From the course: Learning eDrawings

Navigating the model

From the course: Learning eDrawings

Start my 1-month free trial

Navigating the model

eDrawings has many tools for reviewing, moving and presenting 3D CAD data or 2D drawings, The ribbon bar at the top of the screen contains the main navigation buttons. We have the ability to rotate, pan, zoom and section the model. These buttons are available in the ribbon, and additionally, some of these buttons are available as mouse buttons or commands. If we move down the middle mouse button, as a review, we can spin the model. We can zoom by scrolling in and out, and we can take a look at different items. For instance, if I want to see this component here, I can use the zoom to area. I can make a little box around it. I'm just going to click on the left hand corner, drag it down to the bottom right hand corner, and as soon as I let go, it zooms into that component. Now if I click on that component, if I go back here to select a component, notice it highlights it here on the screen. It also highlights it over here in the tree. You can save that component which is 3.5-1, is a member of this 3.0-1 assembly. And that's a part of 1.4 sub assembly. If I want to move this component around, I can zoom in, zoom out. And I have the ability to move right here at the top of the screen, so click on Move. And, I've got several different ways I can do this. One is I can just type in the numbers, the distance that I'll want to move. Or, I can click on the different arrows to drag a component out of the model. And there happens to be two of these on top each other. So I can drag either one of those out, for two different versions, and you can see, the other components stay where they're at. I can also take one of these components and I can rotate it around, and I can grab any one of those different triads to drag and rotate this model around to different orientations. So you see, the first component that was there didn't move. This one is. I can also pick that component to move that component. Same thing. So I've got 3 different rotation axis as well as 3 different axis I can drag the component in. I can click on the different modes here as well. Click on freed drag to just drag it freely around the screen. I can use the triad again. I can click on the different delta modes. So if I type in a number, so like say 5. And I say x. It moves it 5. Fortunately it moved it outside of the screen we can see, but I can also move that back, you can see it moves it by clicking here. The delta means a change, so how far do I move and why? Click on you see it will move somewhere outside of the screen if you move it too far, moved up here, and same thing in z. So I can move that across the screen. So that makes it easy to move it in increments that are manageable so you can understand where they are. Next I can click on the configurations. In this case, we don't have a configuration, so we only have our default state. However, if we had several different configurations, we'll see them listed here. And we'll see that in future movies. Next, it's going to be the different views that are avialable to us. Click on a different view, move the entire model around so we can see it. At any point in time, if your model gets out of control and you have components that are out in space, I can always click on the home key to bring everything back to the original state when we started with the model. If I want to look at an individual part outside of the model, I can right click on that part. So for instance, this part here I'm interested in and if I right click on it, I can either hide that component, make it transparent, I can hide others or I can show all. So in this case, I want to hide others. What that does is makes everyone else in this model hidden so I'm only looking at this one individual component so I can still spin thing around like I did before. I can zoom in. I can check out this component and see what's going on, and you notice over here on this tree, all the other components are now hidden. If I right click, I can go back and show all and bring them all back. Makes a nice easy way to do that. Additionally, if I right click on this again, I can say new part document. What that allows me to do is take that one individual part, and make a new e-drawing of only that part. There it is, and I can take that file now and click on Save. And I can go ahead and save that out if I want. I'm not going to, but just showing you can select a name, save it out and then you have a separate e-drawing file that you can open up and work with. eDrawings is a tool for reviewing complex assemblies or individual parts. There are all sorts of ways to easily move the model around and review and present this design. Additionally 2D drawings can be reviewed and imitated/g.

Contents