If the overall size of your models change significantly, there is a good chance you will need DriveWorks to change your drawing sheet scales to keep your model looking nice on the sheet. Imagine this is my drawing. Let’s say the height of my part does not change much, but my length (which is currently 100 in the model master) can change significantly. DriveWorks (Pro and Solo) gives us two sheet properties that we can use to drive the […]
If the overall size of your models change significantly, there is a good chance you will need DriveWorks to change your drawing sheet scales to keep your model looking nice on the sheet. Imagine this is my drawing. Let’s say the height of my part does not change much, but my length (which is currently 100 in the model master) can change significantly. DriveWorks (Pro and Solo) gives us two sheet properties that we can use to drive the […]
In SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM, I do not like the idea of mixing languages within the same Enterprise variable. I want to be able to run reports and see BOMs in a chosen language. Multi-language reports and BOMs are difficult for users. I like adding a suffix to each variable name for each language, i.e. “Finish” is broken in to multiple languages: “Finish-English”, “Finish-French”, etc… Then define different BOM column sets pointing to each corresponding language. Same concept for search cards, […]
In SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM, I do not like the idea of mixing languages within the same Enterprise variable. I want to be able to run reports and see BOMs in a chosen language. Multi-language reports and BOMs are difficult for users. I like adding a suffix to each variable name for each language, i.e. “Finish” is broken in to multiple languages: “Finish-English”, “Finish-French”, etc… Then define different BOM column sets pointing to each corresponding language. Same concept for search cards, […]
I know companies that spend a lot of money translating drawings. Typically it is a slow, tedious, manual process. Since often times the translators aren’t engineers, you can sometimes get embarrassing translations. If your standard notes are blocks, translating these notes can be done very quickly. SOLIDWORKS’ blocks have a “FileName” property that a macro can easily change. Change the “FileName” property and the block immediately changes to the new block. So if you are clever about your block naming strategy, a […]
I know companies that spend a lot of money translating drawings. Typically it is a slow, tedious, manual process. Since often times the translators aren’t engineers, you can sometimes get embarrassing translations. If your standard notes are blocks, translating these notes can be done very quickly. SOLIDWORKS’ blocks have a “FileName” property that a macro can easily change. Change the “FileName” property and the block immediately changes to the new block. So if you are clever about your block naming strategy, a […]
A library of drawing notes for your drawings: Helps save time Avoid confusion with groups outside of engineering Makes training easier for new hires Make things easier if in the future you need to make changes to your notes through automation. I like turning my common annotations (notes) into blocks, then saving the blocks into my design library. Now when I am ready to add common notes to my drawings, I can drag and drop my notes […]
A library of drawing notes for your drawings: Helps save time Avoid confusion with groups outside of engineering Makes training easier for new hires Make things easier if in the future you need to make changes to your notes through automation. I like turning my common annotations (notes) into blocks, then saving the blocks into my design library. Now when I am ready to add common notes to my drawings, I can drag and drop my notes from the SOLIDWORKS […]
Imagine you received a set of SOLIDWORKS drawings from an outside source. Unfortunately the people who created the drawings didn’t use your drafting standards. [The peasants!] You may be tempted to create a little macro that goes through every one of your settings, one at a time, setting user preference toggles, integer values, blah, blah… Not a bad idea, but doing this is slow, tedious and you’ll run into some “undocumented issues” that my lawyers don’t want me to get […]