Hi folks, I’m back another hair-brained idea that I’m sure has been discussed already…
Oftentimes, we will have a drawing kicked down into a revision change state because of an issue found during fabrication. It may be that we missed a dimension on the drawing, or we guessed wrong when deciding the easiest way to build something. In any case, we use our red pen on the piece of paper at the shop then come back to the office and kick down the drawing, noting in file history what needs to happen. These files are then left there until the next time we’re going to build one, and we then address all the history comments and release the drawing to production.
Well, say that I came back and kicked down a drawing because we forgot to show a dimension to locate a component in a weldment. But then, the next day someone else discovers that we also forgot to add a weld callout for another component on that drawing… In our current system, we usually send a drawing into a check state (the next available transition), noting that we are kicking to add a comment, then kick it back down and add the additional history comment.
Is there some way to add comments to file history without transitioning the file? Or is there a better transition we could set up to handle that?
We can each edit our own history comments, so I suppose when someone else finds a change, they can just write it in an email instead and send it to the person who initially kicked it down, but that system would fail if ever someone were to leave the company before everything they had kicked down was released.
I know I have access to change the comment in state change history. It may be that we have that turned on for the Admins group, which my user is often in. I don’t have access to PDM right now to test, but I’m thinking that’s a permission thing.
Can you check in/out at that state? If so, have them check it out, open the file properties and hit OK (One of the easiest ways I know to mark a file changed with low risk of making an actual change) and check back in with the comments for the additional changes.
You have a redlined drawing. Open the SW drawing in e-drawings and mark it up like you did the hard copy. Save the .markup file. If someone comes along with another change, then can add to the markup file. Make it part of you process to check for these markup files ‘next time around’ so that changes get rolled in before releasing again.
One downside to this is that the markup tools in e-drawings are not that great.
I have seen markup in edrawings a number of times but have been unable to do anything with it. We do the markup on the PDF in job folder, that is the controlling document for the build.
Although some things we notice do not need to be marked up for production, they are just internal to engineering (modeling issues or non-parametric stuff on drawings, etc…)
I wonder if that would be a good use for edrawings markup in the vault.
If Pro, you could add a version free variable comment field to the data card to store notes without the need to checkout.
Another option is scan the markup from your shop to add to PDM, then checkout the drawing file and copy the image file, then “paste as reference” on the drawing file. The image shows up as a child of the drawing, similar tothe 3d model attached.
