apparently theres a license for mbd that I dont have. is there any work around known to export my gd&t annotations as a step file for the programmers/machinists to see?
Have you tried just using eDrawings for free viewing of the file?
no, I want the annotations to come into my cam software.
I can’t imagine that SolidWorks would hold hostage exporting PMI and Model Views behind an MBD license if you didn’t need one to create them… Are you using the STEP AP242 version in your export options as I believe it is the only version to fully support them?
242 is indeed locked behind the MBD license. If your CAM software can read SW directly maybe it can read the PMI from the .sldprt?
sadly I tried that. those peckerheads mustve figured out how to block that
is there a means I can convert those annotations to a 3d sketch?
One of the worst decisions SolidWorks has made was putting MBD behind a paid license. In SolidWorks the drawing function is included. Paying thousands for the MBD module is not gonna fly for most companies. For 25+ years, everyone seemed to think that PMI/MBD will replace drawings. The longer I see how designs are manufactured, I still think drawings are necessary in most cases.
Kinda make sense.
Small shop don’t care much about MBD. Not even file export. “I can finish it with a file.”
Big shop want as much automation as possible. Will pay for technology.
Medium shop stuck at between. Want to automate but can’t pay the bill.
SW get the big shop to pay for MBD development.
well i have a try before i buy license. we’ll see how much i like it and if it’s gonna be of any use…
We’re a bespoke automation equipment design and build division. Most of our parts are relatively simple geometrically, although we do have decently tight tolerances on some features that we need to specify to the machinist. 2D drawings are not that much harder for us to create vs adding MBD annotations. We use multiple different machine shops, including overseas in low-labor-cost countries. We did make an effort to try out MBD, but it was tough for our suppliers to handle. Many of our parts don’t really require any CNC – Bent sheet metal, bars of stock cold-rolled steel cut to length with a few holes drilled/tapped/etc. These folks want to carry a piece of paper out to their manual machine. The equipment, software, etc to interpret the MBD, especially for non-cnc parts, was hard for them to process. We actually found out that some suppliers were taking our MBD files and creating 2D drawings to send to their shop! At that point we pretty much put an end to that effort.
However, the biggest takeaway we got from that process was that I discovered it is possible to embed/attach any type of file inside of a PDF. The macro we use to export PDFs automatically also exports a Parasolid and a STEP file from the 3D model at the exact same time, and attaches it to the PDF file using pdfTK (free download) and a command line. This has been a real game changer for us because there’s no separate file for anyone to have to manage. The attachment process also compresses the attached files, such that the PDF with attached STEP is smaller on disk than the original PDF and separate STEP file.
Luckily Solid Edge includes the manual PMI stuff OOTB and allows downstream consumption and export as well since that is the collaboration path used by an SE ↔ NX workflow.
What they do make you buy as an add-on is their Advanced PMI which basically adds automation features like Auto Dim/Annotate, a nice Model View palette in Draft and a MBD Publishing tool for auto-creating a PDF “drawing”.
Do take a test file. 242 is still updating. It depends on the software version you’re using and the one you send file to. Not everything will get across.