Drawing balloons for FAI and PPAP

How to use it

1. On a first visit the tool shows an example drawing (plate TC-1001) with all 14 characteristics ballooned and measured; one is rejected, with its NCR number. Click a row, change a result, zoom in or try an export to see what you get before using your own drawing. Once you open a drawing of your own or press New job, the example no longer opens by itself; press Example to see it again.
2. Fill in the part details, choose the report and the zone system the drawing uses.
3. Open the drawing. If it has zones, set the number and letter zones to what its border shows, then see whether the blue zone lines fall on the drawing's own zone marks. An ISO 5457 drawing has fields 50 mm long that start at the sheet's centre lines (the centring marks), with what is left over in the corner fields, so the end fields differ from the rest. The tool divides it that way by itself when the counts are those of a standard sheet (A0 24 × 16, A1 16 × 12, A2 12 × 8, A3 8 × 6, A4 6 × 4). If the file is exactly the sheet, there is nothing more to do. If it has a white margin round the sheet, or is a cropped image, choose Zone frame and drag the handles on the corners and sides of the blue box onto the drawing's inner frame line (the one round the drawing area, 20 mm from the left edge of the paper and 10 mm from the others), until the zone lines fall on the drawing's marks. In this mode a drag on empty space pans and the wheel zooms, as in Place, so you can zoom in to set a corner exactly. The mode stays on until you press Place. Other counts, and ASME zones, divide the frame into equal parts.
4. If the drawing is printed sideways on the page, use ⟲ or ⟳ to turn that page 90° at a time. Balloons already placed turn with it, and the exported image and the report come out the way you turned it.
5. In Place mode, click each dimension or requirement; a balloon goes down with the next number. Type the requirement into the table as the drawing writes it. Drag a circle to move its balloon, and the dot at the end of its leader to move what it points at.
6. Where the drawing flags a dimension as a special characteristic, choose it in that row's KC/CC/SC column. KC is the key characteristic of aerospace work; CC (critical: safety or regulations) and SC (significant: fit or function) are used in automotive work. Customers want these identified in the report because they are controlled more tightly than the rest. The value goes into the Characteristic Designator column of the FAI and the Special Characteristic column of the PPAP. The symbols differ from customer to customer; read them from the drawing's notes or the customer's requirements.
7. Enter the results; the table accepts or rejects them against the limits. For requirements with no limits, such as notes or threads, type OK or NG.
8. When a new revision of the drawing comes in, open the earlier job (its .json file), press New revision and choose the new drawing. Every balloon keeps its number and moves with the page size. The previous revision is shown faint over the new one; if they do not line up, drag in Move all until they do. If only some views moved, use Move a view: drag a box round the view in the faint previous revision, then drag inside the box until that view lies over the same view of the new drawing; its balloons move with it. Then set each row to Unchanged, Changed or Deleted; a row whose requirement you edit becomes Changed by itself, and balloons placed from now on are New. The earlier results are cleared, and the report covers only the changed, new and deleted characteristics (a partial FAI), naming the earlier report; or choose to export them all.
9. A requirement that applies in several places, such as 4X Ø6.6 ±0.1, is split into lines 5.1 to 5.4 so each instance gets its own result, as AS9102 asks for every instance. If your customer accepts one line, choose One line for all.
10. For an inch drawing, choose Inches. If its title block gives tolerances by decimal places, such as .XX ±.01 and .XXX ±.005, choose By decimal places for the general tolerance and type the title block's values; a dimension with no tolerance of its own then takes the one for the decimal places it is written with. ISO 286 and ISO 2768 are metric, so they are not used on inch drawings.
11. If you have the drawing as a PDF, open the PDF, not a screenshot of it. A PDF stores lines and text as shapes, so when you zoom in the tool redraws the part in view from the PDF and small figures stay sharp at any zoom. A PNG or JPG holds only as much detail as it has pixels, and shows them when zoomed past that. (A scanned PDF is an image inside, so it is only as sharp as the scan.)
12. Press Full screen to give the drawing and the table the whole screen, which helps on a large sheet with small text. Esc or the same button brings the page back. The part details and options stay on the normal page, so set them before going full screen.
13. The symbol buttons above the table put Ø, ±, ° and the GD&T symbols into the field you are typing in, at the cursor.
14. If you measure on a CMM, or with a gauge that exports a table, press Paste results and paste the table from its report; the results are matched to the balloons by number.
15. Every export is in the Export menu. The table goes out as XLSX or CSV. The XLSX opens in Excel as it is: the header row is frozen, limits and results are numbers that keep the decimal places you typed (6.60 does not become 6.6), so formulas work on them, and the accept or reject cells are coloured. The CSV is plain text, for importing into another system or copying into a customer form. Export the ballooned drawing with Ballooned drawing, PDF in the Export menu, which gives every page in one file. The balloons are written into a copy of the original PDF as lines and text; the drawing under them is not turned into an image, so it zooms sharp and the file stays as small as it was. Your original file is not changed. From a PNG or JPG drawing, the PDF has that image as its page. This page as an image, PNG gives a PNG of the page shown, Print report gives the table with the drawing, and Save job keeps the job as a .json file to carry on later.

Requirements read as limits

Where a requirement cannot be read, or you want other values, type the limits in the table; typed limits replace those read from the requirement.

FAI and PPAP

FAI (first article inspection) checks the first part against every requirement of the drawing. Aerospace uses the AS9102 format, whose form 3 has one row per characteristic; the exported table (CSV and XLSX) follows that form’s columns and adds the lower and upper limits. Revision C (2023) of the form drops the signature and date from form 3 and calls the report number the FAIR Identifier, so the table’s header uses that name. PPAP (production part approval process) in the automotive industry has a dimensional results table measured on several parts, so it has one column per part.

Check the report header and columns against your customer's form every time; many customers have their own. The CSV lets you copy the data into it without retyping.