The Drawings team needs your title blocks!

[andrew.de.leon]

Hi All,

Yes, the Drawings team needs your title blocks...

We don't need complete drawings, just your title blocks (or templates if that’s easier). Would be great if you could provide them in DWG format, but we’ll take whatever format you use. And to help us understand how you populated them, a screen shot of a completed title block would be fantastic. 

You can attach them here or send them to andrew.de.leon@autodesk.com. Looking forward to seeing what you all include in your title blocks.

Thanks,

Andrew

15" Retina MacBook Pro (Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), in Sydney Australia

[brianrepp]

Bump!  This is a great opportunity to help influence the product!

[O.Tan]

Good call on the bump, I actually forgot to send mine which I just did

[brianrepp]

Thanks, Omar!

[Anonymous]

The developers working on drawing functionality should be spending their efforts on something more substantial. It is a waste of developer and end-user time to compile, review and send in drawing title blocks. It is a well known reality that everyone has their own idea as to what should appear in a drawing title block and how it should look. While there is some commonality in drawing title blocks most companies and various groups within the same company insist on customizing them to support "unique" business processes (mostly archaic) and adding that personal feel good touch (ex. company/division/project logos).

What needs to exist are tools to create title blocks from scratch: simple 2D drawing tools to create 2D primitive geometry and notes, plus the ability to import vector/bitmap graphics onto the face of the drawing. It is important that an API exist to support management of title block content and the API needs to support interfacing with an external data management system(s). This is where the effort should be focused.

Of course it is expected the Fusion 360 product will include sample template drawings with title blocks, but these should only be used as a starting point to build company specific ones.

The best thing that can be done for the customer base is to encourage them to not squander the opportunity to rethink what kind of information should appear in a title block. The tendency is to make it mimic whatever is currently being used. Most of the time what is being used goes all the way back to the days to manual drafting on the board. For example, it still amazes me to see a signature block in a title block when a organization's drawing/design release and management process is where that information resides.

Along with supporting user created title blocks is the need to support user defined drawing sizes and formats; the standard ASME/ISO drawing sheet sizes are not sufficient.

And then there is the glaring deficiency of no support for multi-sheet drawings. This and the addition of primitive 2D drawing tools should receive top priority. Fusion 360 has a long way to go before it can be used to create "releasable to manufacturing" drawings. I realize that producing "releasable to manufacturing" drawings may not be the goal/purpose of the Fusion 360 product; it may have functionality to support the drawing process, but the actual process to create a releasable to manufacturing" drawing will need to be completed in another product. If this is the case, it needs to be clearly communicated to Fusion 360 users.

[ScottWertel]

How do the developers know what features to include that will allow users to create title blocks from scratch without first understanding the large variety of use cases that users have customized?

[Anonymous]

Developers know (at least should know) because an experienced qualified subject domain experts are an integral part of the development team. If subject domain expertise is not part of the development team there is a much bigger problem.

While I appreciate Autodesk developer's desire to engage the user community in the develop process, the user community should not be expected to provide missing expertise. I want/expect my CAD vendor to be the expert on the product and the industry (user base) it is targeted towards; to be one, two, three steps ahead of me with respesct to improving existing functionality and dreaming up functions/solutions that improve my work output productivity. As an end user I live in my own little bubble focused on my own navel; end users do not have time to think in terms of long term product strategies. This is why many user submitted product enhancement requests often appear petty and are not well thought out; something I am guilty of.

The title block "problem" is not new and has been "solved" many times by every CAD vendor, albeit, every solution I have seen is far from optimal. Every CAD vendor seems to have made/make the same mistake thinking there is a one size fits all solution. The solution may look fantastic in a product demo sales pitch, but in reality it falls short of the needs of the organization; unless the organization is willing to accept its limitations it cannot be used. An organization that has no history of drawings might be able to swallow the CAD vendor provided drawing format/title block solution, but most cannot. Established organizations invariably end up ignoring the CAD vendor delivered solution and patch together a suboptimal solution that addresses the immediate crisis of getting drawings released, so products can be made, and sold.  

As a side note I want to state that one cannot separate the "Title Block" issue from the drawing format issue; they have to be addressed together.

It is the responsibility of the CAD vendor to provide the basic tools to create and manage drawing content, this includes title blocks and formats. Unfortunately, the tools required to do this are not present in Fusion 360. The actual tools/functions required to build and manage title blocks/drawing formats are quite simple. I could enumerate what is needed, but that should not be necessary; it should be obvious to the development team.

DIsclaimer: I do not consider myself to be subject domain expert in this area. Whatever expertize I may appear to have was obtained strictly as an observer, however, I did contribute in one of those "patch together a suboptimal solution" activities.

[ScottWertel]

Please enumerate.

While you may consider yourself guilty of petty and not well thought out enhancement requests; I doubt by any means that you are unique. Someone else in the community probably has a similar issue and could learn from, or contribute to, the understanding and possible solution to the problems in which you share. That is, after all, the point of the community. The altruism that exists in this, and many other, online communities is the true value... not just the software or the expertise of the development group pushing new features.

Besides, if we left all the development in the hands of the development team, we'd all be driving Model T's when all I really wanted was a faster horse.

[keqingsong]

This is a good discussion, and I just want to interject and give more clarity on the original intent of the ask. Andrew's intent for asking the community to share their title blocks with him extends beyond just for developers to take and deliver a solution. Even with subject matter expertise working the problem, our culture has shaped us to continuously engage with our users to get both sides of the story. Having gone through something frustrating by ourselves and then verifying it with our users allows us to make better decisions as a team and better understand the problem, from product management, to user experience design, to software development/engineering, to QA, all the way to our support teams and technical marketing groups. Based on this, we can then really nail down the right solutions and improvements and deliver something that works the way it should.  

[Anonymous]

Maybe a good starting point would be for the development team to state what
they think the problem is with respect to title blocks that precipitated
the request for examples in the first place.

Let the user community comment on the problem statement to confirm that the
development team has a proper understanding of the problem.

What happens next really cannot happen until there is consensus on what the
problem is.

[daniel_lyall]

@Anonymous I think that's why they ask for diffrent peoples title block's so they can work out what is the same and what is diffrent, then they will go from there.

you need to give a explantion of how you think they should be done that would help ????

[Anonymous]

<quote> I think that's why they ask ... </quote>

Therein lies the problem. We assume we understand the purpose for the request, but our prejudices about what we think is important and presumptions can lead us down an incorrect path.

My originating post was basically a challenge to developers to focus on more important things. It would be presumptuous for me (anyone) to offer a detailed solution to a "problem" that has yet to be clearly defined. My subsequent posts were more philosophical musings based on personal experience. However, I will admit I did drop some hints that were intended to get developers to think differently about title blocks and drawing formats.

The onis is on the developers to convince the user community that title blocks are a priority item and to be specific as to why in the context of all the other things they are working on. 

I think we are having a productive dialogue that is really helpful for the Fusion 360 development team. I wish it was possible for the developers to be more transparent with its user base, but I accept the fact that full transparency is not possible relative to reporting problems and specifics about the direction of the product's development.  

[daniel_lyall]

so why wont you show how you think it needs done other wise why say anything, the developers ask for the info so they don't have to guess or force people to do it some other way????

[ToddHarris7556]

I'll bite : a couple of titleblocks attached, one from Inventor, one from Sketchup. 

We're a hybrid shop... our creative team uses Sketchup for rapid (and low-cost) concept development with clients. For some simple projects, we'll push DXF directly from Sketchup to BobCad and out to CNC routers & mills. For more advanced detailed development, dynamic simulation, etc. we use Inventor/3DS Max (Product Development Suite Ultimate). We still go out through BobCad, we is a capable enough product, but the one-way CAM workflow is tough. Everytime we tweak the model, we have to re-export and re-toolpath. We have high hopes for Fusion 360, and have bought a couple of seats.

The single biggest showstopper right now? Drawings. ASME titleblocks don't work for us. We're a creative firm. We can't look like an engineering shop. 

In order to make Fusion 360 work for us, we'd need the following drawing capabilities:

1) Custom titleblock. With our logo and custom fields in custom places.

2) Font styles.

3) Custom symbols. 

4) Drawing sketches. 

Inventor drawings come close, with only a couple of minor workarounds required for us. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the bait.  I was not sure how best to respond to the "put up or shut up" challenge. I think you did a good job in summarizing and reinforcing what I wrote in my original reply to the initial post requesting examples of title blocks.

Here is a snippet of what I wrote that you summarized...

"... It is a well known reality that everyone has their own idea as to what should appear in a drawing title block and how it should look. While there is some commonality in drawing title blocks most companies and various groups within the same company insist on customizing them to support "unique" business processes (mostly archaic) and adding that personal feel good touch (ex. company/division/project logos).

What needs to exist are tools to create title blocks from scratch: simple 2D drawing tools to create 2D primitive geometry and notes, plus the ability to import vector/bitmap graphics onto the face of the drawing. It is important that an API exist to support management of title block content and the API needs to support interfacing with an external data management system(s). This is where the effort should be focused. ..."

A Google image search using the term "drawing title block" also proves my point that everyone has their own idea (need) for what constitutes a title block. Users do not need developers to create rigid canned solutions, just give users the tools/features they needs to solve their own unique requirements.

I would like to see Autodesk take on the greater challenge of getting users to think differently about what type of information NEEDS to be present in a title block, on the face of the drawing and how that information might be propagated to a drawing document. I know any change is difficult for a company with an established engineering documentation process, but the educational, new user, and entrepreneur markets (markets I think Fusion 360 is targeted at) would greatly benefit from hearing a fresh modern perspective.   

Thanks again.

[josh.sapp]

Here is the sample title block I am working with now. Like many here I've used many various title blocks over the years.