Numbering every drawing characteristic for a first article report
Characteristic accountability is the rule that makes this tedious. Nothing on the print may be left out, so a drawing carrying hundreds of callouts produces the same count of numbered lines on Form 3, each with the sheet and the zone it came from. Notes count, and so do the flag notes. Balloon numbers have to match the report exactly, because that link is what an auditor follows. Where the customer sends a model instead, semantic tolerances in a STEP AP242 file can be read, while graphics only models cannot.
The quote was built against one revision and the drawing in the operator hand is another, which is the defect this sector is built around.
A request to quote arrives as an archive of geometry files and drawings, or as a line in a customer portal, or as a scan. An estimator opens each one, decomposes the part into operations mentally, estimates setup and run times, and emails suppliers for material pricing before typing a number into a spreadsheet.
- Excel
- JobBOSS2
- Epicor Kinetic
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if the customer accepts your own inspection report format and does not ask for characteristic accountability. Ballooning earns its keep on aerospace and defence prints where every callout has to be answered. On a commercial print with a dozen toleranced features, an inspector with a highlighter finishes before any file has been parsed.
The constraint that shapes it
Quality certification is the constraint that shapes everything here. More on how this sector works.
A file arrives. The fields come back typed and checkable. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Reading dates out of a ratified contract
- Abstracting a commercial lease into dated fields
- Filling an MLS input sheet from the listing agreement
- Turning a docket entry into a calendar
- Turning a delivered transcript into a usable set of cites
- Coding a filing fee to the matter that will repay it
- How do I balloon a drawing for an AS9102 first article?
- Do notes on a drawing count as inspection characteristics?
- What goes in the sheet and zone columns on Form 3?
- Can characteristics be pulled out of a STEP file with PMI?
- Why does my first article report get returned for missing characteristics?
Back to manufacturing, or see how this is priced and scoped.