Looking at this software as a way to improve upon our current method of recording first article inspection results. Right now it's a combination of Excel spreadsheets and creating PDF files. The DISCUS website testimonials are impressive. I would like to hear from other users to see if you think this is a good package, or if there is something even better.

Thanks.

--QG

I've been reviewing FAI software packages myself lately in hopes of optimizing our system. I looked at the DISCUS package and the VisualFAIR package. After running the DISCUS Basic demo software, I'm questioning whether I want to proceed evaluating this type of software. It's not a decision I am easily making as if there is a software package out there to make my life any easier, I WANT IT!

I guess the big thing I found is that the software basically captures what can already be done with paper, pen and a good scanner/pdf package. Yes, they can capture the drawing, add reference balloons, and grab requirements and tolerances. Does it make life easier? Maybe less typing for entering requirements but maybe more time for playing with placing balloons on drawings.

Another drawback that the software may or may not address is the use of non-standard forms. I have to use specific forms for one of my customers and I don't fully know if the software can address this.

Final verdict - FAI software might make a cleaner package but I feel the jury is still out if it makes doing an FAI any easier. (Then there is the cost too, which isn't exactly off-the-shelf cheap.)

Any other opinions or comments??

I have been using Discus software for almost a year now. If you want excellent FAI software, this is the one. It is very easy to use and and produces a very nice AS9102 document. I would be more than happy to answer any questions anyone may have about it.

RCW.... My company is required to comply with AS9102 for some of our customers. The documentation we have to produce is monstrous and doing an FAI with pen, a report, and ballooning a print takes 3 times longer than it does using Discus. When i first got the free 15 trial, i didn't think much of it. Then i began to use it and actually timed myself using it. I have reduced my time creating FAI at least by 70%.

Mike

RCW.... My company is required to comply with AS9102 for some of our customers. The documentation we have to produce is monstrous and doing an FAI with pen, a report, and ballooning a print takes 3 times longer than it does using Discus. When i first got the free 15 trial, i didn't think much of it. Then i began to use it and actually timed myself using it. I have reduced my time creating FAI at least by 70%.

Mike

1) Were you filling out a paper version of the AS9102-style forms? If you were, I can see where this software would help. (Like qualitygoddess, I'm also currently using an Excel spread sheet.)

2) How does the software handle capturing tolerances to include on the final AS9102 forms? Approximately 80% of the measurements I would capture have a tolerance listed elsewhere (i.e. the titleblock). (I'm asssuming the software version you have has OCR capability.)

3) Does the software have the capability to put the information into a custom AS9102-type form? Is the final form only readable/editable/printable from the software or can it be ported to Microsoft Word or Excel?

4) Let's talk price. Approximately how much did the software cost? What went into figuring the cost? I'm asssuming the number of licenses you purchased but anything else? (I finally got a price out of VisualFAIR. For their regular package, not the "lite" version, it would be a little under $10,000 to purchase and $1500 annual maintenance costs. OUCH!)

5) Does the package handle/address electronic signatures? (Making sure Fred actually did the FAI versus Bob logging in under Fred's name.)

I would appreciate your feedback on the above questions.
:thanks:

Mike,

Please excuse my manners. First of all, welcome to the Cove. You have come upon a great source of quality-related questions and answers. Post early and post often. :D

Also, I am curious to the nature of your business. Is it all aerospace-related or is there other business mixed in? Is a good amount of your time spent performing FAIs or is it "off & on" during the course of the business year?

RCW,
Thanks for the welcome. I will do what i can. First off, my company is a manufacturing company. One of our earliest uses of the AS9102 form was actually for an aircraft company and we did do it by hand. Until i got a cold call from Kelly @ Discus software, this is how we did all our AS9102 documents. Any other inspection documents were done on our standard inspection report. Not only that for one of our customers we were allowed (and do it for many) to write our findings on a copy of the print. We only have one or two customers that we do that for now. When i tried the Discus software i was awestruck that something like this even existed. I showed my boss and even he was awestruck. We now use Discus for any of our new customers that require an FAI. One of our customers requires FAI, 2, and 3. WE use Discus for this (I had the excel spreadsheet customized) in answers to your questions:

1) Yes we were filling out a paper document (Inspection report based in Word) These forms are going to be placed in the "maybe we will use these again" portion of our server haha.

2) The version i have captures anything you want it to capture, in a manner of speaking. There is a section that you assign tolerances in doing your set up. Its very simple to use. Not only does it do standard but it will convert to metric too. If the tolerance is different that the one you assigned to it, its changed locally, very simple

3) I have 2 custom AS9102 documents that Discus prepared for me (i'm not an Excel whiz). But if you are an Excel whiz you can probably customize your own document. The output is in Excel.

4) The version of Discus i have was $2400 (i just upgraded and got the OCR pkg), i forget the maintenance fee but i have a floating license and is available on 4 stations and if i want to add more i can. Only one can use it at any given time. If you have many people doing the documents (i recommend training from Discus) it will be more $$. I am the only one in my company that uses this software.

5) I am sure it will handle an electronic signature. If you can do it in Excel you can do it on the Discus FAI document as it is an Excel spreadsheet

The best advice i can give is to go and get the 15 day trial version and USE it. You wont go back.
Mike

Dear QG,
I have been a Discus user for about the last 9 months. This software has reduced my FAIR time from days to hours and in some cases minutes. It is so simple to use that we have trained some of our admin staff to use the software which has freed up hours of expensive QE time. You can pre-set tolerances, it comes with canned forms for AS9102, GE aircraft engines, Pratt & Whitney, Honeywell, Rolls Royce, plus if you have a customer with a unique requirement it is really easy to create your own form. It uploads to customer web sites easily. Why don't you take the 15 day free trial and evaluate it. If you have any questions or if I can help you feel free to contact me.

I just downloaded Discus to do the 15 day eval w/ OCR. In the last few hours, I've got more questions than answers (although the help file is pretty comprehensive).

2. Can you slide all the grid lines over at once (i.e. pan the whole grid)? When I had "equidistant" checked, I wasn't able to drag the grid over to match the drawing grid. I had to uncheck equidistant, and then move each of the 16 lines over manually. This would be tedious for every drawing.

3. How do you tolerance angular measurements with minutes & seconds? As shown on the print is 40 degrees, 0' +- 15'. Our FAI's show the drawing requirements exactly, so we can't change to decimal degrees (per our customer requirements).

3a. How do I enter a decimal symbol?

4. When cropping, sometimes it's a wide box that goes past the window. Dragging the crop line outside the box doesn't pan the image, so I can't see what I'm cropping, and constantly either cut off too much, or get outside the box, and get an error. This is on EVERY dimension, and getting quite tedious.

5. How do I re-select a requirement? Sometimes I'll over-crop it, and chop off the end, and need to expand the selection. Another time I accidentally removed the image, and now I have a bubble with no box tied to it. Can I re-select a box?
(edit - just figured out - Found the "snap rectangle" icon. Click on a baloon, and drag the snap rectangle corner to corner).


6. OCR doesn't work at all on this drawing (we just have a soft copy of this scan, so I can't re-scan it, and it's a hand drawn drawing before the days of CAD). I'm re-typing everything, and since there are more steps to it, it's quite a bit faster to drag and drop bubbles and transpose all the text in excel as we're currently doing it.

7. How should reference dimensions (in parentheses) be handled?
I'll also give the VISUAL FAIR (& PPAP) 30 day demo a try.

Thanks for the insight!

I'm still evaluating the Discus Basic software. After loading in their sample file, I tried to export to Excel, using my own Excel template. Everything exported fine but the OCR graphics didn't show up in Excel. (The first row height was also messed up / too short but that's an easy fix.) I double checked my spelling of the fieldname and even re-typed it with the same reults. My Excel occassionally does some weird things so I will try using the Discus on another computer to see what happens. I emailed Discus tech support late last week and have not received any reply.

To be fair to Visual FAIR (pardon the pun), they're lite version is more compariably priced to Discus Basic.