Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

Register Log in

Pro/E Design Guidelines document?

B

bobmann

New member
Hi there. I'm the Pro/E Administrator at my company, and I have been asked to write a Procedure for our Pro/E design guidelines. We are ISO 9000 Certified, and of course we need to have documents to cover everything. And now, that has to include Pro/E, and a general overview of the way the users use Pro/E on a daily basis.

But I'm having a hard time figuring out just what should be included in this document. I mean, I don't know how detailed I need to get. I suppose I should give some instruction as to which start parts to use, which drawing formats to use, when to use top-down design, etc.

But before I get too involved in this, I would love to know what other companies have done. I am certainly not looking to steal any propreitary information from anyone. I'm just looking for how companies describe their general design guidelines. So if anyone works for a company that has a documented procedure for their Pro/E users and wouldn't mind sharing it (or part of it), I would greatly appreciate it.


Thanks!
 
You are on the right path with start parts, formats and general design flow.



Things you should also list....

standard parameters

standard views

standard layers and items they contain



ordering of features - primary (base solid features, surfaces), secondary (drafts etc), tertiary (rounds)



Hope that helps. We have a standards document (on the order of 10 pages but I cannot release any of it).
 
An important topic are the release and change procedures. These bring new information into the company, and has to be well documented.

I document things I see people struggling with. Mostly when a design moves from one designer to another. I try to capture the problem and the suggestions for a solution. After a while, I summarize these to a small group of key users. They add comments to it, and I finaly publish these guidelines on a small wintraweb.
 
I used to work for a company that tried to document everything - including exactly how to model everything. It didn't work - users trained on different versions over the years had different ways of modelling.


What we finaly settled on was along the lines of what has been suggested - start parts/assemblies, standard layers, standard drawing borders, standard naming conventions. We also made it easy for users to find standard bulk parts - screws/washers/circlips etc, so they would use them instead of creating new ones.


We tried model-check for a while and prevented parts with incomplete features or assemblies with frozen or surpressed components being archived - there were always exceptions to the rules though so it was switched off as often as on.


In general make it easier to follow the procedure than do something else by only controling things that really give you an advantage.
 
I agree with Baptie



What I can advise You is to look into VDA 4955. It is German norm which scope is about Quality for CAD models


so at front establish what is allowed and what is not
 
Since my company doesn't have design guide document, I was also in process of creating it, because when some new worker come, then he doesn't know what files to use, how to properly model etc. and then working with his files is mess.


Bobman
My opinion on this is that you must literally said every thing they must do because this way workers couldn't say: "this isn't in Design guide document".
This is my rough sketch of how it should look:
Default files
- config options
- metric.dtl
- start templates
- formats
- all other files that are important for running ProE


Design
- naming layers (this should be in default template, but users must know in which layers comes which feature etc)
- naming features
- forbidding using chamfer/round edges for reference while sketching
- sketches must be simple as possible
- rounds, chamfers, drafts comes at the end of design


Assembly
- how to assemble components
- which components comes first in asm
- creating xsec planes
- creating z clipping planes
- handling large asm
- simp reps


Drawings
- default views that must be in drawing
- dimensions must be only Show/Erase
- while creating dimension what reference must be used
- default data's in formats
- default hatching


This are just some of I have think of, of curse there are a lot more topics that should be coved in Design Guide document.
 
Wow, this is great advice, and should give me a good start! Thanks, everyone!


And again, if anyone has such a document that they wouldn't mind sharing, that would be REALLY appreciated. And feel free to wipe out any sections that contain private company information. But even without that, I think I've got a good start here....
 
muadib3d said:
What I can advise You is to look into VDA 4955. It is German norm which scope is about Quality for CAD models
Click to expand...


Muadib3d, I did a Google search for VDA 4955, and I did find it. But I only found it in German. Would you happen to know of somewhere that might have it in English? Thanks!
 
well I have an access to this norm in our firm but I do not know if I can share such document. I have to find out
 
Hi,

some time ago I found some information on some of the car manufacturers b2b sites which are fx. BMW (http://b2b.bmw.de then go to public area / department / car development / homepage / ProE) and Volkswagen (www.vw-zulieferer.de; on a hurry I didn't find the information now - maybe it is restricted now?!).

Prabably there are many more companies offering that kind of information.

If anybody knows some more companies or even the links to their sites where it is published it would be great to know about that.

I know about some german companies which are offering special addons which are guiding you and providing prebuilt configs and startparts which are necessary to have a streamlined and defined way of pro/engineering respectively modelling. One of those addons is the startup tools wrom inneo (www.inneo.de). I think that inneo was named RAND before???

Happy Easter
 
As the coordinator within a group of Cad users I have found it useful to have the newest employee gather copies of information (memos,e-mails and other company documents) as they find aneed for them and make copies, one for themselves and one for the next new guy. This also gives me insight into what is missing in our existing standards/procedures which I can direct to the Standards committee.


Also google drawing standards, I found alot of governmental standards are available on the web the Air Force Academy for one and there are many others.


Kfactor2
 
I thought this thread would show more post - at least the subject is super interesting especially for newbies, admins and for all other users in small working groups or even one man shows who are not using a guideline but want to improve their own modelling quality.

Of course it is very interesting to know which guidelines potential customers or potential employers are having.

Have a nice weekend
sesser
 
I have written a draft of a Design Guidelines document. Thanks to everyone who gave their input already! I am posting again to see if any people who didn't read this thread before have anything they can add. Any more opinions as to what should go in a Design Guidelines document would be greatly appreciated!
 
Hello Bob


Please post again! I am interesting in your guide line as I have been tasked with the same project and would like all information available!


Thanks you trickey_99
 
Hi Bob,

I try to follw the guidelines which are being used by Volkswagen and BMW for example. They are very similar to each other.

The BMW guidelines can be checked on their B2b-website (http://b2b.bmw.com).

Of course I will be interest in reading the guidelines you ar just working on
sesser
 
I've created an outline, and I've started writing the document. Wow, this is a long, slow process! Anyone, for anyone that might be interested, here's my outline. Please feel free to post your comments...






User Guidelines, Pro/E


I. Config files
A. config.pro
B. config.win


II. Model Creation


A. Copy From Existing Part/Assy
B. Start Parts
C. Bulk Items
D. Naming a Generic/Instance


III. Model Parameters


IV. Part Design


A. Feature Creation


i. First Feature Selection
ii. Feature Order
iii. Part Orientation
iv. Naming Features, Groups
v. Patterns


B. Sketching Considerations


i. Simplicity
ii. Dimensioning
iii. Design Intent


C. Family Table Setup


i. Ordering Instances
ii. Parameter Inclusion
iii. Naming Dimensions
iv. Comment Lines
v. All features unsupressed in Generic when possible (?)
vi. Instance level family tables


D. Part Simplified Reps


V. Assembly Design


A. Assembly Constraints


B. Component Ordering


C. Component Grouping


D. Family Table Setup


i. Ordering Instances
ii. Parameter Inclusion
iii. Comment Lines
iv. All features unsupressed in Generic when possible (?)
v. Instance level family tables


E. Top-Down Design
 
This is a good idea. I would consider not to have the information that "only" have interest for the administartor like Config files or perhaps only write that the exist and that they are managed by the cad-administrator. If you have all installation on a server or controled in other waysthe user don't have to think of the config files.


Keep it as simple as possible. Else you will have a huge job when you upgrade software from one version to another.


Another way to help you to make a cad standard is tosetup modelcheck to make some simple checks when a user save a model.
 
Just for the curiosity... Do you use Intralink? Eventhough it is not directly related to design, I think it is worth to mention about it (procedures etc). Also, you may want to go through how to handle part revisions and ECO process. I assume youdeal with these quite often since your company is ISO certified.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top