Content area
Full Text
Sheet-metal design
If you use AutoCAD to create your sheet-metal fabrication drawings, you are well aware of AutoCAD's limitations. To overcome these shortcomings, Striker Systems offers FAB Professional, an AutoCAD add-on for sheet-metal fabrication. FAB Professional is a collection of five distinct modules: SS-DESIGN, SS-UNFOLD, SS-NEST, SS-PUNCH, and SS-PROFILE. FABCAD, a stand-alone version of FAB Professional that uses an AutoCAD OEM engine, is available for users who don't already own AutoCAD.
For this review, I tested FAB Professional using an 866MHz Pentium III with 256MB RAM, Oxygen GXVI graphics card, AutoCAD 2000 and 20001, and Windows 2000. Installation is straightforward and requires an authorization code. By the time you read this, Striker Systems should have released a new version that is fully AutoCAD 2002-compatible. FAB Professional's toolbars use a black background to distinguish them from AutoCAD's gray ones (figure 1).
SS-DESIGN
SS-DESIGN provides the standard interface for all Striker Systems products and automatically loads with your AutoCAD drawing. As with all modules in FAB Professional, you can purchase SS-DESIGN separately for $750. It provides a wide variety of general- and special-purpose drawing utilities. You can do just about everything SS-- DESIGN does with AutoCAD commands, but SS-DESIGN helps you do it with fewer commands and far less effort. Note that if you need to make a correction, you must use the SSDESIGN Undo command rather than AutoCAD's to ensure that the previous command is completely undone.
SS-DESIGN provides a number of drawing standardization tools. For example, you can use layer management tools to create a layer control system. You assign layer information to various tools and when you use them, they automatically assign the objects to the correct layer. Additional tools manipulate objects based on layers.
Multiple users over a network can access the user library that stores objects as blocks and store and retrieve common standards. You can group items and store text properties such as component description, part number, library name, and material.
An advanced drawings border system lets you create intelligent drawing borders, complete with title blocks and revision information. A drawing history function saves design notes with the drawing, which others can read when accessing it.
SS-DESIGN's parametric commands reduce the number of steps required to create or modify an...