eDrawings-Would you send them to a customer?

I agree that edrawings don't always appear as intended and can be scrambelled sometimes. However I do send them to customers - but not all customers. I only send them to customers who I have worked with for some time and where they understand that often what they are looking at is 'Work in Progress' and not a Phase End Presentation. Thes are still with quality paper drawings and renderings.

I always create PDFs of 2d drawings and EXE edrawings of the assembly and put then in a zip file. These are then sent to clients for archiving. I use the exe drawings so that in the future people can always look back. New managers etc at clients can look back at past work and get a better understanding of what has gone before as we discuss new work.

However I have never found that clients have the patience ( or perhaps skill) to use the annotation features and other more advanced features of edrawings. I am usually on the phone explaining how to look at the model to illustrate my points.

So my verdict - usefull but not perfect or foolproof.

Regards

Jonathan Stedman

For as many years as eDrawings have been around and all the hype that surrounds them you would think they would be capable of rendering, verbatim, what was on a SW drawing.

Yes - I would agree - but I gave up long ago thinking that Solidworks ever completes anything it starts.

I send them to my customers, but only 3-D models. The only customers that I send them to are very computer literate, and have actually told me that it helps a ton while designing things for them.

For 2-D I always generate PDF files and send those.

P.

Don't get me started...... Been a pet peeve of mine for years.

They hype the SW "Chopper" but they can't use their own product to send a proper WYSIWYG e-Drawing to a machine shop.

Every new release I create an e-drawing from the company SW template. Every new release the e-drawing that is generated does not match my template. (i.e. logos that go missing, Title block text (Titles) that look fine in SW drawings "bleed" off the edge of a SW title block, notes that appear in weird positions, sizes, etc.....)

If you can't trust a application to generate something simple like a title block - how do you trust the dimensions it generates?

Don't get me wrong - I like the concept. Its the lack of "real-world" execution that I have a problem with.

Len

Len

Ditto

Kev

Pretty much the same here, except that I only very rarely send eDrawings.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

eDrawings is a mediocre piece of work Many vendors/customers have a difficult time figuring out how to open and apply the features. How many customers etc... have the luxury of time and sometimes patience to learn another computer application.

I wish it was as good as SolidWorks claims.

Kman

Yea, between half of the computer illiterate customers I have and the other half that have old outdated computers (which e-drawings eats for lunch with complex models), PDF's are the only way to go.

I guess the real frustration is having to deal with folks who still haven't learned how to use a computer! What could be simpler than these automated windows installers, high speed internet connections, and low cost computers. Some of these bozos should have tried to install stuff off of 14 floppies using DOS and Compuserve. I think their ignorance is just an excuse to not spend time doing what they are supposed to be doing which is reviewing tech info and giving input, they would rather wait until everything is done and its too late to make changes to bitch and complain.

I just feel lucky that Acrobat is so widely used that every> eDrawings is a mediocre piece of work

There is a print setting in Acrobat that will let you print notes/annotations. Look in the print dialog box. (This is assuming you have the full version of Acrobat).

I sent this in to SW and to their credit they did respond with an SPR on at least one thing.