Alcon Surgical manufactures kits for doctors to use during eye surgury.

These kits (called Custom Paks) are made up of all items that will be needed for a single patient such as gowns, gloves, scalpel, pre-filled syringes, clamps, etc. Each Custom Pak is designed around an individual doctor's preferences and will probably be different from all other Paks. A database Bill of Materials is used to coordinate the ordering, delivery, and inspection of the finished product. Drawings are used to specify the components by a pictorial symbol of the part and a label showing the part number, description, quantity, and unit of measure. The sequencing of each part is presented as an exploded 3d view of the pak, and subassemblies are shown by their own exploded view on a separate page. Because the assembly workers use these drawings as their instructions for arranging the parts, it is imperative that they be absolutely accurate. The drafting personnel are responsible to see that the drawings are checked for accuracy before they are released for production. Revisions are documented and new drawings issued to show every change. In the case of a part substitution which affects numerous different paks, the drawing for each one must be remade and rechecked. The Alcon Mass Replace program was written to aid in preparing and validating the drawings, and in making changes to large groups of drawings as a group. The AMR program begins when the draftsman picks a command from a pull-down menu and specifies the number of the Custom Pak. The Bill of Materials and the drawing revision history is read from the SQL Server database along with all pertinent customer data. A new drawing is opened inside of AutoCAD and named for the job and the next available revision number. If a previously validated drawing is available, it is imported into the new one and the components are checked against the Bill of Materials. The draftsman determines how many drawing pages will be needed and whether those pages contain either pre-bagged or loose subassemblies. The program constructs the requested pages and inserts the appropriate titleblock on each page. The customer information obtained from the database is loaded into the titleblock attributes and the pages are numbered and dated. Names of each drawings showing a component used in the pak are obtained from the bill of materials. Those drawing names are checked against actual drawing files available in the validated drawing area. They are then brought into the pak drawing and arranged in a cluster near the level outline group on the page where they are to be used. The draftsman may elect to have visual tags displayed by each block in the component cluster. The draftsman then determines how many distinct visual levels there need to be in the exploded view and the program constructs phantom level outlines as a guide in placing the components. The draftsman may then use a program command to move one of the component blocks to a selected level outline, positioning the block to be either on the right or the left side of the level outline. This creates a link within the component block to identify the location so that description labels can be correctly sychronized with the picture they identify. When all components are arranged satisfactorily, a program command will generate the description label with a leader pointing to the part block. If any temporary part number tags are visible they will be turned off once the description labels are in place. Some paks require an instruction for special handling to be attached to a particular component. Sometimes a particular component requires the same

special instruction no matter which pak drawing it is in. The text for these notes are entered into a database table and catagorized for easier selection. When the draftsman uses a program command to select from a catagorized listing of available notes, a note reference key is placed next to a selected component. If a specific note is always required for a part, it is placed automatically when the block is attached to the level outline. When all note references have been placed, a program command will renumber the reference keys by level and page and a legend is added to the titleblock showing the text for each reference key. Special instructions that refer to drugs in preloaded syringes can be broken down and formatted into label text and passed to a database. Adhesive backed labels can then be printed so they can be placed on the syringes as the pak is being assembled. A checklist in the titleblock is used to show whether each of several possible types of packaging materials are needed for this pak. The program obtains the types needed from the bill of materials and sychronizes the visible check marks. A program command can survey any pak or component drawing and report whether it complies with the drawing standards and, if directed, will fix problems found. A pak drawing will be checked for content. Any missing or extra parts blocks will be reported, incorrect notes will be reported. If any packaging materials, or description labels are found to be incorrect or improperly linked, they will be automatically fixed. and if a pak drawing has the correct parts, special instructions,

When the Introduction Currently drawings are produced using AutoCad on computer terminals in the Custom PAK engineering department. Each job uses data that is contained in various places on the AS400 computer. Even though this data is accessable from the same computer where the AutoCad drawings are produced, it has to be manually re-entered into each drawing. Also the only verification of the accuracy of a drawing's content is visual review after plotting. This process is very time consuming and does not make the best use of available resouces. When component changes are made that affect large numbers of existing PAK drawings, each PAK drawing must be changed one by one, plotted, and visually reviewed for accuracy, and then possibly changed and replotted again. This makes the still unchanged PAK drawings unavailable for an excessively long period of time. This is a very inefficient process and, as such, is adding unneccesary cost to engineering and causing delays to manufacturing. It is now possible to link the AS400 system with the AutoCad computers so that data from the AS400 may be used in the drawings without being having to be re-entered manually. This project will utilize this capability to assist the drafting computer operators in producing or revising the drawings, to

verify the drawing's accuracy, and to allow unattended mass replacement of specified components in affected PAKs. Mass Replace Process A method is needed to search all active PAK BOMs to see if a given component part or special instruction is used. All jobs found need to be reported to the operator and also saved so that this list may optionally be used to drive an unattended batch process to make the changes. A program is required that will combine the list of PAK drawings that need changing and an ECN log maintained by the engineering dept containing the change instructions. An AutoCad script must be produced that can be started by the operator and left to run unattended. The changes that should be able to be made automatically include changes and deletions of specified parts, changes to special instructions, and updating of packaging materials indicators. All commands or routines used by this program must be totally free of input requests from the operator and must be able to bypass errors to prevent interuption of the batch process. Any discrepencies that do not require an operator's attention need to be fixed by the program if possible. The drawing validation routine must be run on each PAK drawing and the drawing saved and plotted if correct. If not correct, all failed tests need to be written in a log file for later operator review. To accomplish this goal, there are some pre-requisite functions that need to be implemented. The data from the AS400 must be available for use under AutoCad program control, the drawings must be standardized to prevent unexpected interuptions, existing source blocks, part drawings, and active PAK drawings must be converted and verified, and a program must be available to verify and validate each drawing as it is saved and plotted. Data Management All links to the AS400 must be of a type that will demands on the system that would hinder or prevent other users elswhere in Alcon. On the other hand, must be current enough to allow prompt response to not place excessive the use of the system by the data being referenced urgent drawing requests.

To achieve this, a client-server database needs to be established at the Houston facillity that contains data on active PAK jobs and components. Updates of this database from the AS400 must be done in accordance with defined procedures at preset intervals. Discrepencies found by the update procedures need to be recorded in such a way that affected drawings can be revised as required. This data in the CAD database in Houston needs to be available inside the AutoCAD drawings through the use of pre-defined views and updated from inside the AutoCad drawing through the use of pre-defined procedures to allow for changes to the database without having to reprogram the AutoCad interface. The facillities codes of each part in the AS400 PACS BOMs needs to be able to be updated from the CAD database but may be done at a future time. No other update of the data in the AS400 is anticipated. Drawing Standards If any program being used to automatically revise groups of drawings in

unattended batch mode encounters an unexpected condition in an existing drawing, it will not produce accurate drawings and may even crash entirely. To use be able to use batch programs on drawings, conditions inside both PAK and component drawings must be standardized, documented, and verified. The areas to be standardized in all drawings are to include the coordinate system, drawing naming convention, linetype, drawing layer names, model space, insertion base, text style, and viewpoint. In addition, component block drawings are to have the correct attribute definitions, must be 2 dimensional, must have no nested blocks, and can have nothing on paper space. All component drawings, support blocks and custom PAK drawings must be redefined to follow the new standards. Commands must be added to the AutoCad menu to assist the operator in adhering to the standards when making all drawings. Component parts drawings Each component drawing must be verified to insure accuracy. Once it has been found to be correct, the date and time of the drawing is to be recorded in the CAD database to make it available for use in PAK drawings. Components that are to have the option of being shown either flat or folded must have alternate drawings defined that show the part folded two, three, or four times. Easy switching between flat and folded components in the PAK drawings needs to be provided for. PAK drawings A link needs to be provided between the drawing titleblock and the PAK job data in the CAD database. Automatic updating of the titleblock from the CAD database is to be available to the operator. The data in the titleblock must be verified to match the CAD database prior to saving or plotting. The place blocks routine needs to be able to directly access BOM data in the CAD database. Error checking and error recovery for components not defined must be included. A method is needed to reliably show parts with a quantity of more than one. A new drawing process is needed to assist in manipulation of component data in a PAK drawing including placement level and orientation, subassemblies and bagged items, special instructions, packaging materials, etc. All commands provided for this purpose need to be available to the operator on the AutoCad menu on a demand basis. The hidden data of components inserted in the model space area of the drawing and the visible data written in the paper space area of the same drawing must be linked. Program aids are needed to place model space viewports in paper space, and to provide page number coordination between the various viewports and titleblocks. New commands need to be added to the AutoCad menu to assist in revision of existing drawings. Existing component blocks that are no longer in the BOM need to be found and erased. New parts in the BOM need new component blocks to be inserted allowing operator to specify placement and orientation. Special instructions should be monitored and made available from a library of standard notes. The saving process of the drawing file needs to include a purge of unused definitions and deleted entities. The drawing file should be as compact as

possible while maintaining data integrity. Drawing Validation A program is needed to survey all information shown in the drawing and make sure that it is correct. The drawing environment must be examined for conformance with established standards. Components, special instructions, and packaging materials indicators must be compared with corresponding data in the CAD database. All parts that are shown in the drawing as part of the primary bagged items subassembly need to be reported to the CAD database for updating of the facillities code. If the drawing is found to be correct, the date and time must be recorded in the CAD database and shown on the drawing, and the drawing must be stored in a secure area on the network. If not correct, the drawing needs to be save in the working directory and the operator needs to be informed all of the tests that were failed so that corrections may be done all at once.