CAD/Drawing software

MLW222

Looking for CAD/Drawing software that works well/easily with Navisin Financials 2.0

This can get rather hard to explain, in words, hence the need for CAD software.

I work at manufacturing coy. We make custom designed products with materials our customers supply (we supply some things but not an issue/concern)
So our customers need to know not only how much money to send but also how much material. How much is a "simple" area calculation, so much wide, by length by depth.

(Gets a little complicated in deciding the how long, how wide part, which is what my code figures out, along with a set of parameters stored in tables)

I have been trying to write routines in C/AL to do that, but am running into a couple of "glitches".

Say, I get it up and working, until it is debugged, can't trust numbers, so I want users to question and poke around in the results. I could (and do) have it spit out a bunch of numbers, but that is hard to interput without going through everything in detail.

Also, these are the same "numbers"/data the first step in manufacturing process needs, which they currently calculate by hand. But often get wrong as need visualization tool.

So, I am thinking that instead of spitting out numbers, if I could dump the numbers in a CAD program which would render a drawing it would be a lot easier to debug, to use and be easier in manufacturing (at all stages).

On the other hand the drawings do not have to be complex 3-D animated, 4000000 million color type drawings. Basically need some simple 2-D, stick figures, simple geometric shapes.

I am not familiar with CAD software so do not know terms, companies, software out there.
Have been getting bogged down in researching what to get (go to website and they talk about features/functions of which I have zero or little understanding).

Also, our people who deal with customers and manufacturing people are not computer savy, so the last thing I need is complicated CAD software were I would have to spend 3 months showing them how to use it (if only to do a stick drawing) and it would take them 3 weeks to produce a drawing.

I would also like it to go the other way:
People could draw the stick figures, see if it corresponds to customers' specs and then dump the data into Navision.

Any help, advice, suggestions would be enthusiastically appreciated.

Right now I joke with boss "OH yeah program runs fine - when really what it does is just tell me there is a new order and I figure out by hand and type in results - nobody is the wiser - Chinese Box

I saw a download here with Visio and from what I could tell, Visio might do it, but can't get any answer out of Microsoft. So if anyone is familiar with Visio let me know.

MLW222

For more info than you could possibly want on what we are trying to do:
http://www.blueorbwise.net/project1/proj1intro.html

SimonW

How about buying a drawing control & embedding the result in Excel?
I had a quick search and found a company called "Bennet-Tec Information Systems, Inc" which supplied an OCX
Not sure how you would get it to work the other way...

MLW222

SimonW;
Might end up doing something like that
right now do not have license to use/access OCX in Navision, but
biggest thing is that we need it interactive/dynamic over the web

Can't expect customers to buy Excel (or other program) so as to access our website.

Also, I used CAD/CAM term, as in essence that is what we are doing, but none of CAD/CAM stuff is interactive over the web excpet osme realy high end stuff
But the high end stuff requires users on either end to buy software/components - which again we can't require customers to buy

SimonW

I think you can embed the control in a web page - if that helps?

Iwan

Hi MLW222, hi everybody

Do you know, which solution is the best to exchange data form a CAD system like AutoCad or Solidworks to Navision ?


Please send me your idea ?

Thanks and greetings
Iwan

MLW222

Iwan,

Do I know best way to exhange data between Navision & AutoCAD?
Nope.
I am attending a seminar this week on AutoCAD, hopefully I can find out.
I will report back.

Iwan

Hi MLW222

How was your course ?

Did you find out some very interssting Information about CAD and Navision ?

I hope you will respone as soon as possible ! Thanks a lot.

Greetings Iwan

MLW222

Hi Iwan,

You can export data out of Navision, into a text file, csv, or such.

Then import that information into AutoCAD or AutoDesk. That is, AutoCAD AutoDesk are able to import data from such files.

I hope that helps.

For our purposes, we need to automate not only the exporting and importing end, but also have AutoCAD/Desk automatically spit out drawings [that is not have to have a human manually run the export function from Navision, the manually run the import function in AutoCAD/Desk, then manually have it generate/print the drawings]

To get AutoCAD/Desk to to do that? Well, you'd have to do quite of bit of rewriting, adding on to AutoCAD/Desk.