Tag: Drawing

DraftSight in Sight at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 #3DXW25

3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 has nearly a full schedule of DraftSight sessions! Time to go!

3DEXPERIENCE World 2025 is about a month away in Houston, TX at George R. Brown Convention Center. There’s a variety of sessions available. This includes a full catalog of DraftSight presentations and discussions. You can build a nearly full schedule each day of the conference with just DraftSight topics.

Day 1

All of this starts on February 24, 2025 (the first full day of the conference). After the General Session, at 11AM you can join the DraftSight Keynote in General Assembly B auditorium. This presentation will be hosted by Manish Kumar, CEO of DS SolidWorks Corp.

Later that day, at 5:15PM you can attend DraftSight for the AutoCAD User in room 351. This session will cover the similarities between DraftSight and AutoCAD, including AutoLISP, UI, batch printing and more. Also covered will be similarities with SOLIDWORKS.

Day 2

The first session on Tuesday (February 25, 2025) at 11AM will be DraftSight: Explore 2025 features, BIM integration and xDraftSight. This session will introduce the new features released for 2025 to “revolutionize your 2D CAD workflows”. Special attention will be given to new BIM integration and xDraftSight.

After lunch at 1:30PM, you’ll be able to attend DraftSight: Enhancing Industry Collaboration with the 3DX Ecosystem. This session will discuss how this amazing application can be used in collaboration with advanced 3D solutions like CATIA and SOLIDWORKS, providing a robust platform for detailed schematics, technical drawings, and design documentation.

Tuesday has a full schedule with more sessions, all in room 351.

  • DraftSight Unlocked: Tips, Tricks, and Time-Saving Secrets at 2:30PM
  • DraftSight: Everything a CAD Manager Needs to Know at 4PM
  • DraftSight: Ask the DraftSight Team Anything at 5:15PM

Day 3

Wednesday (February 26, 2025) sees a shift in gears with a hands-on session at 8AM, called DraftSight: xDraftSight Hands-on. I know that name sounds like a sequel for an action movie, but this session will put you at the helm to try out an important new tool that allows you to use 2D CAD functionality on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Since this is a hands-on session, space is especially limited. If you haven’t already signed up, you may still have a chance to join if there are no-shows by the start of the session.

At 9:30AM, you’ll have a chance to show the world that you’ve got skills in DraftSight with the Certification Exams! (Check availability before you go.)

At 11:30 will be the DraftSight LIVE Closing Session to recap all the great things you learned during your time at World. Also, Steve Brazier is the Keynote speaker. Steve Brazier is a globally recognized tech analyst and the visionary founder of Canalys, a leading global tech analyst firm. Steve is renowned for his dynamic presentation style, cutting-edge insights, and bold, forward-thinking analysis. Are you ready to evolve? In an era where AI is reshaping industries and redefining roles, adaptability is no longer optional—it’s essential. 

Retrospective

It’s been a long time since I covered DraftSight topics. This old article from 2011 has some images of the original interface. A lot has improved since then.

Check out all the new enhancements and xDraftSight at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2025! I hope to see you there!

DraftSight header

Automatic Border tool works its wonders

Check out SOLIDWORKS’s Automatic Border tool and how it makes editing your Sheet Formats so much easier than old fashioned sketching!

SOLIDWORKS has the amazing Automatic Border tool for Sheet Formats. You don’t need to sketch your drawing borders from scratch. You also do not need to edit many sketch objects to update your borders.

The Automatic Border tool allows you to control all elements of your drawing border and associate those with drawing zones which are intrinsic to the drawing sheet. The tool has many functions to provide to you the ability to make and edit your borders to your exact needs.

To support ease of editing your Sheet Formats, a tab is available on the CommandManager called Sheet Format. This tab includes the tools Edit Sheet Format, Title Block Fields and Automatic Border. To find the Automatic Border tool:

Click on the Sheet Format tab
Choose Edit Sheet Format to switch to Sheet Format mode. Then, select Automatic Border tool.

On a newer template created in SOLIDWORKS 2016 or later, your border will highlight as orange. (If you have an older Sheet Format or you are trying to incorporate your old Sheet Format from another CAD application, see SOLIDWORKS Help.) In the Automatic Border PropertyManager, select Next to edit your existing border.

The first page of the PropertyManager is for legacy (pre-SOLIDWORKS 2016) Sheet Formats. If you have a newer Sheet Format, just skip this first page by selecting Next.

On page two of the Automatic Border PropertyManager, you have many options to edit your border.

Zone size and Margins

Zone Size groupbox allows you to establish your zone distribution and region.

The 50mm from center option under Distribution allows you to use a common size and placement regardless to sheet size.

Evenly sized option allows you to automatically divide the sheet up into evenly sized zones, including a custom number of rows and columns.

Under Regions, you can set zones to fit within the sheet’s margins (Margins) or the sheet’s extents (Sheet).

Margin groupbox allows you to establish where your border appears on the sheet in terms of distance from the sheet extents. You can set the border’s line font and thickness. Also, there is an option to allows you to include double-line border called Double-line border.

Independent Border groupbox is a less commonly used option that allows you to place your borders separately from margins. This is only useful if you have unusual distribution of sheet zones that do not take the border into account, with the same Right, Left, Top and Bottom settings as Margins.

Zone Formatting

Zone Formatting groupbox provides several highly specific settings to control the display of zones within the border.

You have the option to show or hide zone dividers with the Show zone dividers option. With this option off, the lines that represent the divisions between zones do not appear on the border.

Show zone dividers is checked
Show zone dividers is unchecked

In Zone Formatting groupbox when Show zone dividers is checked, you can control the line font, line thickness, length for the dividers.

There are also settings under Center zone divider that allow you to control the center zone divider’s length in both directions from the border.

Use Center zone divider settings to control the length of the center zone divider in both directions from the border.
If you do not want center zone divider to extend into the drafting area of your drawing, you can input 0 (zero) into the second field.

Under Zone labels, you will find several options and settings that allow you to control the visibility, placement and font of the letters and numbers which label your zone columns and rows.

Layer

Finally, you can even set a layer upon which your border should be placed within the Layer groupbox.

Ready?

Once you have made all your choices for options and settings on this page of the PropertyManager, you can choose OK button to accept, or you can continue on to the next page for one more advanced function.

Mask Area to Remove some Zone Formatting

Page 3 of the Automatic Border PropertyManager allows you to create one or more masks for your border. A mask is an area on your border where you wish to remove zone labels and dividers. Typically, you will use masks to create space outside your margins to add a company’s legal notice or (if you are still plotting your drawings) you can add part number, sheet number or other information to quickly index through a pile of drawings.

To create a mask, click on the plus sign button.

When you click on the plus sign button, a box will appear on the Sheet Format. You can modify the size and location of this box using the grips.

For example, if you wish to add your company’s copyright notice to the upper left, move and resize the box to cover the upper left corner of your border.

You can add more than one mask. Each mask that you create will appear in the PropertyManager.

All Done!

When you select OK, you accept all the changes that you’ve made to your border, including the masked area. You will still be in the Sheet Format mode. Add any additional details you wish for your Sheet Format.

Return to your drawing’s Sheet mode by selecting Edit Sheet Format one more time.

Your changes will now be the background to your drawing.

If you wish to reuse your newly edited Sheet Format, use the Save Sheet Format command. Find this command in the File pulldown menu, shown above.

Automatic Border tool simplifies a task that can be a tedious sketching exercise. Not only does the above functionality allow you quickly create the drawing border that you want, you can easily edit your drawing border as the need arises.

Balloon Note – REBUILT

Howdy,
I have to admit my original Balloon Note macro was quite quirky. It was the most complicated VBA project I’d done at the time, so I don’t feel too bad about it. I finally had a chance to try out the SolidWorks 2010 implementation – SO – I decided to rethink the whole thing. WOW – I really have to apologize, I’m surprised that old code worked at all. However, if you liked the general idea found in my original Balloon Note macro, I’m sure you’ll like this completely rebuilt version.

If you have no idea what I’m writing about:
Balloon Note is designed to add a Reference Note to an existing Item Balloon and Group them together automatically. It can add an automatically updating Quantity Text object. The result is similar to a function SolidWorks added in 2010, but, you can adjust the location of the text using the ALT + Select and drag method. The strange squiggle (QTY variable) in the text box represents the selected part quantity, until you apply the Reference Note location (Top, Right, Bottom or Left). Balloon Note uses your current document setting for the Note font height to create the Reference Note. The Links button uses a plain text file “BalloonNote_07.ini” located in the same directory as BalloonNote_07.swp to store your lists of links and symbols. The download includes two versions, BalloonNote_07.swp for SW 2007 (you could possibly change the Reference Libraries to your version) and BalloonNote.dll for SW 2010 x32.

Enjoy

SolidWorks 2010: Minor tweaks II

SolidWorks 2010 has made some minor tweaks to the control users have over balloons.

  1. In an assembly, when the user inserts a balloon, they can set it to follow the item numbering of a selected BOM under Balloon text (an added option for that field).
  2. The user can now add quantities to balloons.  These quantities are parametric so they update automatically as the quantity changes for the associated parts used within the assembly.  This was talked about in one of my SolidWorks World 2009 articles.
  3. One thing that has bugged me about SolidWorks for a long time is the fact that balloon size is determined by font size.  Finally, balloon size can now be set using an actual numeric value (such as .50″).  This can be a general setting in Tools>Options…>Document Properties>Annotation>Balloons.  Individual balloon sizes can also be directly customized via it Balloon PropertyManager.

Drawing ER Blitz results are in

The results are in for the SolidWorks Drawing ER Blitz by Dwight Livingston.  He listed the results in order of popularity.  Here are the topic five.

  1. 60% Provide hole callouts for holes in non-planar surfaces.
  2. 59% Greatly reduce drawing user interface delays.
  3. 55% Provide the ability to item balloon sub assemblies that are inserted after the BOM is created using the Top assembly, ie 3.9 from BOM in a separate sub assembly.
  4. 54% Provide option in view properties window to add view title and/or view scale to view.
  5. 54% Create ability to combine multiple identical hole callouts in a single callout with a combined quantity.

It surprizes me a little that the view title/scale issue is in the top five.  That’s why we vote, though!  The top five seems to be a list that spreads across several difference topics, with a bias towards hole callouts.  In general, the list seems to put a higher priority for dimensioning and more ability to control tables.  It seems to put a lower priority of symbol functionality and handling.  There is a common complaint that broken views cannot be added to detail views.  For whatever reason, this appears low on the list.

The list is a bit surprizing.  Of particular note, very few items even got a majority vote.

Results