Good morning, it’s Friday.
I have a small adjustment to the weekly news update: I’m going to organize it more into themes I’ve come across lately. This is because there are often so many references to other systems that are also important to know.
This time we are going to talk about optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence and working drawings. In particular, we will discuss tools that can automatically read features in drawings, plus how this is used in quality management systems (QMS).
Reading and processing drawings is a difficult and time-consuming business. You should always open each PDF and analyze tolerances, surface treatments, material designations and sometimes create manual measurement reports (or first article inspection, FAI). These issues also hinder automatic processing through portals.
But of course we live in the 21st century and for every problem someone is already working on a solution! To streamline this process, there are a few tricks you can do.
One solution for 2D working drawings is the ability to “auto-balloon”, read out texts, automatically generate reports or checklists.
Below are three examples:
#1: Work24
This tool, developed by a German start-up, seems especially suitable for integration with existing solutions, for example, a link to PDM, CAD, ERP or portal.
What is unique about this is that the software uses both OCR and AI to fully automate the whole thing.
Function extraction from engineering drawings with AI
Powered by AI, Werk24’s API reads engineering drawings and returns a JSON response with structured information, including title blocks (drawing ID, designation, material, general tolerance), dimensions, tolerances, thread, bevel, GD&T, radii and surface roughness.
#2: High QA
One step further is a fully integrated production quality management software, or quality management software (QMS). High QA I met at the TechniShow and soon the EU sales director will also participate in the Metal Connect podcast!
Automate and optimize your production quality management process. From ballooning and part planning to inspection data collection and reporting, High QA has the QMS solution for you.
#3: Balloon2D – capvidia
On the other hand, there is another software from Capvidia, which seems to be a bit in the middle of the top 2 systems. However, this package is provided by a party specializing in model-based definition (MBD), and therefore it can be a good fit for companies that have high demands in this regard.
Balloon2D is software that automatically annotates 2D engineering drawings. Balloon2D is part of MBDVidia Suite, the leading MBD workflow and CAD translation software for digital production. MBDVidia is the only software that offers 2D, 3D (True MBD) and dual 2D/3D workflows for automated inspection planning and reporting.
https://www.capvidia.com/blog/balloon2d-auto-ballooning-software
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Which package is the best?
As always, that depends on the purpose of the organization and, among other things, the integration capabilities of current systems. As mentioned, the most important and difficult question is always where it fits into the system (and, of course, whether it is really necessary).
Want to get started with automated processing of working drawings, quality requirements and fully automated creation and checking of measurement reports to improve production quality? If so, please contact me at this link.
