Create Drawings of sheet metal parts

[Anonymous]

I currently have a macro to create dxf's of all the sheet metal parts in an assembly with the Vendor or Category marked as laser.  I am now looking for some help creating a macro to Create drawings of those parts with a flat pattern view a side view of the flat pattern for the thickness and an Iso view of the folded part.  The only dimensions needed are the thickness and the bends.  I attached the macro for the dxf's to base off of.  Unfortunately this is bad timing as I won't be at work all next week but I would really appreciate any help.

[cadman777]

YW.

Here's a clue that may help you see how others do it:

Get someone who knows AdvanceSteel and Tekla to show you how they customize their auto-drawing and auto-dimensioning. Or just watch YouTube videos on how to do it. There's some good seminars on YouTube about this from Autodesk and Tekla. When you see how they do it, you will see how they categorize dimensions and features on the model, and 'walk-thru' the process by prioritizing which features to 'tag' first. Then they work their way through the whole part or assembly till it's done. The only thing is, it works great on individual parts, and pretty good on structural weldments, but not so good on generic drawings of mechanical stuff like I do. Watching how they do it is a good education, and will to give you an idea of how you may want to approach it. That way you don't have to 'reinvent the wheel'.

One thing I found is none of those programs do any justice to assembly documentation, espeically stairs and platforms. They are also very weak on sheetmetal and formed plate. And they do NOTHING with piping and that sort of thing. Also, their drawing modules SUCK, which is why I don't use them. Inventor has the best drawing module I've used, even compared to SolidWorks. I remember how I pulled my hair out trying to get SW to do what Inventor did simply and easily.

So if you are not an ME, but instead an EE or CE, you can easily learn this stuff by dedicating yourself to it. And you can then put it into practice in the mechanical world. But remember that if you sign an NDA with the corporate slave colony you work for, you won't get any benefit from all your hard work! Instead, the investors and government get most of your labor and ideas (unless you make a contract with them that benefits you based on your creativity and doesn't let them ROB YOU of your ideas and take credit for them and reap the profits from them instead of you).

Just some things to think about ....