eDrawings is getting smarter

[…or should that be “eDrawings are getting smarter”?]

You can think of a SOLIDWORKS file as having two parts. The video data – what the file looked like the last time it was saved, and the mathematical data.

Basically eDrawings reads the video data only. This is great on one hand because it is cheap and fast, but on the other hand your users need to be aware that the file they are looking at may not be the “latest-and-greatest”. You can be assured you are looking at what that file looked like on the last save; but if the file has any references that have changed since the save, you might be in trouble.

Back in the old eDrawings 2007 days, drawings had a double whammy because often times they would have titleblock information linked to file properties…and since many people/PDMs update the file properties without opening the file [especially workflows in PDMWorks Enterprise] –you were pretty much guaranteed that the valuable titleblock information would view/print incorrectly when using eDrawings.

Good news though, in the SOLIDWORKS 2008 format, eDrawings 2008 will now correctly display notes linked to file properties! Special note though…only notes linked to the document properties ($PRP:) display correctly. If you are linking notes to the referenced file ($PRPSHEET:) they still do not display with the new value.

I would love to know if changing a file property updates the file video data in the SOLIDWORKS file or if somehow eDrawings is learning how to display more than just the video information. If it is the latter, that could be a sign of good things to come? [Cross fingers]