The SolidWorks Geek

If anybody has told you that 2D is dead, they are either misinformed or just wrong. the fact is 2D will continue to play a major role in the manufacturing environment. Everybody knows that I am a huge proponent of 3D modeling but I have also worked in the manufacturing environment for over 15 years. I have seen first hand how 3D model has made a great improvement in the design, documentation and manufacturing of some amazing products but the constant has always been 2D. Most designers, engineers and even manufacturers rely heavily on 3D geometry for a variety of task but there is more to the process than that.

No matter how advance 3D modeling programs such as SolidWorks get, there will always be a need to delineate the manufacturing needs to each step of the supply chain. Paper still rules and drawings are still the most important documents to all departments including purchasing, document control, planning, process control and many more. Sometimes certain steps in the supply chain require an outside source. Every company is different. Not every company you rely on for the manufacture of your product will use or even need 3D data. Perhaps their process does not require a solid part, SolidWorks drawing, eDrawing or even a PDF. Maybe they need 2D drawings in a 2D drawing format.

Introducing DraftSight

Recently Dassault Systèmes released a brand new software named DraftSight which is a free, professional grade 2D drawing package. In addition to the free new software, they also launched a community site at http://www.draftsight.com to support the growing community of DraftSight users with everything a new user could require to make their experience in using the software even better.  The sight includes videos, forums, tutorials, and tips to make it easier for you to learn and master the software. At a later date I may go into more detail about the DraftSight community but today I want to quickly show you the program. Before going forward, go ahead and download the program from DraftSight.com. The download is very quick and free. Once downloaded, the installation process is even less painless than one can imagine.

If you are familiar with other 2D drawing packages on the market, you will find that the user interface and over all drawing experience to be very familiar. In fact, if the only 2D drawing experience you have includes the use of SolidWorks 2D Editor, you will have no problem quickly creating 2D drawings. The software can be used to quickly create an accurate 2D sketch for simply demonstrating your design concept or you can even go as far as creating a complete drawing.

The User Interface

After downloading and installing the software, I was not sure what expect. As many of you know I was a long time user of AutoCAD and in the recent years I relied heavily on the SolidWorks 2D editor whenever dealing with vendors that required 2D data or when updating existing DWG files. I was pleasentaly surprised to find a nice clean easy to understand interface. (Click the image to the left to see the full interface)

The interface sports a nice clean layout with standard pull-down menus, toolbars, a graphics area, a properties window and a command line. Being the adventurous type, I decided to jump right in and try my hand at creating a simple drawing without even reading the tutorials. After a couple of minutes I had already created a standard ortographic projection of a ficticious part.

Using commonly used tools such as layers, lines, circles, offset and trim I was able to use the same process I used over 10 years ago when I was living as a 2D drafter. When I first learn how to create 2D drawings, DOS still ruled the world and the command line was the quickest and easiest way to create drawings.

Even though DraftSight has new names for most of the commands, I found that entering the commands I knew from my past still worked. Because of this, I barely used any of the available user interface elements but I did find that the Properties window and the Mouse Gestures to be extremely helpful.

In no time, I had created the three primary views of my fictitious part. All that is left to do is send it to a vendor as is, or create a drawing with everything necessary to make the part such as dimensions, notes, a title block, etc…

Conclusion…

Based on what I have seen in just 24 hours of playing with DraftSight, this program will become a valuable tool in many organizations that rely on 2D data. I am actually looking forward to spending more time with this software and becoming part of the Draftsight community. I am hoping at a later date I can spend some more time with the software and maybe do some tutorials. In the mean time, don’t forget to download the software and give it shot for yourself.