Representing 'Machined' Surfaces

We are a tool & die outfit recently upgraded to Pro/E. We are trying to go all out with Pro/E from Design to Mfg. When we were using AutoCAD, all the machined faces like milling or grinding or saw cut are represented with decimal places on our drawing dimensions. More the decimal places are higher the precision would be, that type of thing. And then there will be 'Notes' too to identify what type of operation that we want to do on the steel.

Now, in the Pro/E world, since we want to go 'paperless', the Mfg wants us designers to 'color code' the corresponding surfaces to identify a particular type of operation. I don't think that's feasible to open every single component of your die assembly and color code it. 3D notes are there, but then it also is going to be a time consuming process.



Are there people here who came across a typical situation? Is there any other ways you can define a surface to be milled or ground? Is there like a common practice thing that we failed to learn? Or is it all just left to the Mfg guys' discretion?



Any comments and help is greatly appreciated.



Thanks.

We have plastic injection molds made for us. We actually do go in and color code surfaces for tolerances and surface finish and it works very well. We use green, yellow, and red. None of these color interfere with PROE standard colors (in the modules we use anyway).



While it is a fair amount of work, it is well worth it when it comes to quick communication with people in other departments or outside of the company, and it is paperless. I also recommend making screen captures, cutting and pasting them in a word document, and filing them away in a project documentation file just in case there is a miscommunication about stack-ups or tolerances. Sort of a CYA for the designer.



I am also a big fan of a well detailed drawing for every part using decimal places for tolerances, and surface finish callouts, but that is just the machinist in me talking.



Hope this was a help even if it is not the answer you were looking for.



Thanks,

Laser Guy

anandel,



Something similar to this was presented at the PTC/USER World Event in the Tips & Tricks session. The presentation material is on the PTC/USER website (http://members.ptcuser.org/dman/Doc...+and+Tricks?folderId=/Conference&cmd=download). The tip How to Automatically Add Color to Machined Features in a Casting is tip #6.



Hope this is helpful.





Best regards,



Matthew Ian Loew

Luck is the residue of design.

Branch Rickey

Thanks very much laser guy & Matthew



Matthew, i saw the presentation and i think its a good technique to follow when you machine castings, where you will have a physical rough and machined casting models. We model the die steels to the size and the mfg guys program off of that model.

So I think we might have to physically go in and change colors like laser guy says. May be we can have some mapkeys written to make it faster.



Thanks again!

"Paint the outside surfaces of the casting a different color"
What do you do when you have a complex part with a lot of surfaces ?
You coloreach surface one by one ?