A small question about a subject that should more or less affect us all: the verification of plans. A more or less tedious procedure but undeniably essential, I wondered if it was possible to optimize it in order to save time while maintaining the same level of quality. Reducing paper consumption would also be a great step forward.
Like most BEs (I guess), we print out all of our plans, have them annotated by the auditor, we apply the remarks. I won't go into more detail about the whole validation process, I don't think it's relevant (self-check, intervention of an approver, etc.) This procedure is relevant in terms of quality. Less in terms of time and even less from an ecological point of view.
My question: are there any tools provided by SolidWorks or Mycad Tools? Because checking plans on acrobat reader is not the most pleasant thing
Thank you very much for your help and have a nice day to all
Pdm or 3d experience are there for that, among other things, with other specificities (advantages and disadvantages) of course (and especially a cost) For MyCad tools, I don't know of any software that does this (without PDM or 3D experience)
On the Solidworks side, there is the "Solidworks Design Checker" add-on (To be checked, but I think it is only available from the Premium license) https://help.solidworks.com/2022/french/SolidWorks/solidworks_design_checker/c_welcome_design_checker.htm Which allows you to check some concordances (Standards, Unit of Dimensions, text formats...) but nothing will replace a manual control carried out by a third party, whether on paper or on a PDF.
In our design office, I set up a self-check on excel, all the essential dimensions of the customer validation plan until the control of the CAM files, the author of the plan must follow the frame and check, then a third party rechecks with this same frame, we save a little time, we use less mental load and we have clearly reduced the nonsense.
I had looked at the design checker a bit, but as you explain, it mainly allows you to make a pass on the form rather than on the substance. What would interest me most would be to make it a little easier to control a shot on a screen, rather than having to print it (I could have been a little more explicit about this).
As @M-Scofield says, unless you create a canvas to check (Excel or other) on the particular points to control, I don't think there is a sufficiently advanced software to control plans, It's extremely subjective... What dimensions should I check? At home we use a mix between a 3D control (via Edrawing - Hoping that the auditor looks at an up-to-date version), an Excel table listing the most frequent problems we encounter, and finally a control of the MEPs (either Paper or PDF according to the desire of our controllers)... No miracle solutions in short...
No particular application, we have moved from systematic paper printing to PDF control. Depending on the importance of the corrections, the corrector makes the modification (forgotten number) or prints/modifies the PDF (acrobat reader allows you to put sufficient annotations) for the illustrator to take into account. Of course, a 6m long mechanically welded chassis plan on 6 folios is impossible to check in PDF.
Apart from a PDF on which you have the rights to annotate ... I'm not sure there are many other solutions. And again, I think we're missing things with this solution. We have too much "head in the screen"
So, a first pass in PDF and then a paper validation seems to me to be a good compromise!
On our side, the verification (annotation) of the plans is done from the native SW file opened in eDrawings.
The Markup tool allows you to annotate, add missing dimensions, etc.
These annotations are then saved in .markup format and the builder can insert the markup directly into their drawing in SolidWorks and make the required corrections. The fact that the corrections are directly displayed in the drawing avoids having to juggle with an annotated paper plan - which can get lost - or a pdf - not necessarily easy to annotate if you don't have the right tools - on a second screen (if you only have one screen has been even worse).
As regards the elements to be checked, a " Directive for the execution and control of plans " details the elements to be checked and in which cases the controls apply. A section "Dimensioning and annotation of technological forms" has recently been added to ensure that everyone applies the dimensions in the same way. Ex:
