Cast Your Vote: Ballooning Method

[Anonymous]

For MANUFACTURING drawings, we have had some lengthy discussions about ballooning.


If you have 3 views of a subassembly, do you (1) balloon each item in all three views, or (2) balloon the item once on the drawing, or (3) place enough balloons to make each view easy to read, or (4) balloon the items in each view that are annotated with dimensions, weld symbols, etc.?

Is any one of these considered an industry standard for ballooning manufacturing drawings or is this something that is preference?

Cast your vote for any of the above options (or other methodology) and explain why.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

My vote is for #3, the whole idea behind "Detailing" is to provide
information/intent for the end user to produce a product that matches the
designers intent.
wrote in message news:6374482@discussion.autodesk.com...
For MANUFACTURING drawings, we have had some lengthy discussions about
ballooning.


If you have 3 views of a subassembly, do you (1) balloon each item in all
three views, or (2) balloon the item once on the drawing, or (3) place
enough balloons to make each view easy to read, or (4) balloon the items in
each view that are annotated with dimensions, weld symbols, etc.?

Is any one of these considered an industry standard for ballooning
manufacturing drawings or is this something that is preference?

Cast your vote for any of the above options (or other methodology) and
explain why.

Thanks.

[kstate92]

(2) But it does sometimes cause the "Where's Waldo?" affect.

[karthur1]

#2. Every item should be ballooned. But the balloon should be placed so that it is very clear to what is being ballooned. The whole idea is "communication". the Auto ballooning that Inventor offers can be used on simple assemblies, but on more complex ones, it is best to manually place them.

[Anonymous]

My personal methodology as well as the company methodology for creating
assembly drawings and ballooning them has changed several times since I
started using Inventor 12 years ago. We currently use many views
representing an assembly procedure and only balloon the parts being
installed at that point of the process.

I've always tried to balloon with the idea in mind that if it is
confusing or hard to read it will be ignored by those trying to use the
drawing.

On 4/16/2010 10:13 AM, djohnson1976 wrote:
> For MANUFACTURING drawings, we have had some lengthy discussions about ballooning.
>
>
> If you have 3 views of a subassembly, do you (1) balloon each item in all three views, or (2) balloon the item once on the drawing, or (3) place enough balloons to make each view easy to read, or (4) balloon the items in each view that are annotated with dimensions, weld symbols, etc.?
>
> Is any one of these considered an industry standard for ballooning manufacturing drawings or is this something that is preference?
>
> Cast your vote for any of the above options (or other methodology) and explain why.
>
> Thanks.

--
Hal Gwin
Mechanical Designer
Caliper LifeSciences

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[markc-uk]

Number 2 - only balloon the item once in a drawing.

As mentioned, you need to think about the placement of said balloon to ensure it's meaning can be interpreted by all who may read the drawing.
As an aside, I've never used auto balloons in either AMDT or Inventor. It is simpler, quicker and I achieve better clarity using manually placed balloons as sketched symbols.

[Mark_Wigan]

i prefer manual balloon placement, more often than not i will use most of them on an iso view, but frequently an additional couple of balloons will be required on one of the plan or elevation views to assist in the communication process, even if a couple are duplicates but i would never completely balloon all views.



-mark.

[kstate92]

Many, many moons ago, we did not use balloons, but leaders with the actual part numbers. It was a little messy fitting them in at times, but at least you didn't have the two-step of noting the balloon number then looking up the part number in the parts list.

I've frequently wished drawing files would at least have the option of tooltips popping up that displayed the part number and perhaps description when you hovered the mouse pointer over a balloon - especially in viewers used by those outside of engineering with smaller monitors (less zooming and scrolling).

[msklein]

Remembering back to when i was taught on the drawing board, we were taught to balloon parts in the view that gave the most the most clear view of how parts went into the assy then add a qty. Some parts did get ballooned in more than one view (hardware) if needed for clarity, but then were called out as ref qty. way to many screws that were close in size to each other.

But a lot of that did have to do with the problem of having to do updates to the drawing and the more places you repeated the balloons or other info, the bigger the chance you had to miss them in the change updates.

So i kind of like the third way today.
msk

[zma1013]

I usually balloon obvious parts once, and less obvious ones multiple times in different views. We do it just on a case-by-case basis and decide whether something is easily visible and defined in a view or not.

[Mark_Wigan]

same here with the part numbers wrapped within balloons... that brings back memories.

... & come to think of it, i have actually done this a while back on very specific GA drawings, and mapped the balloon property to use the part number instead of the item number (sometimes both separated with a vertical line even using a customised balloon shape) so that if the reader wishes to look at the parts list he can read additional information.

-mark.