Importing .dwg's to .slddrw

[macduff]

Hi folks,
Our Sustaining Engineering Dept works a lot importing dwg's into slddrw's. This is common for electrical assembly drawings showing silkscreen artwork and detail components on the boards. The files are exported out of OrCad to dwg, then imported into slddrw. The problem we're having is the SW drawing file grows in file size immensely. So I'm asking for your help.

He's an email from one of my co-workers concerning this issue:

I am thinking that we need to determine how to address the growing issue of huge file sizes of Solidworks drawing files when we import the DXF/DWG files for printed circuit board assemblies. These large files make them extremely difficult to work with and will continue to be a problem until we address the issue. It is frustrating when a 1 megabyte Solidworks file becomes 60 megabytes when you import a 500 kilobyte Autocad file. Is anyone else having the same problem? Does anyone know of a solution? Just thought I'd throw that out there. Perhaps there is a tool we can use to import this data more effectively.

Thanks in advance,

Colin

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[fcsuper]

"silkscreen artwork and detail components on the boards" I'm not sure why you'd want to do this in S/W? OrCAD is for boards, SolidWorks is for mechanical components. My preference is to keep EE in EE based software. You'll lose a lot of important information in the translation, including the ability to make gerbers of your boards. My suggestion is don't do this, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group

 

[macduff]

Matt,
Gerbers, raw boards yada yada yada are done in OrCad. The assembly drawings are done in SW and are very generic. We just copy and paste the 2D views into our SW drawings.

Is this any clearer Matt?

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[fcsuper]

Colin,

I'm still not clear why'd you want to do that either, but I'm not judging...just confused. Anyways, can you save the 2D views into a bitmap (jpg/bmp/tiff) format then simply cut and paste them into the drawing; instead of bringing them in as vector entities (dxf/dwg)? Also, maybe you can bring the 2D view dwgs in as sketches on a model, and create a view on the drawing of that model with sketches visable on the drawing (I'm not sure there would be any size savings in the model, or if this is just moving the problem around). Perhaps bring in significantly less information on from the 2D views into the S/W drawings, especially if it's only for reference on an assy drawing.

Also, you may already be aware of this, there was a bug in SolidWorks 2007 under SP3.0 that caused increditable file sizes. Is the version used by the S.E.D. at least 2007 SP 3.0? Just throwing this out there in case it wasn't already considered.



Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
sw.fcsuper.com
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group

 

[ctopher]

The best thing to do is not to show PCB routing in SW. Just create the board and show the mounting holes, and some majot components. Copying geometry from OrCAD (or any DXF) will make the file bigger.
There is also other software that will translate OrCAD files into SW and make models.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-21-07)

 

[EEnd]

It seems odd that a bit of vector data from a .dwg would bloat a SW drawing so much. The best I have to offer are a couple of alternate ways of getting the data over into the SW drawing:
[ol][li]Open the .dwg in DWGEditor and use copy - paste to transfer the desired lines into SolidWorks.[/li]
[li]Insert the .dwg as a block.[/li][/ol]

Eric

 

[dgowans]

Colin,

Another thing you could do is just use DWGeditor or ACAD to generate your assembly drawings. One of our PCB layout guys has made a lot of progress in creating a VBA program that automates the creation of assembly drawings in ACAD.

I believe you could do the assembly drawings in Orcad as well, although if your workflow is anything like ours this method has its own disadvantages.

I'm reasonably certain this isn't a path you want to head down, but what would you think about importing IDF data into SWX and generating your assembly drawing on the resultant model? Not much, I suspect.....

 

[macduff]

Thanks for the input guys. Let me try some of you suggestions.

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[rfus]

Haven't posted in a while, seeing as I have been spending most of my days in Cadence Allegro 16.0, and boy do I wish I had a forum like this for that package.... Circuit Board Part Creation, Layout, and Routing is no where near as fun as Solidworks Part, Assembly, and Drawing creation.

I export a lot of silkscreen, package/pin geometry, and mechanical and board outlines via dxf. It comes down to custom mapping what you really need into export layers out of Allegro. I then import this dxf into a new drawing sheet (not the drawing of the circuit board .sldrw file). From there, I turn layers on one at a time, ctrl+C them out of the drawing, open up part (usually the circuit board .sldprt file), create a new sketch, and paste this layer into its own sketch in the part file. I do this for each layer I need in their own sketches in the part. Then, when I open the drawing of this circuit board, I show the sketches that I need in the drawing (fcsuper this sketch data is very valuable for drawings and assemblies, especially placing critical electro/mechanical comps like connnectors in an assembly). If need be I convert entities and assign these sketches to their own layer in the drawing. I think you will find by having these sketches in the part file, rather than importing them into your drawing file, your file sizes will be significantly smaller. When things change minimally I just adjust the sketches in the part file based upon the changes I made in allegro. If they change drastically I have to go through this again. I also go visa versa, by taking a lot of stuff I do in SW and exporting from a drawing via dxf, open up dwg editor and position it, save as dxf, and import the layers I need into Allegro. Creating geometry in SW is a sinch, Allegro, not so much.

I've also worked quite a bit with IDF. Idf, especially through Circuitworks can offer the dynamic update qualities everbody loves, but for the most part, dxf's give me what I need. When the board is final, I will export an IDF 3.0 from Allegro which has all the package heights in the place_bound class, and then this board outline and a bunch of extuded components come up in solidworks. I put this dumb looking extruded PCB into my detailed assembly and check for form factor/sheild can interferences. Mating nice looking parts to my board with the dxf's is still the way to go over IDF, although 4.0 has come a way but isn't supported by Allegro yet. In my opinion, IDF still has a way to go before I drink the coolaid. For the most part, dxf gets the job done for me...Although it is a lot of work. I guess thats why I make the 'medium bucks'

Any way you look at it, large sketches increase file size dramatically.

Hope this offers a suggestion.

RFUS

 

[macduff]

still looking into this guys. thanks for your input.

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[omerp18]

Hi
Pcb programs use a very large amount of 2d geometry.
It is hard for me to imagine SolidWorks trying to address this issue since it is not in the scope of most solid based program (PROE) does not perform much better at these area.
If you want to check geometry imported from PCB package to SolidWorks file, it could be done better in dwgeditor which
Is targeted at raw 2d data.
In ECI telecom We also document PCB Boards for manufacturing and maintenance purposes we have done it in Cadam /Cadra /Spicer 10 years ago and we are doing it today with dwgeditor/Acad I see no point in forcing SolidWorks to deal with this amount of data (over 30000 elements)
Allegro/VeriBest produce very good doff which is easily manipulated in acad/dwgeditor and can some of the task can be automated with VBA
Regards
Dudi Peer
ECI