Patent line drawing view

[Anonymous]

Is there a plugin or some program that can convert your 3D work from Inventor into patent grade line drawings?

[mrattray]

What's deficient about the current Inventor drawing environment?

[Anonymous]

I don't know.

Is that for producing patent drawings.. ?

I'm new to Inventor.

From the drawings I've seen in Inventor they didn't have those little surface line details I've seen in patent drawings I've checked out on Google patent search.

[Anonymous]

[mrattray]

It's been a long time since I did a patent drawing, but I don't remember putting any of those shading lines in like you show. I just made a standard engineering type drawing and it was fine. I think those are likely either very old drawings, or the drafter chose to add them to help illustrate the contours of an organic surface(like in your example).

If you're filing for a patent then your patent lawyer should be able to answer your questions about what's required on the drawing better than I can.

Try creating a new file using one of the available drawing templates and see what you can come up with.

Run through some of the drawing tutorials in the help section if you're having trouble.

[Anonymous]

Here's a link to someone mentioing how their Inventor drawings were rejected by the USPTO for lack of shading lines.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Patent-Drawing-Shading-Lines/td-p/2808288

And if you have a look at: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?49788-Turning-inventor-designs-to-figures-for-a-US-pate...

you might recognize a familar member also from this forum who says:

"Patent (US) drawings are not dimensioned engineering drawings.
The closest image type from Inventor is an Illustration rendering type."

I'm doing this solo, no patent attorneys. Small personal project.

[Anonymous]

I am also looking for a way to add the linear shading lines to my drawings for a patent. I believe that a utility patent doesn't require linear shading lines but a design patent does. 

In the past I've had to export the inventor drawing file to a .dwg and manually add the linear shading lines. This sucks and takes for ever. Now I have to do it again but was hoping to find an easier way.

Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

 BRAX is correct that US design patents need surface shading, so the examiner can understand how surfaces change.

As of this post, I currently have to do the same thing [model in inventor>export .dwg>add lines manually]

Maybe a plug-in can be worked into the drawing dialog box (where you can select views, hidden lines, tangency etc)

Similar to selecting the rendered option for views.

Some examples of manually shaded design patents can be seen on {link}

http://nbgdrafting.com/service/ip-patent-drawing-drafting/#design-patents

Surface shading is mostly derived from the tangency lines and offset from or perpendicular to the tangent lines.

The entire object doesnt have to be covered in shading,

-The drawing should be provided with appropriate surface shading which shows clearly the character and contour of all surfaces of any three-dimensional aspects of the design. Surface shading is also necessary to distinguish between any open and solid areas of the design- [excerpt; https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types-patent-applications/design-patent-... ]

A Plug-in to help alleviate or expedite this process would be extremely helpful. 

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