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Scanning SW to take dimensions off of prints.

scadvice

Titanium
Joined
Jan 16, 2009
Location
"Stuck in Lodi", Ca
Anyone ran across SW that does this. I seem to recall reading about such but I'm not finding it anywhere.

I think it puts it out in a excel spreadsheet format.

Another thought would be a way of taking the data directly off of a pdf image by clicking and dragging it to the spreadsheet covered to a text. You could create inspection reports fast.

I don't know about you guys but documenting this information is very time consuming and an absolute necessity in defense work. At 15 min part can generate 45 mins of inspection paperwork ( i.e. 10 min inspection 35 min paper/electronic documentation.

Steve:codger:
 
Another thought would be a way of taking the data directly off of a pdf image by clicking and dragging it to the spreadsheet covered to a text. You could create inspection reports fast.
Acrobat Reader has a rather comprehensive set of measuring tools, but it's disabled by default. You must enable it to use it.

- Leigh
 
Acrobat Reader has a rather comprehensive set of measuring tools, but it's disabled by default. You must enable it to use it.

- Leigh
Yep...kind of heard that... but that's not what we want to do. We are looking to simplify inspection reports by not having to type into the report every dimension on the print. Defense companies want EVERY dimension reported and it is very time consuming to do this.
If we were doing production work it would be different and you don't need to put every dimension down unless its a safety critical or function critical. (Safety's actually are 200% inspection, two inspectors) anyway, we do a lot of 1 to 5 parts that require 100% inspection of all dimensions of the print. It consumes a lot of time and we looking to reduce the hands on paperwork.

We are looking at Acrobat maybe to solve some of this Leigh, and talked to their support today. We are starting to get an idea...

A print with the actual measured dimensions a different color beside the print dimensions...Title formats...ect...company name...certs sheet...cert of conformance...

Steve
 
I understand that dimensional data can be extracted from the original CAD fides into Excel without extreme difficulty:-
e.g. extract dimensions from dwg drawing - Cadalyst Discussion Forums
Probably can't get hold of the CAD files yourself but maybe you could get the customer to do so and supply you with inspection report forms having the dimensions to be inspected and tolerances pre-filled in either electronic or paper format.

Surprised that you don't already have these for Defence work. When I worked for MoD Research anything that was outsourced for manufacture had such a list provided with the drawings for contractor inspection purposes and a similar list for cross-checking at our inspection department when things came back. Fur could fly if inspection discrepancies were found! Right PIA when everything, as you say, had to be checked especially if the draughtsman hadn't paid proper attention to tolerance build up and inspection error bands.

Clive
 
Clive, we (here at the shop) just talked about that, but decided we have to many different customers with different policies, so we feel it would be as time consuming as we're doing now just to sort the whole thing out.

Is anyone using "Inspection Xpert"? AS9102 FAI Software | PPAP software | ballooning software We are now trying the demo. It's a bit pricey(1600 to 1700 for one seat!) but, if it works as advertised, we could get that back in time savings in short order. It claims to do just about what we want.

Steve
 
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