As the Boss rushed out the door to his week long conference, his parting statement to me was "and sort out that drawing template thing will you?". Now in all honesty, we have been talking about this for the last few years, although in general terms like "wouldn't it be nice to have ___ on the drawing?" or "what was (previous draftsman) thinking when he started doing this"

Most of what he wants done I know, but throwing it open to the general forum, there are two things that I would invite comment on.

Firstly, general tolerances. We have a list which is basically
X = +/-0.5mm
X.X = +/-0.2mm
X.XX = +/-0.1mm
X.XXX = +/-0.05mm

Now that last one is being ditched, as we rarely work to that level (we do plastic moulded parts, pressed metal, wire lengths and the occasional low tolerance machined part), and I can always add something for specific requirements to the drawing, but what is are the thoughts on that spread? I was thinking of taking the 0.2 up to 0.3 and maybe the 0.5 up a bit too, but are they typical of what others see?

Related to that, how do other companies account for tolerances on STEP models? Note on the drawing with a general +/- something if not specifically called out?

The other thing is general drawing notes. We have some ridiculous ones, hanging around from the '60's when the company was started (we don't even have a Chief Engineer to approve parts anymore!) which will go, but has anyone seen any that they think are worth adopting? There is always something out there that makes you think you could use a note like that...

Specifics can be added on an 'as needs' basis, but what the boss is trying to acheive is setting up the template to minimise effort, even to the extent of having a number of general notes that get individually deleted if not applicable, just so that notes don't have to be typed in all the time.

Thoughts?
Michael


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