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Summary

The Hole Wizard can make holes based on 2D or 3D sketches. The type of hole that you create is up to you. Two-dimensional sketches are far easier to use than 3D sketches.

Library features are very useful in automating frequent design tasks. They are easy to create, store, apply, and automate. Setting up the features for the most flexibility often takes careful planning and attention to the detail of the references that you use. The more data you reuse, the more time you will save by automating and centralizing your libraries.

Part III: Creating Part Drawings

In This Part

Chapter 14

Automating Drawings: The Basics

Chapter 15

Working with Drawing Views

Chapter 16

Using Annotations and Symbols

Chapter 17

Dimensioning and Tolerancing

Chapter 18

Using Layers, Line Fonts, and Colors

Chapter 14: Automating Drawings: The Basics

In This Chapter

Understanding the difference between templates and formats

Customizing drawing formats

Creating drawing templates using Pre-defined Views

Using blocks

Engineering drawings include a lot of repetitious information from one drawing to the next. The information is not always exactly the same, but it is usually in the same format and of the same type. For example, part drawings always include information about who made the drawing, when the person made it, what the material and surface finish of the part are, and some basic notes that depend on the use of the drawing (manufacturing, assembly, or inspection).

All this information needs to appear consistently on each drawing, every time. However, humans are not always good at following dull routines, which is why we have computers to help with these boring or difficult tasks.

SolidWorks drawing templates and formats enable you to automate some of these tasks. SolidWorks can insert information on a drawing's creator and the materials to be used, and start similar types of drawings from a consistent starting point. Drawing templates and formats also save settings that you may want to reuse.

Comparing Templates and Formats

Simply put, templates are collections of document-specific settings and default views saved in the *.prtdot (part template), *.asmdot (assembly template), and *.drwdot (drawing template) file types. In this chapter, I cover the *.drwdot file type.

Formats, more formally called “sheet formats,” are exclusive to drawing documents and contain the sheet size, the drawing border-line geometry, and the text/custom property definitions that go with the text in the drawing border. You can think of a sheet format as an underlay beneath a clear drawing sheet. Formats can also include company logo images.

You can save formats in drawing templates; in fact, this is the method that I use and recommend. Using SolidWorks' default drawing templates, the templates and formats are initially kept separate. You specify the size and the format when creating a new drawing from a blank template. However, when the format is already in the template, the size has already been determined, and so the templates end up being saved as sizes. Of course, you can change formats later if you need to use a larger drawing sheet, but you cannot change templates.

A SolidWorks drawing template can have multiple sheets, which can be the same or different sizes. You can use a different format for each sheet. For example, if you want a default two-page drawing, you can save it as a template, with different formats for the first and second sheets.

Changing existing templates

Currently, once you create any kind of document from whatever kind of template, you cannot change the underlying template. However, you can change all the settings, which is for the most part equivalent.

SolidWorks offers custom drafting standards, which provide some of the functionality that the ability to swap templates would achieve. You can take a drafting standard such as ISO (International Organization for Standardization) or