Making drawings in Creo of an assembly modeled in Catia?

[MB_10560460]

Hello!

Is it strongly adviced to NOT make a drawing in Creo 9 of an assembly made in Catia v5? 

I'm making an component for a client. The component consists of two sheet metal plates that are cut and welded together and then applied a gasket. An assembly in Catia contains solids and surfaces that represent the plates and welding paths. 

I modeled the components in Catia v5 r28 and the customer uses Creo 9. 

Then I made a preliminary test of the question above by

1. Export a stepfile of the assembly,

2. Open step with creo and save the assembly and parts as creo asm and parts. 

3. Open creo assembly and designate a top view and front view in the assembly. Create simplified representations of the assembly (cutting process of each plate, welding process, gasketing process)

 4. Create a drawing and made a sheet for welding and a sheet for cutting of one plate with their respective simp representations. 

5. Dimension the views. I put an outer dimension.

6. Export a stepfile from Catia of a new version of the plate, Open it in creo, save as creo part

7. Replace part in the creo assembly (as unrelated component) that the creo drawing is linked to. 

8. Drawing is updated, As expected the dimension is purple and need to be remade. 

I want to be able to update the drawing, i.e. replace parts in the assembly with new versions. I expect that linked dimensions in the creo drawing will be lost and need to be re-dimensioned. 

The advantage of having it in creo would be that the client can open and edit the drawing directly. But I assume there is some loss in reliability and functionality when working across softwares like this. 

Advantage with Catia is that we can make multible drawings by copying a catia drawing and re-link (often times) with an updated catia part. But some re-linking of dimensions will be needed.

[StephenW]

If this workflow works for you and your client, then it really doesn't matter what others think about.

From my experience, if you are using 2 different cad systems within a company and something is modeled, detail and maintained in one system (catia in your case) and then "exported" to the other system (creo) for whatever purpose, the model in the second system (creo) can become obsolete and if the user doesn't know to check for changes (in catia), mistakes can be made. I would say this is a major drawback.

The opposite could be true also. Someone opens the creo drawing/model, makes a change, but the catia model isn't updated mistakes could be made.

[BenLoosli]

One other drawback is that the customer will receive non -parametric Creo models as converting the file into Creo through STEP will erase the parametric information.

If the customer has Creo and you have Creo, why not model the parts in the customer's system?

Is there a larger assembly modelled in CATIA driving you to do the drawing in Creo?

Why not do the drawings in CATIA?

Keeping the design and drawing in the same system is the best solution. As Stephen pointed out, switching systems can lead to mistakes along the way.

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

my suggestion ...

1.] create drawing in Catia

2.] export Catia drawing into dwg file (AutoCAD format)

3.] send your client this dwg file ... they can view its contents in Creo -OR- in free Autodesk DWG viewer