I have a machining company and we for years have been using 2d cad systems such as AutoCAD, GeneralCAD, etc. Now we are starting to adopt 3d because everybody says it's so much more powerful, etc. I agree it's nice to have a model that you can see and manipulate onscreen... but I see that it almost creates double the work to make the model, then go ahead and create a 2d drawing out of the model, dimension the drawing appropriately, print it out and give it to the machinist to make. It's like doing work twice for one part. You first have to make a model, then make a drawing and dimension the drawing. The import dimensions feature in drawings is terrible, it never puts the right dimensions in the right places, etc. so you manually have to go and insert the right dimensions in the right places.
I know you can feed a solid model through CAM software to program your machine tools but we don't do this. We just machine parts off of 2d drawings.
so my question is, is there a way to make solidworks drawings with an assosiated model just as fast as making a standalone 2d drawing only like we used to do in AutoCAD, etc.? I don't want to significantly slow down my business and spend all day making models then drawings.. I don't have that time or resources available.
I know you can feed a solid model through CAM software to program your machine tools but we don't do this. We just machine parts off of 2d drawings.
so my question is, is there a way to make solidworks drawings with an assosiated model just as fast as making a standalone 2d drawing only like we used to do in AutoCAD, etc.? I don't want to significantly slow down my business and spend all day making models then drawings.. I don't have that time or resources available.
