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September 1, 2006
By Mike Hudspeth
Collaboration means many things to many people. And there are different levels even when you agree on what it is. But one thing everyone would agree on is that at some point in a project it will become important to communicate the design to someone. How do you do that? There are many options.
Sending someone a static line drawing is the way design communication has been handled since the art of drafting was invented. The problem inherent in the process is that the draftsman must be very good at visualization to accurately depict the part. Things aren’t always as they seem. Add to that the fact that people aren’t always as creative as they need to be. They sometimes can look at the same drawing as someone else and not perceive the same thing. That’s why 3D models are so valuable. You can rotate them and really look at the model from all sides. But how do you send a 3D model to someone who doesn’t have your modeling software?
Impressive!
The people at SolidWorks have a program called eDrawings that allows you to send a neutral file format to anyone. The eDrawings viewer is free for anyone to download.
When I first saw eDrawings years ago, I was blown away. I could open the eDrawings file and view a fully detailed drawing. I was impressed. Then, I found that I could shade the drawing. Again, I was impressed. It seemed to me that eDrawings had some remarkable capability. That was when I discovered the Rotate icon. When I hit it eDrawings began to smoothly transition between drawing views, pausing for a few seconds then rotating to the orientation of the next view. You could set it to be shaded or wireframe. I thought that was wonderful! Then I discovered you could pause the transition and freely rotate the model any way you chose.
You used to have to pay for the eDrawings Publisher but now you can download it for free. I guess SolidWorks listened to the people who said it was hard to justify its cost. With eDrawings Publisher, you can decide what level of functionality your recipient will have. With eDrawings Professional you can set a password to limit those who can use your data. You can enable or disable the measurement function for when someone wants to see your model but you don’t want them to know too much. (Unfortunately, it is a fact that there are unscrupulous people out there who, given a chance, will take what amounts to an exact mathematical model of your design and steal it. Trade secrets are fleeting enough as it is.)
The eDrawings Publisher comes in different flavors that can output the files of many different CAD systems. You can get modules for AutoCAD, Unigraphics, Pro/Engineer, or a whole line of systems. Obviously, if you start out with a 2D system, a 2D drawing is all you can expect to end up with so there won’t be any fancy rotational transitions between views but you’ll still have a perfectly usable data file.
I like the fact that with eDrawings Professional you can also cut cross-sections of your models (see Figure 3, above). You can use this functionality to view the interior of a complicated model, for example, the combustion chamber of an engine assembly. You can isolate parts and measure them, all at the same time as seeing how they interact with the parts around them. You can explode assemblies and move parts out of your way. You can even see any different configurations that you created in your file. I can’t think of too many more intuitive ways to express a design.
I had an opportunity to discuss eDrawings with Paul Sullivan of Crenshaw Lighting Corp. (Floyd, VA), a maker of custom hand-made lighting fixtures. He told me that a good part of their business is one-off lighting solutions for public spaces like museums. Crenshaw uses eDrawings to show their designs to suppliers and customers very early on in the design cycle. It allows them to get buy-off or refine the design faster than ever before.
