Important: For this tutorial, we recommend downloading and using the attached file (See part1.pdf at the bottom of this article).
1factory is able to read PDF's generated from CAD models**. If you create a QC Plan "from a drawing" by uploading the attached file, you will see that 1factory reads and highlights all text areas.
- Inserting a Balloon: To create your first balloon, hold down the shift key on the keyboard, and point and click with your mouse. [The shift-click combination is required to prevent accidental balloon creation]
- Selecting a Balloon: All balloons have red borders with a white background (e.g. balloons 4, 5, 6 and 7 below). On the other hand, a selected balloon has a red border and a red background (e.g. balloon 2 below). When a balloon is selected, a slide-out appears on the left hand side of the screen where you can capture the characteristic type, characteristic name, the nominal measurement and tolerances, as well as other fields including key, inspection method etc. 1factory defaults the characteristic name to "linear dimension", but you can clear that field and over-write as needed.
- Capturing Dimensions: With a selected balloon, you can click on any highlighted text to add that to the nominal field. As an example, clicking on the blue-highlighted 30°, will result in the value 30 being added to the nominal field, and the value "angle" being added to the characteristic field.
- Click Save: You MUST click on save to add the selected balloon to the quality control plan.
- Viewing the Plan: To navigate to the QC Plan, simply click on the back arrow (<-) in the top-left hand corner of the screen.
- Returning to Ballooned Drawing: From the QC Plan table, you can return to the ballooned drawing by clicking on the "Drawing" tab above the table.
** NOTE:
1. 1factory can read most recent PDFs. Some older PDFs (for example generated before 2011) may not be read, but can still be ballooned using 1factory.
2. PDF Files with pages containing images larger than 2MB / Page cannot be uploaded.