Hi Tiberius,
I'll chime in with my 2 cents worth as well.
In the machine manufacturing world (well at least in the States) you are almost always "safe" supplying a 2D paper drawing provided it has all the needed information and dimensions to make the parts/assemblies. Some manufactures may ask for a certain drawing standard (ANSI Y14.5 etc) but as loang as all the info is on the drawing I wouldn't be too concerned. Obviously there are more sophisticated ways as you know.
Miles is correct. DXF files are pretty universally accepted (usually in R12 format). It's not to hard at all to save a copy of your drawing in DXF format. I expect that ALL MCAD software have the translator to do this. That said, if a particular machine shop wants a certain "neutral" electronic format it is likely that your MCAD software will have that output format as well. Those might be IGES, STEP or SAT. Again, pretty much all MCAD software have these formats available for output. Be sure to choose you output options as a solid and not wireframe or surfaces.
Cheers.
I'll chime in with my 2 cents worth as well.
In the machine manufacturing world (well at least in the States) you are almost always "safe" supplying a 2D paper drawing provided it has all the needed information and dimensions to make the parts/assemblies. Some manufactures may ask for a certain drawing standard (ANSI Y14.5 etc) but as loang as all the info is on the drawing I wouldn't be too concerned. Obviously there are more sophisticated ways as you know.
Miles is correct. DXF files are pretty universally accepted (usually in R12 format). It's not to hard at all to save a copy of your drawing in DXF format. I expect that ALL MCAD software have the translator to do this. That said, if a particular machine shop wants a certain "neutral" electronic format it is likely that your MCAD software will have that output format as well. Those might be IGES, STEP or SAT. Again, pretty much all MCAD software have these formats available for output. Be sure to choose you output options as a solid and not wireframe or surfaces.
Cheers.
