Huge screws!

...to borrow a phrase I read in Matt's site.

Just ran into this one. I guess I'm hitting them all!

What were they thinking?

For me it's a matter of perceived value. The value of a work of engineering. Hours, days, weeks, months. Lots of time, money, thought, consideration and study goes into these works.

Given that, the very tools with which we document and create these designs must not conspire against us. The unique ability that Toolbox has to damage a design if used as delivered is simply a failure by SW to place any value on their customers work. For this is the only way one could consider designing a system that would allow such a grotesque alteration of a design to take place.

Design data integrity must be a fundamental guarantee of a high-end tool. The design must be a solid unit that can survive transport and archival without having to resort to error-prone manipulation. One such example is using the "copy" option in Toolbox; appending these files to any archive or transmission and later having to recreate a structure just to be able to see the design without missing parts or distortions. Not only is this a mess that is unreliable (it might not survive an employee leaving, for example) but it is prone to such basic issues such as file naming collisions and other tragedies one can think of. There are examples of this type of problem with other tools. One that comes to mind with ACAD is the image issue. ACAD saves absolute paths to images used in drawings. All you have to do to break such a drawing is move the directory from drive C to drive D. The only fix is to manually tell the program where the images are.

Gotta love it!

I'm adopting a tip I saw while searching the NG's archives for this problem:

Insert all the Toolbox parts you need. Select a representative or each part type. Open it. Use "Save As" to save it to the design directory.

Now it's a permanent part of that design. The whole directory could be zipped-up and moved to the other end of the planet with a reasonable guarantee that a 4-40 nut won't turn into one used to fasten tires on 747's. The good news is that you only have to do this once per part "family" due to configurations.

-Martin

Reply to
Martin
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Our department is in the process of converting to Solidworks. I am the one highly experienced CAD guy in the department and definitely have had some bad experiences in the past with Autocad and directory structures for images and x-refs.

But, I personally, am not on solidworks yet and therefore do not have the knowledge to advise the department on how they should handle thinks like this. Thanks for the heads-up on this issue.

Am I correct in understanding your recommendation as follows; - All files related to a particular design should be contained in one directory (and/or sub directories) - It should be taboo to reference components in any kind of shared directory.

But perhaps such standard parts as bolts could be handled by keeping the shared component directory exactly as it was when the program was first installed, and making it a read-only directory. Is this possible, or does the toolbox need to be writable for some reason? Would you recommend this approach?

Joe Dunfee

Reply to
cadcoke3

We don't use Toolbox here (wasn't used when I arrived) and instead have a common library of hardware, etc. on our Z: drive. This way we don't have any Toolbox issues - all standard nuts, bolts, washers, etc. already exist as configs of part files, and the existing parts don't change - only add configs for unusual stuff not already there. We also have a library of purchased parts models so we reuse them from a common location, rather than hunting all over to try to find the last place we used it, and then having multiple copies.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

WARNING: Please, do not take what I say as "recommended practices" or even absolute fact about SW. I have 20 years experience with ACAD and about four months, a class, a bunch of tutorials and a couple of designs with SW. I am, most definetly, not the person to look up to for recommendations. There are real experts on this newsgroup who can help you. I'm sure they'll pitch in.

It is clear that, as any new tool out there, SW requires learning. Part of that learning has to do with letting go of what you know and shifting your thinking to best utilize the new toolset. For example, today my VAR suggested a neat trick that involves using the cavity tool to have a part punch holes in another part without having to resort to piles of external references. I think I can safely say that I never would have thought of this independently.

Anyhow, make sure that you listen to experts advice. I'm just a newbee relating some of my experience and frustrations in hopes that it helps others and, of course, to help me learn about the errors in my own ways.

-Martin

Reply to
Martin

Having said that, I realized I didn't elaborate on what I posted with regards to Toolbox.

It's very simple really. I don't need to work on highly complex designs. Mostly electronic devices to be mounted on standard 19 inch racks. In this context SW will be used to design sheetmetal and some of the plastic parts. In more general terms, to model the various sub-assemblies for form, fit and some function (doors, slides, etc.).

It is clear that my needs out of toolbox are simple. A few fastener types per design. Nothing fancy. And so, I've decided to opt for avoiding the whole issue of Toolbox building parts on drag-and-drop and require that all designs have all parts needed for the design within the folder structure for that design. For example:

Widget1 Front panel (a part) Keypad (an assembly) Buttons Knobs Etc. Chassis Cover Fasteners

The Widget1 project survives the test of time and place (for the most part). You should be able to move it from computer to computer and even send it to vendors and have all parts come-up as per the original design. No need to worry about whether or not Toolbox is installed and where/how/when/if a certain part and/or configuration was built. In other words, the file package is a true description of the whole design with the only caveat being that you might have to use the same version of SW to open it as that which created it. Maybe the addition of a plain-text "Readme.txt" file at the top of the hierarchy could be used to communicate such things. This approach should also survive hardware upgrades and even changes in engineering team makeup.

Yes, it replicates parts from design to design. I'm willing to accept this in exchange for the freedom and independence this approach provides from software, computer, network, etc.

I don't know how PDM might modify the above.

Hope this helps.

-Martin

Reply to
Martin

I re-located tool box to the server, and have inserted our common used parts, micro switches etc.. into the tool box. The only time I had 747 wheel bolts, was when an assembly was incorrectly saved, without the file references and then opened on another PC.

This also applies to, any assembly, that uses parts located in a different directory. The easiest thing to forget, is to use the find references and copy the files from there, (even preserving the directory structure if you wish), and not from the windows or solidworks explorer. This way, you to can take the whole assembly home with you work on it , add more bolts and then take it back to work, where the toolbox definitions are updated with the new data.

Reply to
pete

On the subject of purchased parts. Which vendors and products do you recommend? I'm talking mostly about fasteners and the like.

-Martin

Reply to
Martin

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