Label/SilkScreen Artwork

[Anonymous]

I am designing an electronics enclosure. We need to send out artwork for labels to be made or for a silk screen company to paint control and indicator text on the enclosure panel.

I created a sketch on the plane of the panel. I then used sketch text to position the labels. Finally, I did a 2 mil push/pull into a new component. Success - all letters there. I then made them plastic and painted them matte black. On the 3D model it looks great, all filled in.

Now for the drawing. I created a drawing from this assembly choosing only the component containing the lettering. I have another drawing of the entire assembly, which includes lettering. The lettering is outline-only in the drawing, not filled in. This cannot be used to make labels or do silk screens. 

Any assistance appreciated.

[Phil.E]

Sorry to hear of your pain. I am very close to this issue having done a lot of work like this in my days as a designer.

I put up this idea station post about PDF from Sketch

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/ideastation-request-a-feature-or/save-sketch-as-pdf-for-silk-screen-ar...

This hasn't moved forward as a project because not many customers are asking for it. So I'm happy to see your post :). Since I put that request up we have added DXF out of sketch which does produce a 1:1 mechanical image, so this might get you farther if you have another tool to work on the DXF. It would just need a solid hatch pattern and PDF output.

Another Idea Station request is for what you want, a solid hatch pattern in Fusion drawings.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/ideastation-request-a-feature-or/2d-drawing-capable-of-being-used-for-...

So feel free to vote for these. I'm also hoping other forum people can chime in with their workflows. It shouldn't take too many steps outside of Fusion to get a good PDF for silk screening.

[Anonymous]

According to Fusion 360 developers the first suggestion is "Implemented"... Thanks for posting!

I guess I have to go find some way to pull in a dxf, convert to yet another format and output silk screens, or just dump it on the vendor by making it their responsibility to come up with artwork based on a dimensioned sketch from Fusion360 that shows lame outline text.

[TMC.Engineering · Accepted solution]

This is not a Fusion solution but is it possible for you to use inkscapes/ corel draw/ adobe illustrator to bring in the dxf and then color/fill the text?

[Anonymous]

Of course. Hopefully I won't have to select each letter and do it, the way a lot of these tools go that's what it would be. Of course, we don't have any of these tools here, I have Corel Draw at home.

[TMC.Engineering]

@Anonymous 

you will need to either explode the text or create another sketch plane and project each letter.  then in corel draw use smart fill to color the letters.  Wish there was a better way 

[Phil.E]

This is a rare request from me. Can any of you please write a paragraph or two here about why silkscreen is important for manufacturing, and how it would benefit from being part of a truly parametric workflow inside of Fusion?

I'm trying to expose the customer case for this and you can help with your stories. It's considered a niche workflow and most people do not understand it's place in CAD. In my opinion, silk screen relies on the model like G code relies on the model. I'll leave my thoughts there and would really like to hear from you all.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

Imagine a stereo system or complex piece of test equipment with no front panel markings. This makes the silk screen as critical as the switches themselves, without silk screened labeling the product is useless.

In the product referenced in this workflow, the heavy lifting is done on the printed circuit board. This is where all connectors and controls are positioned. For electronics packaging this is often the norm, but even if it were not, outside control markings are so important they would be considered if the case were designed first then used to position the parts on the printed circuit board.

Fusion 360 is then used to enclose the printed circuit board. I selected an appropriate off-the-shelf enclosure (in this case Hammond 1590XX) then positioned the board in the enclosure, projecting the mounting holes and the holes needed to expose connectors, indicators and controls. Very nice, slick and fast workflow. A humble EE with absolutely  no training in this or any other 3D tool was able to do it.

The final step is to create a drawing to make the silk screen that will label these controls. It's natural to start a new sketch on the face of the surface to be screened, then just use text to put the labels in. You can size the font to fit nicely with the controls and you can move it where it is best from an ergonomic and artistic perspective. I put the silk screen sketch together in less than a half hour.

And then in Fusion 360 you hit a brick wall: all this beautiful text is mashed by the outline output. It's useless, can't be sent to anyone to make a silk screen. So we're back to using Visio or some other silly tool to, by-eye, make a suitable silk screen master. Mistake-prone? You bet. A big waste of time.

If a good silk-screen output to PDF were included then Fusion 360 is truly a one-stop shop for EEs trying to package electronics.

[Anonymous]

I've run into the exact same problem as Willian has above. There is no way to export a file suitable for silkscreening from Fusion. You need to rely on other software, the learning curve with some of these product is steep, they can be expensive and its often difficult to scale the images to suit your enclosure. At present I basically need to give the sketches to an artist who is familiar with creating silkscreens and has all the tools and knowledge, he does a good job but it's time consuming to explain to the artist (by creating a detailed brief) where the controls go etc. So far we have gotten it right first time every time but from submitting the brief to recieving the .svg file it's taking a lot of time for each device.

The ability to creat silkscreens in Fusion would be a huge benefit for electronics designers.

John

[Phil.E]

Thanks for the detailed descriptions. I've added it to the improvement request ticket.

@Anonymous  Can you please provide a design file and describe what you would do with it (your proposed workflow)? It would help to provide this example.

(ref: FUS-10800)

[swift]

I'm facing a similar situation: designing the front panel for an electronics enclosure with buttons and indicators.

My model has the holes and cutouts for LEDs and connectors that are mounted to the panel, but I need to generate the artwork for company logo and the text labels that correspond to the LEDs and connectors. I can use text in a sketch on the panel plane, or text in a Drawing, but neither is an easy export. The fabrication shop is requesting that the artwork be in Adobe Illustrator format.

A potential option that might work: there is a Fusion 360 plugin for the Shaper Origin CNC 

router that converts shapes in a surface to SVG. I mention that because exports to other vector 2D graphic formats should work similarly. I haven't tried it yet for this purpose, but in principle it should handle fonts as nice closed vector shapes. Unfortunately, I don't believe it represents the text fonts as fonts though once it gets exported, which would be ideal for the fabrication shop (in case they need to change the font weight or spacing, for example).

Shaper Origin Plugin 

Shaper Origin Plugin Installation 

In the example below, I exported DXF from the sketch and then used Inkscape to fill outlines, but that was tedious.  

[Phil.E]

That's a great example. Silk screen for panel layout.

This is a topic that is on our radar. Nothing is in the roadmap yet, but we are keenly aware of the use case. I made this video to show the best workflow available today that ties Fusion model data (panel geometry) directly to PDF output using drawings. It does require manual updates to the drawing if the geometry changes. Ultimately, the text should be parametrically connected to the geometry, at least IMO.

[andyskirrow]

Hi,

A great thread and exactly what we need.  Working in different companies i see this panel design done with ease and speed on Solidworks. Creating blocks with layers. 
I've found a good work around with a component for each 'component' (no pun intended)  each has four sketches
1 - Panel Cutout
2- Front face clearance
3- Rear face clearance
4- Legend (screen print)

This means we can have multiple component repeated with ease.  However as many have said we his a wall providing the render file for the screen printing. 

I whole totally vote for some solution to make this possible. 

Andy

[Phil.E]

Thanks I added your comments to the improvement ticket. You show a good view of the customer experience, thanks.