Print (Drawing) Bubble Techniques

Most of our drawings are in pdf format. Engineering assigns feature ID numbers to individual features. We then in turn bubble the drawings by hand.

Is there a cheap and easy way to apply the bubbles without buying some expensive software? The feature ID numbers can range into the thousands.

I have seen some posts about using excel. I am not sure how this works. I do have access to Mastercam. We don't have models with built in MBD.

Any suggestions??

Thanks!

jabbett said:

Most of our drawings are in pdf format. Engineering assigns feature ID numbers to individual features. We then in turn bubble the drawings by hand.

Is there a cheap and easy way to apply the bubbles without buying some expensive software? The feature ID numbers can range into the thousands.

I have seen some posts about using excel. I am not sure how this works. I do have access to Mastercam. We don't have models with built in MBD.

Any suggestions??

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I feel your pain. As a contract machining company, we often created our own numbering system for the various features of a product on hard copies of customer drawings. I remember hours spent burnishing those little numbers from transfer sheets next to each feature on the drawing, then creating inspection sheets with feature number, criteria, instrument used or to use, and result.

It is ever so essential when dealing with multiple features with the same dimension (0.250 +/-0.005, for example) to prevent confusion or duplication during inspection and assure another inspector can replicate the inspection using similar instruments.

Our system married the feature numbering system with the most efficient order of inspecting these features (required, then listing all the features to be inspected with the same gage or instrument, then next instrument, etc.)

Suggestion:
Typically, the drawings are created in a CAD program, then copied as locked pdf files so they can easily be read or printed without requiring the CAD program be resident on every machine. Is there a possibility of collaborating with the CAD operators to add the feature numbers BEFORE the drawings are copied to pdf?
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jabbett said:

Most of our drawings are in pdf format. Engineering assigns feature ID numbers to individual features. We then in turn bubble the drawings by hand.

Is there a cheap and easy way to apply the bubbles without buying some expensive software? The feature ID numbers can range into the thousands.

I have seen some posts about using excel. I am not sure how this works. I do have access to Mastercam. We don't have models with built in MBD.

Any suggestions??

Thanks!

Click to expand...

You can use Adobe Acrobat to balloon drawings. It's faster than doing it by hand, and easier to make corrections. See the attachment.

jabbett said:

Most of our drawings are in pdf format. Engineering assigns feature ID numbers to individual features. We then in turn bubble the drawings by hand.

Is there a cheap and easy way to apply the bubbles without buying some expensive software? The feature ID numbers can range into the thousands.

I have seen some posts about using excel. I am not sure how this works. I do have access to Mastercam. We don't have models with built in MBD.

Any suggestions??

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I am using Corel draw X5 simple and easy to use. New version is Corel draw X6

I was new to this just 2 months ago, and found that Foxit pdf reader is great for annotation PDF,s. It also allows other text etc to be added with-out affecting the integrety of the original PDF.
As this is my forst post unable to post link but google Foxit
I have also found thier support is very good and prompt.

Hope this helps

Alan Wilson said:

I was new to this just 2 months ago, and found that Foxit pdf reader is great for annotation PDF,s. It also allows other text etc to be added with-out affecting the integrety of the original PDF.
As this is my forst post unable to post link but google Foxit
I have also found thier support is very good and prompt.

Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I'm interested in the ability to "comment" within a pdf file. I've downloaded and installed the program on an XP-powered machine. The descriptions on the website (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/) seem VERY useful. If I have good or bad experience over the next month or so, I'll report. If they are good experiences, I will download onto a Windows 7 machine and report if there is any appreciable difference between operating systems.

Alan Wilson said:

I was new to this just 2 months ago, and found that Foxit pdf reader is great for annotation PDF,s. It also allows other text etc to be added with-out affecting the integrety of the original PDF.
As this is my forst post unable to post link but google Foxit
I have also found thier support is very good and prompt.

Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Welcome to the Cove Alan .. and hope to see you more here.

Alan Wilson said:

I was new to this just 2 months ago, and found that Foxit pdf reader is great for annotation PDF,s. It also allows other text etc to be added with-out affecting the integrety of the original PDF.
As this is my forst post unable to post link but google Foxit
I have also found thier support is very good and prompt.

Hope this helps

Click to expand...

There's also a portable version (can be installed on a flash drive) that could be handy to those who might not be able to do software installations at work.

Jabett

For this need, try PDF-Xchange, you can add text, boxes, clouds, circles,etc.

Hope this helps.

I am also looking for a way to semi-automate the "bubble feature" on PDF drawing files. Many of these files come from customers and using the CAD drawing is not a viable solution. We used to have an Adobe Writer plug-in of some sort that automatically incremented the bubble number. The program was lost and I can't find anything about it on the web. If anyone knows how to get a tool like this, please let me know.

Thanks