A Knowledgebase for all Die Designers…

As long as I’m on a roll this month talking about balloons and how they work with the Logopress3 BOM, I figured I might as well show you a few details about the Logopress3 BOM and describe them. As mentioned below, there are many options making it very flexible and useful.

In the picture above, the first thing you see is the template being used at the current time. If you’d like to use a different template, simply switch it at any time.
The second thing you see is the list of parts, some of which are tagged (checked) to be in the bom and some of which are unchecked (the unchecked ones are not visible in the picture above). This list also shows you whether the part is locked or not, so it is shown as unchecked, checked or locked. This list also shows you, with both a graphical icon in the second column and a letter in the third column, which sub assembly this detail is in, be that the bottom, middle or lower.
The third thing you’ll notice is a button with a 1.2 on it and that button opens up the Number settings dialog, which is the one mentioned in the previous post that give you the options for balloon numbers, including which of the five organization methods you’d like to use.
The fourth thing is the padlock icon, and depending on which item or items in the list are highlighted may be available or grayed out if they are already locked.
The fifth thing in the list is a very nice feature – “Families of components to include/exclude”. In this picture above, you can see we have chosen to exclude the socket head cap screws from the BOM but have chosen to include the socket head stripper bolts and the pad retainers…
Finally, the last thing you see in the Logopress3 BOM property manager screen shot above is the “Add Custom Properties” list. This is an awesome feature that we’ve added quite recently that allows you to automatically populate every single part file in your assembly with custom properties of your choosing in the list in a matter of a couple seconds. The files don’t get opened, they simply get populated with the data. Of course you want your sheet formats to include placeholders for these custom properties so that the title blocks are completely and automatically filled out with absolutely NO user intervention other than filling in these spots in this “Add Custom Properties” area shown above!

In the case of standard components, as you can see in the picture below, these are represented in the second column with a picture of the component rather than an icon showing which sub assemly they are located in as is the case with “plates” that are inserted in the die in the screen shot above. But as you can see below, in the case of a standard component where some are located in the bottom sub assembly and some are located in the middle sub assembly, (the Lamina bushings and the 1/2″ long button head cap screws) they are listed in both as is represented by the MB.

If you were wondering what the H, M, and B stood for in the column heading above, of course the M is Middle and B is Bottom – the H is Highest, which of course is the punch sub assembly.
Finally, some might be curious if the part numbers happen automatically as the part is inserted into the die – the answer is YES!

LP3 How-To's for users

First of all, to get something straight and so that we are on the same page, when we talk about ballooning we are also talking about the BOM (bill of materials). The two are linked together and perhaps this is obvious, but it is worthwhile noting.

I’d like to point out just a few of the options related to the Logopress3 BOM and ballooning since they provide some nice enhancements over the standard SolidWorks BOM and balloons. There are a great deal of options in the Logopress3 BOM which provide the tool designer with a great deal of flexibility and the best way to learn about them is through the excellent Logopress3 help file. You will find a Bill of Materials section at the end of the Logopress3 help file that is absolutely loaded with just about every option imaginable or necessary to the die designer.

But it is worthwhile to point out just a few of the ballooning options to give you a flavor of what you can find if you dig deeper. Don’t let all of the options below scare you! Again, they bring flexibility and once youv’e used it on a design and determined the way that suits your company or your customer best, you know how to use it on the next design.

The picture below shows that Logopress3 has five main options for balloon organization.

Below we can see the first and most basic balloon organization method, “Global numbering”.

The picture above also shows a drop down box showing the three options that are common options regardless of which of the five balloon organization methods are chosen.

The picture below shows the “Global numbering according to the Balloons positioning order” method along with the options for sorting direction. 

It is the fifth option below which is my personal favorite because it provides the most information possible, “Split numbering for lower, middle, upper parts, and standard components”.

With this fifth option shown directly above and with the other two that are not shown, you might get the impression from the pictures above and from the help file that you can’t sort the balloons within each of the “groups” (in the picture above, I am calling the “groups” the upper, middle and lower sub assemblies, and standard components).
But in fact you CAN!

You can easily manipulate the software to do so through a combination of the above pictures along with the Logopress3 locking feature shown here in the help file…

…and as shown here in this screenshot:

But if all you want is to have the balloons sorted in order and not pay attention to where they are in relation to the lower, middle and upper sub assemblies and the standard components, then use “Global numbering according to the Balloons positioning order”. Instructions for its use are shown below – this is a screenshot directly from the help file:

LP3 How-To's for users

For those of us that were accustomed to using software in the past that automatically sorted the balloons so that they were in numerical order in the drawings, it was a real disappointment losing this ability when switching to 3D. With dozens and dozens of balloons on one sheet, or even over a hundred, it can be like playing “Where’s Waldo” when we searched for them.

This is not a problem with Logopress3 since Logopress3 has some very nice and very flexible balloon sorting tools built into the Logopress3 Bill of Materials (BOM). This sorting can be done in regular balloons, but used in conjunction with a split balloon, and also with using part numbers for parts rather than the names of parts or the description of the parts, this can bring a great deal of order on the manufacturing floor.

How much would the guys in the CAM department like it, and how much more efficient would it be to have the files all in order in a folder so that they don’t have to search for them – like this:

So if you are going to use a part number for the filename rather than a descriptive name for the filename, my suggestion to you would be to use split balloons. This way this is you can sort them and have them in order. This ordering of the balloons would be managed by the contents in the top half of the balloon using an automated Logopress3 custom property named “NumberNomenc”. The bottom half would contain the part #, minus the project number, which is, as you’ll see in the picture below, the “Comment” custom property.

It’s much simpler than it sounds. Below are instructions on how to do it (sorry if some of it is redundant):
The top of the split balloon is what we will informally call the “Detail” number. We call it “Detail” number because SolidWorks does not use this word “Detail” number. SolidWorks uses the word “Item” number and the “Item” number is NOT what we will be using here. In fact, this “Detail” number will actually be a Logopress3 custom property named “NumberNomenc” and Logopress3 uses this custom property for sorting of balloons.

The bottom of the split balloon will show the Logopress3 custom property named “Comment”. This Logopress3 custom property named “Comment” gets combined with the Logopress3 custom property named “ProjName” and this is what becomes the filename, with the SolidWorks extension of course. Note that Logopress3 has recently made available the option to have the project name (ProjName) either before or after the part name or number (Comment). So the file name could become ProjName+Comment.sldprt or Comment+Projname.sldprt. Below is a picture of the Logopress3 Tool Structure property manager and this picture shows you when the “Comment” custom property is chosen by the user, as well as the “Description” custom property, which will end up in the BOM and in the title blocks of detail drawings.

Below is a screenshot of what the custom properties look like within the part file for this part number 006 that we inserted:

Start by inserting your BOM using the Logopress3 BOM and change settings within the Logopress3 BOM as desired. Then insert your balloons using SolidWorks Auto-ballooning functionality or you can insert them manually. If the balloons are already there, just highlight them all and then go to the property manager and set to split balloons and set the top of the balloon to custom property “NumberNomenc” because it is this custom property that Logopress3 will use for sorting the balloons. This “NumberNomenc” is what we will loosely call the “Detail” number. Again, this is different from the SolidWorks “Item” number. The bottom of the split balloon will be set to the Logopress3 custom property “Comment” and, as mentioned earlier, this is equal to the file name minus the project number and minus the extension of course.

If you only want a single balloon and you want this to contain the part number, which is the “Comment” (file name minus project number and minus extension) custom property, this is no problem. You can simply set this single balloon to be the custom property “Comment”. But note that if you do this only, you will NOT be able to sort the balloons in numerical order using Logopress3 because it uses the NumberNomenc” custom property to do that and NOT the “Comment” custom property.

LP3 How-To's for users

It is very surprising to me that more tool and die companies don’t work with part numbers as the file name as opposed to the name of the part (the description, really) as the file name. I think the reason they don’t is because when most companies start out using 3D CAD, they start by naming the file “Die Block.sldprt” because that just seems more natural than just a number, and that is why some of them still do it this way years later. Also, it is intimidating (at first) to look at a folder full of numbers as file names as opposed to a folder full of “names” as file names. But once you are used to this, it is intimidating to look at a folder full of names as opposed to orderly numbers.

Of course the rest of the world works with part numbers typically rather than names. For example: If you buy anything at all for your home or car or whatever, and you need to order a new part, you look at the diagram of parts and most of the time you look at the balloon that is pointing to the component you need and look to see that this balloon is pointing to part number 12345 or whatever and you order a 12345. Or perhaps there is simply a part number being called out with a leader.

I believe there are two really significant benefits to using a part number (such as 17033-006 where 10733- is the project number or job number and 006 is the part number) for the file name rather than a descriptive name:
Benefit #1:
Many if not most dies cannot be designed fast enough for managment - they want to get steel on the floor and start cutting… So there is typically a problem because the BOM is not done yet and so you don’t know what the detail number is going to be, assuming you want your balloons in the correct order, etc, but of course you’d like the steel you order to be identified in some way. Using a part number allows you to order material based on the job # and part # combination and this part number is determined the minute before the designer puts the part into the assembly. So even if the part isn’t finished yet, you know what size it is and what kind of material, etc…
Benefit #2:
Back when we were using 2D, it was a major pain to have each detail on it’s own drawing – this often meant having each detail drawing as its own file. But today, with 3D and in particular with Logopress3, it is far easier to have each detail on its own drawing and being its own file. In addition, with all parametric modelers, including SolidWorks, each part file is its own separate file and these separate files go into an assembly. So it is much easier to locate these files in a folder or directory if they are in some sort of order. Giving the files a part number rather than a descriptive name brings this order to Windows Explorer and this way the CNC CAM operators and the WEDM operators and everyone else can find the files much more easily, as you can see from the picture below.

Benefit #3:
Having sheet numbers is just not necessary anymore in most cases, unless you need to keep doing it because “We’ve always done it that way“. We are creatures of habit, and sometimes this is the reason we do still do things like we did years ago. Instead of sheet numbers, many folks just use the part number of the part as the “sheet number”, so to speak. It’s not actually called the sheet number because you don’t look for sheet 22, you look for part number XYZ…

I would encourage you to look at the possible benefits of using part numbers as file names rather than the description of the part for the file name. I will detail instructions for an easy method of doing this using Logopress3 in the next post or two.

General tips & tricks for all, LP3 How-To's for users