Happy CADing with ZWCAD Mechanical-How to Output a Headlight Reflector Drawing Faster and Better

Following the fast upgrade of headlight components, the demands and standards of headlights design have been higher. Automotive manufacturers are forced to seek more professional CAD software to enhance the quality and efficiency of designing.

Take headlights reflector design as an example. A pair of decent headlights would be crucial for safe night driving. After being designed and annotated by 3D CAD software, the headlight reflector will be input into 2D CAD to do detailed annotations, set frames, etc. for final output. Therefore, a professional 2D CAD compatible with 3D CAD with robust annotating and plotting functions will be a productivity booster.

We have introduced to you how to design a reflector by ZW3D. Today we will give you three useful tips about how to quickly output it to a standard drawing for production. Let’s get started!

Figure.1 The layout of a headlight reflector

Tip 1. Customize Frames Quickly

Finishing the model design and 2D drawing in ZW3D, we can output the 2D drawing to a .dwg file and open it in ZWCAD Mechanical, to further annotate it.

ZWCAD Mechanical supports not only the mainstream drawing standards but also those company-customized frames, which can be synchronized to every designer’s computer for a unified design specification and avoid repeating and manual setting.

By inputting ZWMFRAMEINIT Command you can trigger the Frame setup dialog. The common style of a reflector is IOS, the Frame size is A2, and here we select Partition as the Frame style. Then fill in the corresponding Title panel, Addition panel, Code panel, etc. as shown in the figure. For the Title panel, you can fill in the commonly-used material PC, the drawing name as Reflector, and the company name and other information like the auditor’s name. Save it, and you will have a custom frame template and edit it in the drawing.

In addition, if you accidentally delete or change the template setting, you can use the setting on your colleague’s computer (the default address is ZWSoft\zwcadm\2021\zh-CN\Template) to quickly restore the template to your company’s standard without recovering one by one manually.

Figure.2 Customize a frame template for the drawing

Tip 2. Use Tables to Annotate Quickly

Finishing the frame template, let’s move on to complete the information of the drawing. ZWCAD Mechanical optimized the related functions of importing and editing tables. For example, engineers can copy the table in Excel or WPS directly to the drawing area. After that, the copied table can be edited directly, saving your time of creating one. What’s more, the Data Link function supports bidirectional data synchronization between ZWCAD and external tables to streamline the data exchange workflow.

No doubt, these two functions are helpful to engineers in annotating. In this case, the commonly-used annotation table for demolding axes can link with an external table by the Data Link function for synchronous modification. Besides, by shortcut “T” you can create and edit multiple lines of text in the table of the technical requirements, which is commonly used to annotate the reflector drawing. You can also save these tables as templates that can be directly reused in subsequent annotation work of the same sort of product. To further enrich the annotation methods, ZWCAD Mechanical can generate a QR code for relevant links and information of the reflector. Engineers can insert it into the drawing, and get the information simply by scanning it.

Figure 3. Add annotation tables for demolding axes

Figure 4. Add technical specifications

Tip. 3 Use Intelligent Functions to Output Drawings Quickly

Completing the annotations of the drawing, we can output it to other formats such as pdf. for final presentation of the design. You can use the default built-in PDF Printer in ZWCAD Mechanical to output the reflector drawing directly without using any plug-in.

In the actual working scenario, we can use Smart Plot function to output multiple frames in the same drawing at one time. Moreover, with powerful APIs, ZWCAD Mechanical allows enterprises to integrate their PLM, ERP, and other systems to synchronize design data and facilitate digital management.

Figure 5. Use Smart Plot to batch print the drawings

So far, we’ve completed the output of the drawing of a headlight reflector. Actually, the drawing of headlight components involves considerations of standardization, accuracy and efficiency. Fortunately, with the professional frame creation, annotation, and output functions of ZWCAD Mechanical, we can complete the reflector drawing fast and well. Come and get a free trial and start happy CADing with ZWCAD Mechanical!