SolidWorks 2011 Parts Bible - Matt Lombard [73]
• RealView drawing views are not available on a drawing except by capturing a screen shot from the model and placing this screen shot in a drawing. The same applies to PhotoWorks renderings.
12. Look at the custom properties that you created in the title block. The date is there because you entered a specific value for it, but the Name field is not filled in. This is because there is no User property in the part. Right-click the part in one of the views and select Open Part. In the part window, choose File⇒Properties, and in the Property Name column, type the property name user, with a value of your initials, or however your company identifies people on drawings. The Properties dialog box, also called Summary Information, is shown in part in Figure 4.21.
Figure 4.21
The Custom Properties entry table
Cross-Reference
When used in models and formats, Custom Properties are an extremely powerful combination, especially when you want to fill in data automatically in the format, in a BOM (Bill of Materials), or a PDM (Product Data Management) product. These topics are discussed in more detail in Chapter 14.
13. When you flip back to the drawing (using Ctrl+Tab), the Name column now contains the value of your initials.
14. Click the Section View button on the Drawings toolbar. This activates the Line command so that you can draw a section line in a view. When sketching, a line can go either on the Sheet or in a view. This is similar to the distinction between the Sheet and the Format. To make a section view, the section line sketch must be in the view. You will know that you are sketching in a view when a pink border appears around the view. You may also use Lock View Focus from the RMB menu to lock view focus manually.
15. Bring the cursor down to the circular edge of the slot to activate the centerpoint of the arc. Once the centerpoint is active, you can use the dotted inference lines to ensure that you are lined up with the center. Another option is to create manually sketch relations. Turning on temporary axes displays center marks in the centers of arcs and circles. Figure 4.22 shows the technique with the inference lines being used. Draw the section line through the slot and then place the section view.
Figure 4.22
Creating a section view
16. As mentioned earlier, you can use two fundamentally different methods for dimensioning drawings:
• Model Items imports the dimensions used to build the SolidWorks model and uses them on the drawing. These dimensions are bidirectionally associative, meaning that changing them on the drawing updates the model, and changing them on the model updates them in the drawing. On the surface of things, this sounds too good to be true, and it is. The potential problems are that you might not model things the way you would dimension them for the shop. You have to answer several questions for yourself, such as do the leader lines go to the right locations or can they be moved, and the dimensions usually come in in such a way that they require quite a bit of moving them around.
• Reference (driven) Dimensions can be applied to the drawing view directly. These are only associative in one direction, meaning that they measure what is there, but they do not drive the size or position of the geometry. All changes must be made from the model. Again, on the face of things, this appears to be redundant and a waste of time, but in my personal estimation, by the time you finish rearranging dimensions, checking to ensure that you have everything you need and hiding the extraneous dimensions, you are usually far better off using reference dimensions.
Best Practice
Users have strong opinions on both sides of this issue. The best thing for you to do is to use both methods and decide for yourself.
17. If you choose to use the Model Items approach, you can do this by choosing Insert⇒Model Items. Then specify whether the dimensions should come from the entire model or just a selected feature. You also need to ask whether the dimensions should come into all