How To Unify Drawing Standards Quickly With Zwcad Mechanical

By Author: Jenny A Wu
Total Articles: 2
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ZWSOFT's new ZWCAD Mechanical software packages supports many international drafting standards, such as ISO (international), ANSI (American), DIN (German), JIS (Japanese), and GB (Chinese). In this way, ZWCAD Mechanical enables designers to work with common standards, no matter where their location in the world.

But ZWCAD Mechanical also provides a way to ensure drawings created on all computers match your own company's standards. This ensures that all designers in the whole company employ the uniform standard. For instance, in the company for which I work, we have sub-companies in different locations, and we have found that it is not easy to transfer and configure standard style files on other computers. To my delight, however, I found that the Style Sync Server in ZWCAD Mechanical eliminates this anxiety.

I use the Style Sync Server to configure the standard set of styles on one server, and then enable all other computers to access the styles from the server. The server ensures all client computers use the single style that is uniform and up ...
... to date.

Let me show you how I set up the Style Sync Server:

1. First, I decided which computer to take as the server. This is the one from which all other computers can sync from.
2. To find the Style Sync Server tool, I went to ZWCAD Mechanical's installation location (such as C:\Program Files\ZWCAD Mechanical 2012), and then double-clicked ZwmUpdaterSrv.exe. Notice the dialog box in figure 1.



Figure 1: The configuration dialog box of the style sync server

3. The most important part of configuration is the Config Path option. This is the path to which the style files are saved on this server. I clicked the [...] button to browse to the style file I had created earlier with ZWCAD Mechanical. For my system, the default path is C:\Users\Public\Documents\ZWSoft\zwcadm\2012\en-US\styles\DDC-CO,LTD_ANSI

4. Here is what other options mean:

The Multiple Style option includes layers, linetypes, fonts, drawing borders, title blocks, and so on.

The Fixed Style option includes customized content in part and symbol libraries.

The Update Target Path section specifies the path to which the client saves sync'ed style files. Generally, I prefer All User Documents, because this is the same as the default path used by ZWCAD Mechanical to save the style files.

5. To configure client computers to get standard styles from the server, I took these steps:
1. On each client computer, I went to the ZWCAD Mechanical menu, and then chose System Configuration Manager > Standards Synchronous Tool Configuration. See figure 2.
2. I input the IP [internet protocol] address of the server. See figure 3. (Through the help of VPN [virtual private network], I can even sync standards to clients in different places.]



Figure 2: Access the Synch Tool manager.



Figure 3: Entering the IP address of the server

3. There are two options in the Sync Tool Setting dialog box:
Automatic Update lets clients sync the standard style every time they connect to the server.
Manually Update allows clients to sync only when I choose the Configure the Sync Client option from Assist Tools > Update Standards menu. See figure 4.



Figure 4: Manually syncing standards

That, in a nutshell, is how the new Style Sync tool works. I think it really is a genius in making standards to be shared and unified so easily. That's just one of the reasons why I like this new 2D mechanical drafting program from ZWSOFT.