Solving a problem of technical illustration

Endress+Hauser found a way to utilise its existing 3D Cad files to produce the technical illustrations, in order to eliminate the cost of re-drawing them

Endress+Hauser is a Swiss family enterprise with international operations.

A member of the elite group of suppliers of measuring equipment and automation solutions for industrial process control, its worldwide network of companies includes 22 production sites in nine countries, as well as numerous sales, service and management companies, and employs nearly 6000 persons.

Endress+Hauser was founded in 1953 - exactly 50 years ago - by Georg Endress and Ludwig Hauser.

Since its founding, the company has developed steadily from a specialist in filling level measurement to a supplier of complete solutions for industrial measurement technology and automation.

Today Endress+Hauser offers sensors, instruments, systems and services for measuring temperature, flow, fill level and for fluid analysis and registration of the measured values, as well as sample collectors, system components and engineering.

These products are employed by E+H customers in industries that include chemistry and petrochemistry, pharmaceuticals, food, water and wastewater, paper, energy, oil and gas.

They help in optimising processes ecologically and economically, to preserve natural resources and energy and to protect people, equipment and the environment.

The products of E+H stand for maximum reliability and availability, excellent quality and the latest technologies.

At Endress+Hauser, the broad range of products and their complexity (around one million equipment variants) results in a great need for documentation.

All documentation is created internally and distributed throughout the various production sites.

The principle styles are operating instructions, technical information and service manuals, in which numerous technical illustrations are used.

In addition, four-colour brochures are produced for advertising purposes.

These, also, contain embedded illustrations.

Endress+Hauser wanted to continue using its existing 3D Cad data from ProEngineer to produce the technical illustrations, in order to eliminate the cost of re-drawing them.

So, E+H sought a means by which this data could be made usable for documentation.

Attempts to achieve this with the DXF data format did not yield satisfactory results.

The cost of the designer who had to prepare the data was very high.

Additionally, the line thicknesses created in ProEngineer disappeared during export.

Considerable re-working in a conventional graphics program was then necessary.

Performing this transfer at a high quality level was simplified in 2001 with the acquisition of IsoDraw Cadprocess.

This product from Itedo makes it possible to import the development data directly using the IGES format, and then process it as needed.

Hidden lines are deleted automatically, and the line weights that are typical of technical illustration (thick/thin technique) are produced correctly.

The time savedby the illustrator is quickly evident.

Version 2 of IsoDraw Cadprocess, which entered the market in the spring of 2002, made work even more convenient for the illustrators at Endress+Hauser.

This version enables the documentation staff to work with the product modules created by the designers for the first time.

This means that the illustrator can access individual modules specifically without having access to the Cad system.

Whereas the designer previously had to isolate the desired parts and forward them to the documentation department in separate files, illustrators can now import modules selectively, place them in the desired position and process them.

It is even possible to 'explode' along an axis.

"The extensive functions in IsoDraw Cadprocess give our technical illustrators greater freedom in portraying our equipment.

That, in turn, enables us to improve the graphic quality of the documentation for our customers," reports Urs Mesmer, technical editor at Endress+Hauser.

A variety of software products are used for layout work at Endress+Hauser, depending on the nature of the documentation.

Since IsoDraw Cadprocess has numerous format filters, the finished illustrations in those programs can be easily processed.

In conclusion, IsoDraw CADprocess utilises the existing 3D Cad data efficiently and in the best possible quality, thereby making them available for further documentation processes in the company.

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