Drawing Archives - Page 15 of 29

Vote for your ideas to improve SolidWorks

Without much fanfare, a new feature was added to the SolidWorks Forum under the SolidWorks World area. Its called Ideas. Heres a link (you’ll need to be logged into the forums to gain access to this area). In this new tab, you’ll be able to create and vote on ideas on how to improve SolidWorks. Presumably, the most popular results will be presented at SolidWorks World 2011. So, if you have some zany ideas on how to make SolidWorks better, go to Ideas and submit your idea. Be sure to vote for great ideas submitted to others.

As of right now, it appears that the most popular Idea tag is “Drawing” and the second most popular is “Drawings”. I think that speaks volumes about where SolidWorks needs to be focusing their resources to improve SolidWorks. Happy voting!

What silly drawing workarounds are you using?

Melissa Appel, DS SolidWorks Product Definition Specialist, started an engaging forum thread on the SolidWorks Forum. She invites SolidWorks users to answer the question:

What are the silliest workarounds you use in drawings, and what is the actual goal?

To date, there are 124 responses. Most comments cover one or more particular cases where a silly workaround has to be used in order to acheive desireable results.

There are many topics covered. Several comments are about well covered (and mostly resolved) topics, like the elimination of the Dimension Palette. There’s a few solutions to problems some users experience. Other topics cover little problems, like the fact that a user is forced to double-escape from the Ordinate Dimension command before a new set ordinate dimensions can be started. Then there are big topics, like the fact that SolidWorks doesn’t provide any method to break dimension extension lines around other leaders and extension lines (unless they are actually cross through an arrow).

There’s a lot of good information in the forum thread, but I’m sure there are a great number of topics to cover! Check our the forum thread and add your own or comment on existing topics.

Label Views +

[This article is outdated. The macro is no longer available. SOLIDWORKS has enhanced view label capabilities in subsequent releases, starting in SOLIDWORKS 2014. Please see current SOLIDWORKS Help for more information.]

If you have ever needed to add a label to a standard drawing view, you know it takes a few steps to get it to look like the section view labels.
Maybe you’ve added a note but accidently had the wrong view selected. Now when you move the view the note doesn’t move with that view. I hate that, and it takes time to fix.
~~Have you ever wanted to add some text to a balloon so that if you move the balloon the text moves with it? That’s done with the Group tool, but why not make it automatic?~~
~~All of the above is made easier with the revised Label Views macro.~~
Label Views is designed to help you quickly add formatted text to existing SolidWorks Views or replace an existing View Label (if desired), also automatically group text to existing Note Objects.
SolidWorks does not provide View Labels for Standard Projected Views. Label Views can add formatted text, to any SolidWorks View.
Label Views can replace-hide the default (mono-format) SolidWorks Section/Detail View Labels with multiple formatted text. However, the new Notes are “dumb” SolidWorks Notes and will NOT update if the Document Annotations format or the View Scale is changed after the Note is created.
Label Views can automatically group new text to existing Note Objects. This can allow you to keep the SolidWorks automatically updated Labels and add grouped text to it.
The “Model Links & Symbols” buttons provide a list of Model Links and Symbols you can choose from to add to the Note text. You can alter these lists to suit your needs by editing this open source macro.
This version is a complete rewrite of the code (all previous functionality is preserved, except saving User Preferences in the Windows Registry).
The .zip file contains LabelViews.swp for SW 2007 and LabelViews.dll with all the folders & files for SW 2010 32-bit.
Label Views (3.01) is available at http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php

Thanks

SolidWorks question: why does opening a part cause others to open too?

Have you ever opened a particular SolidWorks file that caused other SolidWorks files to automatically open as well? This can be very frustrating if you want to open a signal part, but then 5 other parts load with it. Most people who encounter this behavior figure out that there are external references that link the files together.

Over the years, I’ve seen people give several types of responses for this behavior in SolidWorks. Some people simply live with the undesired behavior. Others may say, “the file is corrupt,” or “there’s a bug in SolidWorks.” Some people spend hours trying to resolve the cause of the behavior without success (me being one of them, many, many, many years ago).

The answer?

SolidWorks is doing what it is supposed to do when you open one file, and then other external referenced files open automatically with it! This is intended behavior. It is also behavior that you can control at the system level.

There is a setting in System Options that allows you to tell SolidWorks how to handle external referenced files. It’s at Tools pulldown>Options…>System Options tab>External References. At that screen, the fourth line from the top says, “Load referenced documents:” followed by a drop-down field with the following choices:

Prompt – ask the user before opening referenced files
All – open all referenced files every time
None – never open referenced files
Changed Only – only open referenced files if there is a change

As far as I have seen, Changed Only appears to be the SolidWorks default choice for this setting. To tell SolidWorks not to open external referenced files, change this setting to None. Save the setting by clicking OK button.

loadextrefs

That’s it! I know, this seems like such a simple solution for something that may have been particularly frustrating.

Draftsight for Mac now available: Free 2D CAD

DraftSight for Mac (a new CAD .dwg editor) is now available for download! It is a beta release, so there is still room for improvement (not that I know what needs improving on the Mac version). If you are a Mac user who’s interested in DraftSight, please join the DraftSight.com community to get ideas or provide your suggestions.

SolidWorks 2011: Auto Arrange Dimensions tool

There is a a set of new drawing functions in SolidWorks 2011 that’s catching a lot of attention. These are the Auto Arrange Dimensions tools which are built into the Dimension Palette. Using a thumb wheel and available options, the user may automatically space dimensions from smallest to largest, aligned and centered (where possible), spaced with the pre-set offset distances, adjusted to avoid overlapping, and staggered (where necessary). In short, these tools automatically space and align selected dimensions with very little effort.

Currently, SolidWorks 2010 does have auto spacing for dimensions, but this can sometimes be more of a hassle than a benefit. There’s a lot of potential with these new Auto Arrange Dimension tools. They may allow the user to save time while giving them direct control over dimension placement.

Auto Arrange Dimensions is reportedly so easy to use, if dimensions of an entire drawing are selected, they can be spaced and aligned at once using this tool.

If these tools work as well as promised, they can potentially save a lot of time when inserting or adding dimensions to drawings. I guess the only addition I’d ask for is an option to automatically select every dimension on the drawing with the click of the mouse button to allow an entire drawing to be aligned and spaced in one quick action.