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Re: OK, good responses on parts lists, now how about foldout
Subject:Re: OK, good responses on parts lists, now how about foldout From:"Richard J. Collins" <writejob -at- DNAI -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 13 May 1998 14:26:59 -0700
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marc Lederman [mailto:Marc -dot- Lederman -at- pulse -dot- com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 6:50 AM
> To: Richard J. Collins
> Subject: Re: OK, good responses on parts lists, now how about foldout
>
>
> Rich,
>
> We also use drawings in our manuals but we have a graphics person that takes the
> CAD engineering drawings and strips out all of the doc control, border, and
> supporting information and fits the particular drawings to the 8 1/2 X 11 sheet
> of paper. It is a time intensive effort but I think it enhances the manuals and
> keeps the "extraneous" material out of the manual. If your customer has a need
> to know that information, it can be put in a table or list or...
>
> This is quite an effort if you are doing it yourself. Although we have the
> luxury of a full-time person doing our graphics (most of these drawings are line
> drawings of cabinets, chassis, channel units, circuit diagrams, block diagrams,
> and some extensive tables that come off the engineering drawings. It works well
> but because of the turn-around times required, often we wait for drawings to
> complete our manuals.
>
I get the autocad files directly from doc control and convert to Visio 5.0. If I leave the
border information the process is fast (10 to 15 seconds on average), but that is for a
display only version. To convert the actual drawing objects into a Visio file that I can
edit take much longer, and like all graphics conversions, there are inevitable errors that
crop up (Visio is supposed to release a new converter soon.)
In the old days we had photo mechanical transfers made, got out the sissors, whacked off
the border and waxed the drawings down on paginated page forms. Now that, was labor
intensive.
> The border information is useful for digital circuits or other such drawings
> and schematics that incorporate a component numbering scheme that is
> referenced to the border zones. I can see leaving that intact. But if the
> border information serves no useful purpose on an assembly drawing, and
> leaving it on makes you shrink the image to make it fit, and that hurts
> legibility, I say take it off.
>
