Thought I would Share... Tis the Season!

- A
- Aron (bacsdesign.com)
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
17 years ago

Mon, Dec 4, 2006 5:05 PM

Hi,

In this time of giving... I thought I would share with you my latest "gift"...

I arrogantly thought I had gotten every possible format of drawing given to me by clients... boy was I wrong!

I just received a drawing done entirely in Microsoft Excel! Not an embedded drawing mind you, but actually drawn, shaded, and dimensioned using row and column lines, autoshape symbols, shading, color, etc. I would show this but the contract stuff prohibits... I will say it is a Major Asian Auto Company though.

In my honest opinion, it is a masterpiece of time wasting on both their part and the time I will now spend deciphering this "masterpiece". I guess overseas they have a low enough hourly wage so it cost them about the same as doing the drawing it in a better suited program like maybe Paint, or even AutoCAD, or dare I say SolidWorks!

A truly pure and beautiful example of management & "bean counters" doing design with what was available and understandable to them. To see these "drawings" is both inspiring as well as scary on many many levels...

Happiest of Holidays,

Aron

P.S. Anyone up to the challenge of writing a macro to import a shape drawn / column -row Excel file into SolidWorks! Ho Ho Ho... just kidding about the macro of course - go spend time with friends and family!

- K
- ken
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Tue, Dec 5, 2006 2:57 AM

How about a screen capture and then putting the image in Solid Works???

- A
- Aron (bacsdesign.com)
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Tue, Dec 5, 2006 4:49 AM

Ken,

Good idea...

I have used pictures as background pictures to sketch on top of. It works well for clearances on equipment you need to model, so that what you are actually designing will fit ok. I used it to get the outline in multiple views (top, right, back, front, etc) of a camera lens - some of them can be unsymmetrical like the one I had with a handle and strap. I took digital pictures from as far away as I could and then used the lens zoom function to get back the image size, that way the image had little if any perspective distortion, which you do not want or need when modeling for linear scale - perspective is a nonlinear function of distance. I.E. take the picture in telephoto mode.

But I could not use this technique in this case... Unfortunately the cell spacing is not even, or even linear (!) for that matter, the scales are off on the X and Y axis too because text makes some of the cells taller!

The good news is that I will be able to follow the dimensions and get everything done, but the real kicker was doing a drawing in Excel... you have to say it was at least creative and probably quite universal. Still think it is funny!

Maybe getting drawings in Excel is more common than I thought... I hope not... leave the drawing to the designers and engineers with the proper tools (thank you SolidWorks!), and have management talk and communicate with engineering to get the job done the first time - that way everybody wins!

Deck The Halls,

Aron

- K
- Ken
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
17 years ago

Tue, Dec 5, 2006 3:45 PM

Years ago when I worked on a mainframe based modeling system (IGDS), the engineers didn't have access and so they would create electronic drawings in Word using the drawing tools available. Some of them made some very intricate drawings with it which was impressive from the standpoint that the tool was very primitive.