1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention relates generally to computer drawing files, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, system, and article of manufacture for enabling the commenting on drawing files.
2. Description of the Related Art.
Drawing files (e.g., computer-aided design files, solid modeling files, assembly files, two-dimensional [2D] and/or three-dimensional [3D] drawing files, etc.) are often static. When updates are required to such drawing files, there are two ways of indicating such updates: (1) making notes on a hard copy; (2) annotating a static electronic copy with leads to the comments. If another party wants to add any comments, they have to add such comments directly to the static drawing or sheet. Space and feedback are limited. Accordingly, there exists a need for dynamic feedback in drawing and assembly files. To better understand such problems, a description of prior art problems may be useful.
To provide feedback on a drawing, prior art users often mark up a printed copy of the drawing with a red pen. Such pen-based markups are nimble, fast, and allow a user to be very specific with feedback. Further, they allow the specification of feedback to specific elements in a drawing. A similar approach may be taken for commenting on electronic documents and/or in a network/electronic environment. For example, in most social collaboration products (e.g., the FACEBOOK™ social media application), one can comment on a post/photograph. Such a comment is against the entire file. Similar comments may be inserted against an entire drawing file (e.g., in a computer-aided design [CAD] drawing). However, user data may be deep and nested. A drawing file contains many sub parts that, in turn contain sub parts. Accordingly, commenting on the top level file (like in the FACEBOOK™ social media application) is not a very powerful way to collaborate. In addition, comments/feedback may become out of sync with the actual design almost immediately. Further, it is difficult to coordinate and reconcile feedback from multiple sources.