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At Canard we believe that communication is key to the success of any project. In fact we will be doing a series of blog posts on the importance of communication and some ways we try to improve our own communication with everyone we work with.

We like to involve our clients at the design and drafting stage of any project. There are a number of ways one can do this including technical drawings, video animations, screenshots, or rendered images (computer generated photo-like images of concepts from 3D CAD models). All these have their place but one of the most useful is sending solidworks assemblies or parts as an E-drawing.

The E-drawings viewer is a free download from SolidWorks that allows anyone to open a 3D model and interogate it in a similar way to the way we interogate the parts in the full version of SolidWorks. It is straight forward to use, and after a little practice, anyone can do useful things like:

• Spin the part around in a 3D environment and zoom in on detail to gain a full understanding of the design
• Show or hide individual parts or sub assemblies to fully understand how and why the assembly is designed the way it is
• Explode the assembly to see all individual components
• Take sections (cut the part or assembly in half)
• Measure parts, and check critical dimensions of the design
• Make comments, and add notes to the file to communicate design changes effectively in an unambiguous way

The great thing about e-drawings is they are relatively easy to interpret (unlike a technical drawing) and aren’t selective about what they show (unlike a video or rendered image). They show the design in it’s entirety from an overall form to checking the tolerance on each part.

I did a blog post briefly describing the benefits of Dropbox and how we use cloud server to link clients folders with their own computer to keep them up to date with the project. Saving our advanced 3D cad files in e-drawings every-time their is a development or version change compliments this service. The two tools combined encourage debate and discussion of designs which results in better products that do exactly what our clients need.

you can learn more about solidworks here and see their free downloads including e-drawings here