PTC Windchill – Automated Drawing Comparison Accellerates the Approval Process

SF Drawing Compare speeds up and simplifies the validation of drawing changes in Windchill. Reviewer and checker automatically receive a differential drawing during release procedure. It contains a colored visualization of all areas / elements that changed between drawing to be validated / released and preceding revision in PDF format. This eliminates a time intensive visual resp. manual search for differences between to revisions, and thus minimizes the risk to miss changes. Check and release of 2D drawings after changes are sped up, potential error sources are ruled out. This digitization of change information additionally fosters collaboration between development, production, and quality management with customers and suppliers during changes.

Drawings are still commonly accepted as the technical and legal binding document, even if most product information (PMI) is already depicted in 3D CAD models. Hence, check and release of changes depend on visual control/inspection of associated drawings of the changed 3D objects. Often, release procedures are split between reviewer and approver, so these actions are executed twice. Here, review and inspection are not based on the original CAD drawings, e.g.  in PTC Creo, but on neutral format PDF drawings. These are created as representations by Windchill CAD Workers at the begin of release procedures. Changes are visually compared on often incomplete and unclear change notes and PDF drawings of current and preceding versions. This can become very time-consuming for extensive drawings with multiple pages and hundreds of PMI. Therefore, this approach involves the risk to miss changes.

SF Drawing Compare – automated drawing comparison of drawings in PTC Windchill

SF Drawing Compare automatically creates a geometric comparison for all drawings and pages contained in a Windchill release procedure, and marks all changed areas in color. Thus, the checker receives a so-called differential drawing in PDF form that presents in redlining resp. greenlining the areas changed over the previous revision. This eliminates a time-consuming comparison and location of changes. The differential drawing is linked to the original drawing and is available in Windchill per click of a button.

Automated drawing comparison with SF Drawing Compare in PTC Windchill

Quickly recognize differences between 2 versions of a drawing.

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