Viewing a dwg on screen in scale

[dcrockettjr]

I work in a manufacturing facility.  I have been tasked with finding a way to replace some paper drawings that we have on the floor.  Those drawings are plotted to scale and when an operator on the floor wants to check his production he can put them on the overlay to make sure all the necessary holes and cutouts are in the right spot (relatively speaking)  they still check the actual dimensions with calipers, micrometers, gages, and such.   so the production manager would like to get rid of the paper drawings and simply buy a large screen that the drawing could be pulled up on and viewed and then the part compared to that.   Has anyone successfully done this and if so how?

I know that different monitors, different resolutions etc would make a difference.  In my head I can theorize that if I cut a 2 inch by 3 inch piece of paper out and taped it to the screen I should be able to create a drawing of a rectangle 2 inches by 3 inches and then figure out the zoom needed on the dwg viewer and the resolution of the screen to best get that to fit exactly.  That is how some Photoshop people have suggested viewing their work in true size.  Any other ideas on how to do it with DWG files?

[christopher.l.evans]

Look into Autodesk DWG TrueView.  It will require a little training but there is a measure feature in the ribbon.  I'd still get a large monitor but this way it's less likely to get damage with them trying to measure something on screen with calipers etc.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=6703438&siteID=123112

[pendean]

Sorry, AFAIK there is no way to set a monitor display to show actual size on screen unless you want to spend all day zooming in and out and calibrating it constantly. The above advice is not the ideal: if your photoshop folks think it's easy to do then that's the application you need. Test and confirm before you commit.

[dgorsman]

This is one of the few places where paper use is better than digital-only.  The best that can be hoped for is for the drawing to be on screen at roughly the same size and comparing for proportions not dimensions.  Manufacturing is definitely *not* like artwork where good enough works.

There is technology called "augmented reality" which merges 3D visuals into a video stream.  Its seen some development in the portable gaming world.  In this case, the part could be placed on a viewing table and the technology would place a 3D digital version next to it on screen for comparison.  Not sure if they survived all the board migrations, and it was only a technology demonstrator, but try searching on "Boomless Chameleon" from AutoDesk.  Maybe things have progressed a little farther.

[dcrockettjr]

thank you all.  I have had some success in this venture. not 100% but some.

the overlay is definately for a quick comparison only.   The actual part is still physically measured to the actual print dimensions using calipers and real gages etc.    The part being measured is just a long thin flat piece of steel that may have notches on the side,   holes in certain locations so it is just a quick visual check to see is this notch in the right spot, hole in the right spot, am I missing a cut out notch, am I missing a hole etc.  ( Something that is easy to see anyway from a normal print but these overlays have been used for 30 years and it is part of our process and not likely to be changed no matter how little sense it makes).   This application would also only be in use in one area of the plant on one PC and one monitor -actually a large flat screen TV that would be mounted facing up on a table with glass/plexiglass covering to keep it from getting damaged.

I did notice that each drawing used different zoom levels such as pendean posted.   I also found that using the measure tool on True View that the default border/title block of all our company prints were not the same size.   Some borders were 11 inches wide to hold a drawing of a piece of tooling 3.5 inches long and some pieces of tooling that were 14 inches long might be inside a title/border that is 27 inches long.   I did a quick test and made copies of two files with that type of feature.  In one copy I deleted the actual drawing inside of a title block that is 27 inches long and copied and pasted the smaller drawing  into the larger block.  Once I did that I found that I could use the same zoom level for the modified  dwg (small tool inside large block) and the orginal large block dwg.   I will continue testing a few more parts tomorrow to see if this holds true.

Of course if it does hold true then that means modifying every single drawing for this application to have the same title block as the biggest possible part so that the same zoom level is used for every part.   That might be enough work to kill this project now.   It would also mean that if we ever made a larger part that couldnt fit in the now standard large title block that every drawing would have to be revised again.