US 8,600,706 B2Granted

Systems and methods for identifying crash sources in a CAD environment

AssigneeAuto Prep, LLC

InventorsJoseph P. Reghetti, Phillip M. Schaeffer

Life of this patent

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Abstract

Systems and methods that automatically identify causes of errors during one or more CAD processes, such as while binding external reference drawings to a host drawing and/or batch comparing sets of multiple drawings. In certain examples, a first session of a CAD program can be used to track potential crash occurrences during a second CAD program's processing of a set of drawings and dynamically replace corrupt drawings and/or broken references with blank (proxy) drawings so that the desired process can complete. Whenever the first CAD session detects a potential error event, such as when the second CAD session is interrupted for a particular length of time, the first CAD session can log the error, close the second session, and/or continue the desired process with a new CAD session.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A method for processing a batch of computer aided design (CAD) drawings, the method comprising:

opening a first session of a CAD application on a computing device;
storing an identification of a first CAD drawing in a first data structure;
during the first session of the CAD application, initiating a second session of the CAD application to process the first CAD drawing, wherein the first CAD drawing comprises a plurality of external references to a plurality of external drawings associated with and external to the first CAD drawing;
and
processing the plurality of external references to the plurality of external drawings of the first CAD drawing, wherein said processing comprises,
selecting one of the plurality of external references,
storing in the first data structure an identification of the external drawing corresponding to the selected external reference,
attempting with the second session to link the corresponding external drawing to the first CAD drawing,
monitoring with the computing device said attempting to link by the second session,
when said attempting to link by the second session is successful, clearing the first data structure of at least the identification of the external drawing corresponding to the selected external reference and continuing to process, with the second session, another one of the plurality of external references if all the plurality of external references have not been processed,
when said attempting to link by the second session is not successful,
storing in a second data structure, with the first session, the identification of the first CAD drawing and the identification of the external drawing corresponding to the selected external reference, and
closing the second session of the CAD application.

10 more elements

A system for processing a batch of computer aided design (CAD) drawings, the system comprising:

at least one storage device configured to store a plurality of CAD drawings;
a first instance of a CAD application executing on at least one computing device;
a first data structure configured to store an identification of a first one of the plurality of CAD drawings, wherein the first CAD drawing comprises external references to a plurality of external drawings associated with and external to the first CAD drawing;
a second instance of the CAD application initiated by the first instance of the CAD application to process the first CAD drawing by attempting to individually link each of the external referenced external drawings to the first CAD drawing, wherein the second instance of the CAD application is further configured to,
store in the first data structure an identification of each external referenced external drawing to be linked prior to attempting to individually link the external referenced external drawing, and
remove from the first data structure the identification of the external referenced external drawing after successfully linking the external referenced external drawing to the first CAD drawing;
wherein the computing device is further configured to monitor the second instance of the CAD application to detect an error event during said processing of the first CAD drawing by the second instance of the CAD application that interrupts said processing by the second instance of the CAD application,
and wherein the computing device is configured to, upon detection of the error event, store to a second data structure the identification of the external referenced external drawing stored in the first data structure at the time the error event was detected.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 12/716,929Filed 3 Mar 2010 · continuation in part
Priority: 1 May 2007
Published: US 2010/0138762 A130 Sep 2010
Granted: 3 Dec 2013
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification2 codes

G06F 30/13
Geometric CAD: architectural design, e.g. computer-aided architectural design [CAAD] related to design of buildings, bridges, landscapes,…
G06F
Computing and data processing

Family

Application60/915,198Us provisional application · filed 1 May 2007
Application60/915,195Us provisional application · filed 1 May 2007
Application12/150,845Parent of this continuation-in-part · filed 1 May 2008
Application12/150,792Parent of this continuation-in-part · filed 1 May 2008
PCT/US2008/005602Parent of this continuation-in-part · filed 1 May 2008
Application61/157,460Us provisional application · filed 4 Mar 2009
US 2010/0251028 A1Pre-grant publication · published 30 Sep 2010
US 8,368,717 B2Parent of this continuation-in-part
Application12/598,418Parent of this continuation-in-part
US 2009/0148050 A1Published application
US 2009/0273598 A1Published application
US 2010/0138762 A1Published application
US 8,732,599 B2Related patent
US 8,600,706 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.