Converting Non-Updated Drawing to DWG format

[bracin]

Hi all,
I need to save a drawing as a dwg file, but I do not want the drawing to update before saving. I have an old set of drawings that I need to furnish to a patent attorney and unfortunately they have to be exactly as they were almost two years ago. As soon as I open them in Solidworks, they update to the later revision. When opened in e-drawings, they are perfect, but I can not export to dwg format.
Thanks for your help
Brandon

 

[JMirisola]

I'm not sure if this will work, but if you change the file extension to DWG and then open in eDrawings or DWG editor, will that work?
Just an idea...

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
CAD Administrator
SW '07 SP2.0, Dell M90, Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM, nVidia 2500M

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/jeffs_blog

 

[ctopher]

How do they open to a later revision?

Chris
SolidWorks 07 2.2/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 02-10-07)

 

[AnnaWood]

Chris,

I am assuming they may not have saved their older data, only the e-drawings for history, and are not using PDM to keep the archival data so it can be retrieved at a later time.

Brandon,

Do you have a complete set of archive data files of the original SW data? Please explain a bit on how you manage your data archives.

Regards,


Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

WHy would a patent attorney need DWG files?

 

[draftsman101]

In order to obtain a patent you have to summit drawings so that they can check to see if you are trying to copy from someone else, I think.

B. Long
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I understand that, but why in DWG format specifically? Wouldn't hard copies of eDrawings (or an eDrawing executable) suffice? Just curious. You could also open the drawing using the View Only option, and print TIFF hard copy) or PDF (electronic) from that.

Also curious as to why the drawings would be out of synch' with the model.

 

[bracin]

Basically, I have about 50 or so revisions of this particular product and I am trying to get specific drawings from about two years ago. Unfortunately I had made several changes to this model before saving it elsewhere ( for archiving I just copy the whole "folder" onto another hard drive). I thought I had this covered but apparently, I made some changes before storing the file for later use. The drawings were created and sent to my patent attorney before the changes. I now have a new attorney and he needs to tweak the drawings using Autocad. I am just trying to find an easy fix to give him the dwg files without updating the drawing.
Thank You
Brandon

 

[MadMango]

Patent Attorneys redraw the images you give them to simplify them, annotate them with their own item ballons, and justify their cost. I've got a few patents, and they all look like they were drawn with someone's feet.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[AnnaWood]

Brandon,

Does your old patent attorney have the original DWG files you sent him?

Did you e-mail the DWG files way back when? Are the files in an old e-mail on your server? Do you back-up your e-mail data?

First call I would make is to your old patent attorney...

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

 

[bracin]

Unfortunately, my old attorney used my printed drawings, wrote notes on them, and sent it in to the examiner. This is why we have this problem in the first place...apparently they do not accept drawings with handwritten notes. Anyways it is a good thing I have a new attorney....I could go on and on. Can Autocad open a solidworks drawing file?? Is there another program that can open a solidworks drawing and save as dwg??
Thanks for all of your help
Brandon

 

[draftsman101]

In order for that to happen you have to do a save-as and save it as a .dwg file.

Good luck

B. Long
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2

 

[AnnaWood]

Brandon,

I think you are SOL.... :-(

Looks like you will have some work burning the midnight oil to re-create what is missing for you patent drawings.

Start with the last good set of data before you created the dwg's for your drawings a couple years ago. They don't have to be perfect since it is a patent drawing.

Chalk this up to a hard lesson on the importance of managing your archive data.

Regards,

Anna Wood
SW07 SP2.1, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450
WD Raptors, 1 Gb network connection

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

 

[EEnd]

You said that you can open them up in eDrawings and they are fine. Can you print to PDF from eDrawings? If so there are a ton of converters out there which will go from PDF to DXF. There is also a ton of print to PDF utilities out there so the eDrawings to PDF step should be doable as well.

Eric

 

[EEnd]

And you could try CBL’s suggestion and open the drawing view only in SolidWorks and then save as or print to PDF. Then do the PDF to DWG step. The PDFs themselves might be worth sending as a lot of non CAD drawing packages will open them directly.

Eric