how do you deal with the SW drawings problem ?

This is where Pdmworks, would be great, because you can open the assembly from Pdmworks, to your "local" machine, measure any feature, then delete the "local" assembly. Your original, (in Pdmworks), remains untouched. :-)

Would saving as detached drawing help?

I am just curious as to why your drawings are messed up every time you open them?

I am not the only person with the drawings problem here. I believe it is because I place my dimensions/ tolerances etc. according to what I feel provides the most aesthetically pleasing/ informative locations. The problem is that after saving such a drawing, say to complete at another time, when I open it all my dimensioning, views and text get really messed up.

Laz

Laz,

You will have to explain what you mean by messed up? I have no idea what you are talking about because I can't see your screen.

It helps when asking for help to let the reader know what version of SW you are on, what service pack and some specifics about your problem. When you say something is messed up in a general way nobody can really begin to help you.

The only problem I've ever had with dimensions, text and annotations moving on a drawing after opening them are the Section View text. I've never had problems with any of the others being all over the place after opening them up. Are you importing the dimensions from the model or do you dimension the drawing manually.

I believe they're using 2005; not sure what sp, but according to the posts I've read here it doesn't matter. I want to stay in SW because of my familiarity with it, but I don't want to take the job and end up looking like an idiot because the software has a problem with drawings. It would be wiser for me to void that issue altogether and just do my drawings in the Cadkey they have there.

Laz

news://nntp:119/d5p791$224$ snipped-for-privacy@lust.ihug.co.nz

So this is more of a general feeling that SW does this, but nothing really specific?

1. SW in general will produce suitable, repeatable drawings given the part or assembly used to make the drawing are not changed. For archival purposes you have detached drawings.
2. Issues with complex drawings having dangling dimensions does happen. It is frequently due to poor practice somewhere in the parts or assemblies making up the drawing. The good news is that you typically don't bring in a lot of dimensions on an assembly drawing as that is left for the details.
3. The most common reason I know of for annotations to move around is due to the operator not locking focus on a view or on the sheet as the case may be before making the annotation.

Example: a general note placed apparently on the sheet, but in reality associated with a view will move with that view. The fix is to CTRL-X the annotation, lock focus on the sheet and CTRL-C paste the annotation the sheet.

1. On a micro scale annotations can move around slightly. Using the align functionality can help with this. However, it does frequently occur when printing or zooming in and out. While this may be more of a MSoft issue, it is no excuse for SW allowing it to happen. Had SW gone with the Apple platform this probably wouldn't be an issue as Apple seems to have figured out how to do WYSIWYG long ago.

1. SW still hasn't gotten translation of a drawing from SW to DWG/DXF right. You cannot trust that text or dimensions will be the same size and in the same place as on the SW drawing. Nor can you always do a clean edit of text or dimensions and expect it to come out right.

2. SW still hasn't gotten translation of drawings from SW to eDrawings right. See previous posts here. Same concerns as with DWG/DXF.

1. There can be printer to printer variability in printed drawings. This is a user fixable problem for the most part.

It is hard to believe you are familiar with SW and haven't run across these minor issues.

I greatly appreciate your information. I am printing out your information for my reference. Familiarity is a relative term. While I recall I experienced similar issues with dimensions at an earlier job bidding for a contract; it was model, drawing, print and run...no time to go back.

Thanks again

Laz

Geez. This has been going on forever. I got a SPR WAAAAAAAAY back in Swx 2003 regarding this. What have those susbscription $ been paying for? Oh that's right, the parts pallette changed to the "Design Library".

Sorry, this is one of my major pet peeves. I used to own a company where we did all our design in Swx but the customer required dwg's. We spent a lot of time cleaning up the junk dwg's that Swx creates.

CD.