Strange Workflow? Creo-Autocad

[rubenvillarreal]

Hello,

At my company, the thing goes like this:

Model in Wildfire 5

Assemble in Wildfire 5

EXPORT the drawing to DWG (ONLY THE GENERAL VIEWS)

Annotate ALL in Autocad LT

So, my main question is, is it normal to do something like this? I know is not the best way, but is this a really strange thing? Or this is happening a lot in another companies?

The just bough Creo 4.0, and they hired me to help them with the drawings, is it Creo a good software to create drawings? Can you share your work? (Some complicate drawings), that way I can tell them why should we uninstall Autocad.

Thank you.

[dbower-3]

Sounds cumbersome. 

If the model changes drastically, do you re-export the Pro/E drawing to AutoCAD and Annotate it again?

Sounds like a lot more work than just making the drawings in Pro/E.

If your end-result must be an AutoCAD version, I would export a completed Pro/E drawing to AutoCAD.

[KenFarley]

When I first started working with Pro/E in the olden times, we did this. Mostly because Pro/E only ran on an HP workstation, of which we only had two. So it was more timely to do drawings with Autocad on our plentiful PCs. But, those were the dark times. Every time a change was made to the geometry, you had to re-export all the views and do all the detailing again. Unless you were able to edit the geometry in Autocad to "fix" it. If you needed another view, like an auxiliary or some such, you had to go back in, generate it, export, etc. It was a nightmare of file copying and you were often unsure that the drawing actually represented what you wanted. No thanks. We thankfully abandoned that and went to doing the drawings in Pro/E. It's often not the best experience, but much more efficient than the multi-tool approach.

[James62]

It's too early for Creo 4.0, especially for the drawing mode.

I started working as a tool designer in similar environment with Rhinoceros 2.0 for 3D modelling and BricsCAD (clone of AutoCAD) as a 2D tool for drawing formats, tables and annotations. Whenever a change came it was a disaster. With almost every tool I designed there was always at least something that came out wrong until I've learned how to do it all including surfacing in Creo Parametric.

It took me a lot of time to figure out how to export correct DWG files from Creo Parametric and 'fix' them using LISP routine in BricsCAD, but it was well worth the effort.

[Dale_Rosema]

We export .drw's to .dwg's for the use in the shop viewer system (different directory on the network).

I have used Draftsight (by Dassault) to edit specials in which we do not save the modified models, but only the drawings.

[rubenvillarreal]

Yes, if you move a hole, you need to re-export the entire plate again, views, etc. Sometimes I get sleep at my desktop annotating again and again. At least I am not alone, since there is people here that knows what I am talking about, I am just in the past, again....

[Inoram]

I used to do this, too. But we are talking 1995-97 rough time frame. WF5 is perfectly fine to make drawings in. You need to start learning 2d right in Pro-Creo whether it's Wf5 or Creo whatever version. Once you get it, you will save a ton of time. Granted almost all my macros are written to save time in 2d, so you have a lot of learning to do.