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Issue Date: April/May 2000

New type of compressed, electronic drawing file

April 2000

SolidWorks has announced the release of eDrawings, a new type of innovative, compressed electronic drawing file that enables users to create, view, send and receive mechanical design drawings via e-mail. Each eDrawings file includes a self-contained viewer enabling recipients to start using the drawing information immediately. The eDrawings' Publisher is available for existing users of SolidWorks, AutoCAD and any CAD system outputting a DXF or DWG file.
eDrawings break down the communication, software incompatibility and drawing interpretation barriers by allowing engineers and designers to easily create compressed electronic drawings and e-mail them to anyone. In addition, the unique, small file size of eDrawings enables the delivery of drawings faster than was previously possible. This eliminates the need for 'snail mail' or faxing as a means for sending drawings. EDrawings' built-in viewer and self-interpretation tools make it the ideal solution for anyone who needs to send drawings over the Internet.
"SolidWorks developed eDrawings based on input from countless engineers and designers," commented Freek van der Berg of local distributor, Mecad. "We found that people are frustrated with the day-to-day difficulties associated with sending, receiving and understanding drawings. With eDrawings, SolidWorks has taken the concept of a drawing and reinvented it for the 'wired' world. With the eDrawings Publisher, engineers and designers can create and send drawings with one simple click of the mouse - no more confusing data, no more software incompatibility. eDrawings is just the beginning of the SolidWorks vision to enhance drawing communication."
An eDrawing file contains intelligence not found in standard drawings. These key innovations include:
* Virtual folding - Allows users to look at several drawing views at one time, regardless of how the views were arranged in the original drawing. The user no longer has to sort through multiple sheets of paper or fold drawings to place different views next to each other. Virtual folding allows the user to open individual views in a drawing and arrange them in any way desired. Virtual folding also automatically aligns the views intelligently and enables the user to print and export any subset of a drawing.
* Hyperlinking - eDrawings recognises how drawing views relate to one another because it understands standard drawing conventions such as ANSI and ISO. With the hyperlinking feature, the user can simply point and click on any drawing annotation and eDrawings will automatically find the selected view. If the view is not present, eDrawings will open the view or, if the view is present, the location is automatically highlighted on the screen.
* 3D pointer - This feature allows the user to point to a location in all drawing views simultaneously. Because eDrawings understands basic 2D drawing conventions, it can distinguish how drawing views relate to one another to represent a physical design. This enables eDrawings to show the user-defined location in every view simultaneously.
* Animation - With one mouse click, eDrawings enables the user to animate a drawing. The animation feature allows the user to enhance a familiar 2D drawing by combining the 2D drawing annotations with the benefits of a 3D solid model. This makes it easy for the user to communicate what a product will look like before it hits the manufacturing floor. The animation feature also enables users to shade drawing views, making the geometry even easier to understand. The animation capabilities are available with the SolidWorks eDrawings Publisher.
* Ultra compact size - For years, sending drawings via e-mail was difficult because many companies did not have the bandwidth to send or accept large documents. Using eDrawings, the design is compressed so that the e-mail version is substantially smaller in size than the original document, thereby minimising bandwidth barriers over slow connections. In fact, the size of an eDrawings e-mail attachment is typically 50% of the original drawing file's size.
SolidWorks is represented in South Africa by Mecad Systems, computer-aided engineering software specialists with offices in Centurion and also in the US. Contact Freek van der Berg on (012) 665 1400 or freek@mecad.co.za or visit the website at www.mecad.co.za


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