Creating Blocks with Editable Text by Brad Snow

Creating Blocks with Editable Text
by Brad Snow, Technical Analyst, CATI

For those SolidWorks users who take advantage of blocks, you may have noticed a change in block functionality between SolidWorks 2001Plus and SolidWorks 2003. In SolidWorks Drawings you can create (or import existing) blocks that contain geometric sketch entities and/or text Notes. For SolidWorks 2001Plus, any text Note in a block was editable – meaning that multiple instances/copies of the same block did NOT necessarily have the same text strings within the block. In SolidWorks 2003, the DEFAULT setting for block text is Read-Only, giving the appearance that we can’t change text in block instances without changing the text in the block definition itself. In SolidWorks 2003, there is actually more functionality that has been added, causing the confusion. We can now control the Read-Only/Editable setting for EACH text Note within a block. The following steps detail how to create multiple instances of a particular block AND allow the text in those block instances to be modified.

1) Make (or insert) a block that contains 1 or more text notes.

2) Double-click on the block to edit its definition

3) While in edit block mode, select one of the text notes to see its Note properties in the Property Manager (left of the screen)

4) In the Note properties window, go to Block Settings, Tag Name and insert a name for that particular text note/field. (Leave "Read Only" and "Invisible" unchecked for the note to be editable and visible!)

5) Confirm the sketch [sketch symbol in Confirmation Corner] to accept changes to the block definition.

After following these steps, "tagged" text notes are editable if you left them Read Only – and text notes that do NOT have a Tag name are NOT editable.