Make SOLIDWORKS Drawings "Quick View" Your New BFF

Have you ever opened up a drawing and got the dreaded empty drawing views because the drawing cannot find the SOLIDWORKS part or assembly file references? Ugh. Now what??? You don’t even have any way of seeing what the missing reference file used to look like or should look like? No worries.

DO NOT SAVE the SOLIDWORKS drawing file with the missing file references. Just close the drawing without saving. In SOLIDWORKS, go to the Open File Open select Quick View and then click the Open button. You will get your drawing views to populate from the last time the drawing file was saved when it had it’s known file references.

You can’t save the SOLIDWORKS drawing file as a .slddrw file type while in Quick View. But you can save the Quick View file as a .TIF image file and/or print the file as well. This will help you know what you are looking for until you find the missing reference file(s). Again, DO NOT SAVE the SOLIDWORKS drawing file with the missing file references. Just close the drawing without saving in case you need to open it up again in the Quick View mode until you find the missing file references.

I hope this makes you more efficient in SOLIDWORKS.

Don Glaske
Field Technical Services Manager & CAM Team Manager
Computer Aided Technology, LLC