I am finding more and more posts on engineering related forums as well as discussions with industry professionals that cannot believe that designers and engineers have little to no idea how to sketch using a pencil and paper.
Personally, sketching helps me reduce my modeling time anywhere from 20-50% while at the same time increasing the simplicity and accuracy of my model. In my Advanced Modeling course at NTI I start off the course by asking the students to define advanced modeling. Those who do not know me yet will answer with functions like Surfacing, Sweeps, Lofts, Sheet Metal, Weldment so on and so forth.
Then I pull out my soap box and tell the students that these are actually industry specific standard tools. If you are working on sheet metal day in and day out then those are generally the core set of tools you use son on and so forth. Same goes for Mold Tools.
The next part of my presentation talks about advanced modeling being about modeling using the most basic tools possible to accomplish a manufacturable component, assembly that 2 years down the road the next newbie can immediately open and make the necessary changes for the next design. I talk about taking the time to model as best you can in a manner that will allow you to import you model dimensions to the drawing to save time in the detailing process. Model so that your drafts, fillets, chamfers (dare I say it “extruded text”) are at the bottom of the feature manager tree so they can be easily suppressed. Use the hole wizard to aid not only in assembly but also use you companies standard hole callout format. Try to limit the parent child nightmare by relating back to datum planes, origin or you base feature. These are tangible items in which i can immediately show the results and demonstrate the value.
Being able to sketch your part before modeling is proving to be more of a challenge. I cannot tell you how much time I have saved throughout my career by sketching before I model. It is a great way to spend those countless hours in drawn out design reviews (cat fights).
What value do I find in Sketching? It allows me to envision how my model will be constructed (is this a cast to machined part? will this become a progressive die stamped part? how can I ensure my design intend in understandable?), add notes to features that may associate to other parts of the assembly (this hole is related to part B, the connection is a shaft the will be pressed into 2 bearing what was that fit again? Oh yeah it is right here in my sketch), list our drafts, minimum radii, wall thickness, materials to select from, I can add all kinds of research to a sketch that will reduce my time at the computer and increase my productivity while I am at it.
This is proving to be a challenge to convey to students. They want to work on the computer all the time. I even talk about my time in Florida (the highest number of lightning strikes per inch capital of the world) and how there is often times you can not have a computer with you. Or how about when one of your machines is on the brink of failure but we can only take it offline for a given amount of time to reverse engineering the no longer existing replacement parts needed to over haul the machine.
Anyone else in the Legion have some examples of how they use sketching to improve modeling productivity? Any one out there think that sketching is the dumbest thing next to the pet rock. Let me know. My student will benefit from all views.
