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If you need to place something on your drawing such as a Design Table, but it does not appear that the Design Table is going to meet your needs, you can simply copy the data out of the Design Table and re-create it in a static Excel spreadsheet. The Design Table that you place on the drawing updates if it is changed in the part or assembly, just like the drawing geometry, but you must manually update an Excel spreadsheet that is created from copied data. Keep in mind that you must decide whether the automatic functions are worth the time you invest in setting them up. In many cases they are, but in other cases they require more work than they save.

Placing Hole Tables on Drawings

You can place Hole Tables on drawings to include information such as the size, position, and number of holes or slots of a given size on a drawing. Only circular holes and through slots are recognized. You do not have to use the Hole Wizard or simple hole features to make the holes. The Hole Table does not recognize counterbored slots or even slots with a chamfer edgebreak. The position is given relative to a selected reference position, and the holes are labeled. You should not use a Hole Table for slots unless you first test to make sure that you are getting correct data.

Like other table types, Hole Tables can use templates. As with other templates, you should store Hole Table templates in a library area outside of your local SolidWorks installation folder. You can then direct SolidWorks to this location by choosing Tools⇒Options⇒File Locations and specifying the path settings.

Hole Tables use anchors in exactly the same way as BOMs. For more information, see the section on table anchors earlier in this chapter.

You can find the options for Hole Tables by choosing Tools⇒Options⇒Document Properties⇒Drafting Standard⇒Tables⇒Hole.

Figure 17.12 shows the PropertyManager for a Hole Table. The left image shows the PropertyManager that appears when you create the table, and the right image shows the one that appears when you edit the table. Figure 17.13 shows the resulting Hole Table on a drawing with a part that contains holes. The table incorporates holes from multiple views, using a different zero reference for each view.

To initiate the Hole Table function, you must first select a view. You can access the Hole Table function by choosing Insert⇒Table⇒Hole Table.

To specify the datum, either select an edge in each direction to serve as the zero mark for the X and Y directions or select a vertex or point to serve as the Origin in both directions.

To select the holes to be included in the table, activate the selection box in the Holes panel, and either select the hole edges directly or select the faces on which the holes are located. Once you place the table, you can add holes or change the datum information. To do this, right-click the Hole Table entry in the Drawing FeatureManager, and select Edit Feature. You can resize columns and rows in the same way as for BOM tables.

FIGURE 17.12

The PropertyManager for the Hole Table

In the table in Figure 17.13, the Combine Same Sizes option is used, which causes several of the cells in the table to merge. If you use the Combine Same Tags option, then the hole locations are not displayed — only the hole callout description and the quantity appear. Figure 17.14 shows this arrangement.

FIGURE 17.13

A Hole Table combining holes in different views

FIGURE 17.14

The Combine Same Tags option used with a Hole Table that includes a slot

You can control the hole callout description used in Figure 17.14 by using the file named calloutformat.txt, which is found in the lang\english subdirectory of the SolidWorks installation directory. Again, if you customize this file, then you should keep it in a library external to the installation directory and list it in the Tools⇒Options⇒File Locations area. This text file enables you to define how hole callouts are specified for different types of holes.

Using Revision Tables

You can use Revision Tables in