Pro/ENGINEER Tips & Tricks:
Comparing Drawing Revisions

It's sometimes very informative to show the differences between two drawing revisions.

Let 's say we would like to highlight the difference between Drawing 1 and Drawing 2

Here are two methods to do do so.
  1. Do it in Pro/E with Analysis Compare Sheet 
  2. Do it outside Pro/E using plotfiles and external tools.


Pro/E Compare Sheet

  1. Save a Picture file from Drawing 1: File -> Save a Copy -> Picture (*.pic)
  2. Open Drawing 2 and do: Analysis -> Compare Sheet to picture ... -> [Select .pic file]
    The result looks like this: Compare with Pro/E Picture.
    As you can see not very accurate (or perhaps too accurate), since also stuff which wasn't changed is shown.
    Furthermore this command sometimes yields no diff output at all.


Comparing Plotfiles with ImageMagick

With this method you use the compare tool from ImageMagick which is GPL compatible free software used through commandline options (no fancy windows gui).

I also installed Ghostscript (also GPL compatible free software) which is used by ImageMagick to convert PDF files,  but you can also convert JPEG files created directly from Pro/E.

  1. Create a JPEG or PDF file from Pro/E of Drawing 1 and Drawing 2 : File -> Print -> JPEG/Postscript/PDF
    (use Ghostscript to convert the postscript to PDF).
  2. compare the files in a DOS prompt with a command similar to these:
    % compare drawing1.pdf drawing2.pdf -format gif compare.gif
    or
    % compare drawing1.jpg drawing2.jpg -format gif compare.gif
    The result looks like this: Compared with ImageMagick.
    The differences are in red overlayed on a washed out drawing2.

At Fico we use both methosd in our automated scripts ....

I finally create an animated gif showing the latest drawing and the differences with this command:
% convert -delay 100 -dispose background -loop 0 drawing2.gif compare.gif compare2.gif animated.gif