The SolidWorks Geek

Well here it is, part 4 of my rambling descriptions of some of my favorite enhancements in SolidWorks 2011. In case you missed them make sure you check out the first three parts of this series. In part one I cover some enhancements including conditional statements in equations, walk-throughs and decals. In part 2, I talk about the new defeature tool and some enhancements to FeatureWorks. In part 3, I begin exploring drawing enhancements by covering one of my favorite tools: The Dimension Palette. Today we are going to continue the tour with more enhancements that were made to drawings in SolidWorks 2011.

3D Drawing Views

Has this happened to you? You are working on a drawing and the predefined views of the referenced part don’t quite give you the view you are looking for. Then you notice that up in the Heads Up Display Toolbar there is a button called 3D Drawing view that lets you rotate the model to view all possible angles. Just when you think think you are in luck and you have found the perfect view of your part, the view resets after you click the green check mark. Frustrating, to say the least. Well now that button finally gives you the functionality that I am sure everybody has been praying for.

In SolidWorks 2011 when you click the 3D Drawing View button, you will be rewarded.

Now when you are in the 3D Drawing View mode you will see new and changed functionality of buttons in the floating toolbar. The most important change is unlike in earlier versions clicking the green checkmark will actually set the drawing view to match the view of the model after rotating. To cancel the view and reset to its orgininal orientation all you have to do is click the red X. Next there is the addition of a Save The View button that will allow you to create a named view that is then available for use elsewhere on the drawing. I am sure that I am not the only to think “It’s about time.”

Weld Tables in Drawing

Until recently I never needed to do many drawings for welded components but my current job uses a lot of weldments for various areas of a Solar Power Concentrated Photovoltaic System. This has allowed me to become a little more familiar with welds and when I heard about the addition of weld tables in SolidWorks 2011 I instantly saw how this could be a huge time saver for our designers. Weld tables can now be inserted into drawings to summarize the weld bead data for the referenced welded assembly.  The default weld table template includes the weld size, the weld symbol, weld length, weld material and quantity of each weld bead in the assembly. The table template can then be modified to include additional information that may be listed in the weld bead custom properties such as weld cost and weld time.

Hide Bodies in Drawing Views

The ability to hide components in a drawing has been available for sometime but if you were making a drawing of a multi-body part you would have to rely on configurations in order to hide bodies in a drawing. Now to make it so much easier in creating drawings of multi-bodied parts you can hide bodies in the drawing simply by right-clicking the body and selecting Show / Hide → Hide Body. I am confident this will definitely come in handy for me, I hope that is the case for you.

Show Model Colors in Assembly Drawings

Okay I will admit it not every enhancement in SolidWorks 2011 makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. In fact, this one I actually don’t really like and I included it in my list just so I can rant a little about it. SolidWorks 2011 now gives the user the ability to show the model colors of a part or assembly in a drawing. This means that if each part in an assembly has a different color assigned to it, the lines of the drawing view will reflect the color. Now don’t get me wrong. This can be helpful in some rare cases but my fear is that some designers and drafters will try to sneak this past their checkers in production drawings. I constantly have to reject drawings that have shaded views but now I have to update our company drawing standards to forbid the use of this ability in our production drawings. You may be wondering why I am so much against colors and shaded views in drawings. That is a valid question. The main reason is how drawings are printed, copied or shared. Colors and shaded views may look great on the screen but they don’t always hold up when printed on black and white printers, copied in black and white or even faxed. It is just a pet peeve of mine but I can’t be the only one. Am I? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

More to Come…

We are nearing the end of my favorite enhancements in SolidWorks 2011. I think we will be able to finish this in two more post. So make sure you keep checking that RSS feed and please let me know what you think about my views on SolidWorks.