SOLIDWORKS Drawing VS Cloud Drawing. You might want to check that out!

Technical or production Drawing has been a standard practice in manufacturing industry. These drawings have been used to show the fabrication detail and engineering detail to produce the parts. Some of the assembly line.

Those without these high-end design tools tend to use drafting CAD to produce these drawings or blueprint manually, required user with many years of experience, to draft a good detail drawing in manufacturing line. This to meet the minimum criteria of submitting the drawing to the production line or fabricator. 

SOLIDWORKS Drawing & 3DEXPERIENCE xDrawing App

In SOLIDWORKS, usually come with the 3 main features. The part, assembly, and the drawing. When we talk about the benefits of using the SOLIDWORKS Drawings, we talked about the synchronize function between the drawing and the CAD data. When user changes to the 3D CAD data, the drawing will directly update the drawing detail after you update the model data or save the files. It is so convenient that it helps to save a lot of time to prepare, to produce, to update their drawing.

In SOLIDWORKS Drawing, it comes with plenty of commands and functions you can add in the drawing, to show the detail such geometric tolerance detail, machining detail in the SOLIDWORKS software.

On the other hand, xDrawing App is one of the web applications from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, allow user to do drawing without physical software installed at the PC or rely on the hardware specification or requirement..

Like the SOLIDWORKS drawing, the application itself can direct generate 2D view, model view and isometric view from the existing model data. In this case, the user  focuses on adding dimensions and other information, instead of focusing on drafting the drawing in the xDrawing App application. Simplified layout in the web application, making an ease transition from existing CAD drawing software, especially those form the 3D CAD software.

With the power of cloud, users can draw anywhere with their portable devices or even with their smartphone, as long they have internet access.

SOLIDWORKS Drawing has been widely used by a lot of users, to create standard technical drawing.

xDrawing rolling out in 3DEXPERIENCE platform, cloud drawing tools.

 Premises VS Cloud Drawing

The only difference between this software is the method of storing data and transferring data.

For users who have been using SOLIDWORKS Drawing for so many years, to transfer the SOLIDWORKS Drawing to other user, required to use special function in SOLIDWORKS, known as the pack and go in SOLIDWORKS.

The pack and go function allow user to pack the model data and drawing’s files into a zip file, so others would no have any issue opening the SOLIDWORKS drawing. But there’s a catch, if you use this method, to share the file with your vendor or fabricator, they will have direct access to the model data and make any modification on the data without the user concern.

We used to have on of the export functions known as the detached drawing, allowing user to send out SOLIDWORKS Drawing without the model. So, the end user can only add additional information on the SOLIDWORKS Drawing. But now, that feature has been removed, due to low usage of that function.

Mainly because users prefer to send the drawing in DWG file format or PDF format, as drafting CAD software is widely used in production line, especially in Asia region.

Compared to 3DEXPERIENCE, the concept of storing and viewing these data completely different compared to legacy software or premises software.

First, 3DEXPERIENCE is a cloud solution, whereby all the data is stored on cloud storage, either in 3DDrive or 3DEXPERIENCE space. Previously, we talked about how 3DEXPERIENCE collaborates projects on cloud  like how we share and view the files on cloud.

Let’s discover, how the xDrawing App connects all its data in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

As mentioned, for all the web application to link the model data in 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Users must upload or create their data in 3DDrive or 3DEXPERIENCE Space, bur mostly we prefer users to work their data in 3DEXPERIENCE Space. As 3DEXPERIENCE pace provides more flexibility or functionality compared to 3DDrive.

When the file is stored in the 3DEXPERIENCE Space, this is where the magic begins. You can directly select which model data you wanted to create in xDrawing App application, similar operation steps that you had seen in the XDesign and xSurface application. Once you select your data, the xDrawing App will directly pop up and option to start generating drawing from 3D CAD data.

With the benefits of II role in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the lifecycle features allowed user easily to store the file in 3DSpace, download the files into your physical devices and even share your files with your team members on vendor.

Using the xPlay application, non-CAD users who use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, can directly use it to do measurement, checking on the drawing without compromising the data in 3DSpace.

Direct create drawing view from the local drives, easily generate standard 2D view

All data must be saved in 3D Space or 3D Drive to link the file to create drawing

The 3 basic tools you can use to present your drawing and 3D Model

Similar like SOLIDWORKS drawing, able to create geometric dimension detail

Space of improvement

After using the xDrawing App, the application itself still has plenty of space for improvement. Compared to the SOLIDWORKS Drawing, the SOLIDWORKS software is more matured and less bug issue compared to the cloud xDrawing App. The command in the drawing is more  organized and with the advantages of win UI, user easily to find the function that they are looking for.

In xDrawing App, most of the functions or features in the application display as in icon, to ensure the simplicity of the webapp UI. But this also led to another issue for users, required more time to practice, to adapt to the new UI to do their work in the xDrawing App application. Training is recommended to reduce the trial-and-error time to use the drawing web application.

Secondly, we found out that the display options in the xDrawing App seems fine but not completely fine in this case. When we tried to change the display options for our drawing in the xDrawing App. When we try to change to shaded edges with hidden line.

All the drawings change together, including the isometric view, and we have yet to find another work around for this issue. Unlike SOLIDWORKS, the drawing allows the users to decide whether to change the display style on specific drawing view or selected view for this case.

Additionally, when creating the standard top, front, side view, the xDrawing App generates the drawing seems to be slightly different compared to the drawing generated in SOLIDWORKS drawing. So far these are the few issues that we encounter when we were testing the application. If we encounter more issues during the process, hopefully we can elaborate more on the next blog.

SOLIDWORKS Drawing considered mature and stable, awaiting more features to be introduced in 2025

Hidden view options applied to all drawings, not flexible when come to drawing view options.

Simplified icon, users required a little time to find the feature.

Final verdict

That is all what we wanted to share about the xDrawing App compare to the SOLIDWORKS drawing. The web application itself is a good application to use with. With the power of 3DEXPERIENCE platform, users can use it anywhere anytime they want.

But still, it’s the user choice, whether to go with the premises software or the cloud solution. But it is still something that is worth trying out and if you interested to know more about the xDrawing, feel free to reach out to us, or email me at chchai@cadcam.com.my

– Henry Chai, Senior Solution Advisor, IME Technology Sdn Bhd