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• Drag-and-drop. Drag a part or assembly from the FeatureManager and drop it in the drawing window. All Pre-defined Views are automatically populated.

• Insert Model. Right-click a view and select Insert Model. From the interface, browse for the model to be displayed in all the related (projected) views.

• PropertyManager. Select a Pre-defined View, and from the PropertyManager, select Browse in the Insert Model panel.

• Make Drawing from Part/Assembly. Click the Make Drawing From Part/Assembly button in the Standard toolbar and select a template that uses Pre-defined Views.

Scaling Pre-defined Views

When Pre-defined Views are created, they are set to follow the sheet scale by default; however, you can manually set them to have a custom scale. If you are using the automatic scaling option (found at Tools⇒Options⇒System Options⇒Drawings⇒Automatically Scale New Drawing Views), the sheet scale is automatically changed when the drawing views are populated to make a nice fit of the model geometry on the drawing. The scales used by the automatic feature are all standard multiples of two, so you do not have to worry about odd scale factors on your drawings.

Understanding the limitations of Pre-defined Views

The function and expectations of Pre-defined Views are fairly straightforward, although there are a few things that could be improved. For example, SolidWorks does not allow you to create pre-defined section or detail views. Also, the View Palette does not preview the populated Pre-defined Views.

Using styles and blocks in templates

The functionality formerly known as favorites is now known as styles in certain parts of SolidWorks, although you will find other parts where the term favorites is still used. In SolidWorks, styles function like styles and formatting in Microsoft Word, or other word-processing software, by adding underlines, bold formatting, and even items such as tolerances and symbols. Hole Wizard Styles are described in Chapter 13, and work similarly to Dimension and Note Styles (described in Chapter 16). This chapter addresses the fact that styles can be saved to files and loaded to documents. In particular, they can be loaded to documents that can be saved as templates, thus maintaining the loaded styles. Several types of styles can be loaded into and saved with drawing templates, including dimension, note, GD&T, weld, and surface finish symbols.

When a style is loaded into a template, any document that you create from that template can use any of the loaded styles. The many file types for styles exist mainly to transfer styles from one document to another, but they are not needed once the style is loaded. As a result, before saving a template, you should gather together your styles into your library folder and load them into the template.

You can load styles by going to the interface for the type of favorite; for example, dimensions or notes. Figure 14.25 shows the top of the Note PropertyManager interface, which contains the Styles panel.

FIGURE 14.25

The Styles panel for the Note PropertyManager

The buttons in the Styles panel of the Note PropertyManager interface have the following functions, from left to right:

• Apply the default attributes to the selected notes

• Add or update a style

• Delete a style

• Save a style

• Load a style

This section is concerned with the last function, Load a style. After clicking this button, you can load multiple styles at once by Shift+selecting them through the Open dialog box that appears.

Even symbol types that can be applied by dragging-and-dropping from the Design Library can also be loaded as styles. However, I prefer dragging from the Design Library because you get a preview of the symbol; with the styles, you just see a text tag.

Blocks can also be loaded into a template or used from the Design Library as drag-and-drop items.

Using custom properties in templates

Part of the usefulness of templates is that you can do work once and have it replicated many times.