Comparing Drawing Revisions using 3DMarkup on 3DExperience

Visualizing changes in product designs for both parts and drawings helps to simplify the review and approval process. Comparing drawing revisions is very helpful to understand what has changed in a design.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform has several tools that help with comparing drawing revisions and other 3D model changes. Two of the main tools are the standalone Compare tool and the 2D Compare option inside of 3DMarkup.

The Old Way of Comparing Drawing Revisions

In the typical engineering and manufacturing world, human error is a big factor in comparing different drawing revisions to see what is changed. This could come down to switching between open drawings on a computer or physically printing pages out to review.

The engineers behind the drawings would often leave revision comments to make comparing drawings easier, but sometimes changes were left off, meaning that they were missed. While these missed changes could be innocent, they regularly lead to scrap on the shop floor and lost profit.

Using the Compare Tool

The Compare tool works great for reviewing differences between parts and assemblies stored on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. It will visually show the difference between revisions with different colors when the models are side-by-side or overlaid.

While the Compare tool is the go-to solution for reviewing 3D model changes, we need to use something else for 2D drawing revision review. There are a few different tools to simply view a drawing on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, such as the 3DPlay app, but a tool that can show multiple revisions would be extremely helpful to compare drawings.

Opening a Drawing with 3DMarkup

To compare revisions, you will first need to open a drawing in the 3DMarkup app. This can be done by either right-clicking on a drawing and Open With the 3DMarkup app or by selecting 3DMarkup from the app list in the compass.

Opening a drawing in 3DMarkup

Launching 2D Compare

From here, we can click the 2D Compare button on the taskbar at the bottom. This will open a search that allows us to see the different available versions of the drawing.

Select the 2D Compare tool

In this case, we’d like to review the differences between revision B (originally opened) and revision A, so we simply need to click beside revision A on the next screen and then select OK.

Selecting which revision to compare

Reviewing Differences in Revisions

Once selected, you’ll see the two versions overlaid on each other with the differences showing up in green and red. The green represents the earlier version, and the red represents the latest version.

We can see here that the red version is wider and stretched versus the green version. A detailed view has also been added in the latest revision, which shows up in red.

Comparing drawing revisions in 3DEXPERIENCE

We can now use the slider at the top to move over to the right (to all green) to see the original version. The differences between the versions will show up as green. Drawing entities that didn’t change will show up as black.

Viewing the original revision

If we move the slider over to the left, it will show the current version. This includes the revision information at the top right, the 50-inch hole spacing at the top, and the new detail view.

Viewing the latest revision

We can move the slider back and forth to easily see the differences between the two revisions. This will help you understand the changes that have been made to the model and the drawing. If a designer misses adding a revision symbol or revision description and has changed something else, we will see it visually. This can help to fully understand what’s changed in the design.

3DEXPERIENCE has two great ways to compare both parts and drawings. The Compare tool is fantastic for seeing the differences in 3D models, while the 2D Compare tool inside of 3DMarkup app is a great way to review the differences between two drawing revisions.

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