How to make a

SolidWorks Template

How to make a SolidWorks Template

Aim of the Document The aim of this document is to demonstrate how to make a template in SolidWorks, and more specifically, a drawing template. This document deals with the settings and best practices for creating a drawing template and a related sheet format. It describes how to create linked notes and the best use of custom properties in your drawing, as well as going through a detailed case study step by step.

Definition of a Template Templates are blank part, assembly and drawing, documents that include user-defined parameters and are the basis for new documents. In the picture below, different templates have been created for different units setting (millimeters and inches).

Topics that will be covered in Document

Insert and resize OLE object

Create notes linked to standard & custom properties

Set custom properties

Save a sheet format file

Assign a sheet format file

Set document properties

Create pre-defined views

Save a drawing template

Drawing Template We are creating a drawing template because it requires more work than creating a part or assembly template (but the same principle can be used for all types). To create a drawing template, the following steps are taken;

Create a sheet format file. The sheet format file contains the drawing border and title block which displays notes that can be linked to custom and special properties, anchor points for tables and custom properties.

Save the sheet format file (SLDDRT file extension)

Prepare the Template. Assign the sheet format file to the drawing file. At this stage set the document properties, add any pre-defined views, and sheet properties.

Save the Drawing Template (DRWDOT file extension). The template file includes the document properties, the sheet format and pre-defined views.

Drawing templates and sheet formats are closely related but different. SolidWorks is supplied with a single drawing template and a set of English and metric sheet formats. When you open a new drawing using the default SolidWorks template, the size of the drawing is undefined. The system prompts you to select a sheet format. This determines the size of the drawing sheet, creates the drawing‟s boarders and title block, establishes the default sheet scale, and determines the type of view projection (first or third angle) and sets up the next letter of the alphabet to be used in view datum labels. Levels of Customizing: You can customize the default sheet formats and save them as new files or overwrite the existing files. In this way you can still use the default drawing template to select the size of the sheet required but the sheet formats that will be inserted into the drawing are your custom sheets.

Dissecting a Drawing Template

You can also create customized templates. These templates can have the appropriate sheet format already associated with them. For example you can create a C-Size specific template that not only contains all of the appropriate text sizes and dimension settings but it also has the correct sheet format already in place.

Properties in the Template: The standard SolidWorks drawing templates are populated with notes that are linked to properties. The values used by these notes comes from the custom Properties of either the part/assembly used in the views or the drawing sheet itself. User Defined Properties: Properties, custom or configuration specific, are used to add customized information to documents in the form of a Property Name and user supplied Value. This information can be extracted by processes such as a linked Note and BOM. Inserting Customer Properties: it is good practice to add custom properties to a part, assembly or drawing file and then link the properties to notes in the drawing. While you are adding a custom property note to a sheet format, a variable for the “property name”). When you return to editing the sheet, the value of the property, if found, is displayed. Note: If the properties used in the format have no assigned values, error markers with the variable for the property name will appear on the notes. SolidWorks Special Properties can be added to a sheet format and linked to notes in the format and on the sheet itself. The properties can be linked to the part or assembly file that inserted into the sheet. What makes them special? Unlike the Custom Properties, special Properties generates their own values based on the drawing in which they live. For example, when the SW-Sheet Scale is linked to a note, it reads the sheet properties and extracts the sheet scale value. Saving View states in Drawings: you can create new states in Orientation dialog so that a desired view state can be easily recalled. This can also be applied to drawings – for instance creating a view state of the title block or the revision block. Adding this view state to the template will mean that every new drawing that is created will have these present view states included. Note: We use the term view state here to refer to zooming or scrolling to a specific area of the drawing view created by the various view creation commands. You can and probably should save view states that are zoomed in on various drawing views. Customizing a Sheet Format: In this lesson a new drawing template will be created. A standard sheet format will be modified by adding notes and custom properties. These changes will be saved as a new sheet format and also saved into a new drawing template file. Tip: settings made in Tools, Options, Document Properties are saved with the template Inserting OLE Objects to drawings can be a simple method of inserting a company logo or a related image to the drawing. The OLE objects can be Linked or Embedded. Tip: when using objects it is good practice to embed the object into the document. This way if you send (email) or move the drawing file the object will not be lost. Where to find it: select Insert, Object… or drag and drop the object into the SolidWorks document window. BOM Anchor Point: The standard sheet formats supplied with the software include an anchor point for placing the Bill Of Materials (BOM) in a specific location on the sheet. When you add a BOM to a drawing, you can choose whether or not to use the anchor point. Saving a Sheet Format: when you save the sheet format, any custom file properties that you have added to the drawing document are saved with the sheet format. (A sheet format has a file extension .slddrt.) Where to Find It: Click File, Save Sheet Format….

Tip: By default, sheet formats are saved in the <SolidWorks install directory>\data folder. However formats can be saved in any location required. The data folder is overwritten when a new version of SolidWorks is loaded. The files will be lost if they are stored here. Saving a Drawing Template: you can create and save drawing templates, predefined sheet formats, multiple sheets, and predefined drawing views. Drawing templates have a .drwdot file extension and can be saved in any location. Click File, Save As ….and select Drawing Templates (.drwdot) Templates Locations: in order for a template file to appear in the File, Open dialog box, you have to specify the location of the folder through Tools, Options, System Options, File Locations, to do this;

1. Select a folder type (Document Templates) from the Show folders for list 2. Click Add to add a new directory path to the list 3. Browse in the Browse For Folder dialog box to locate the folder. 4. Click OK to add the folder to the Folder list

Populating Predefined Views: are added to the template, they are free of references. The reference. The references to parts or assemblies can be added at any time using Insert Model. Where to find it: Click Insert, Drawing View, Predefined…. Or on Drawing Toolbar, Predefined views

Property Values It is important at this stage that we understand where all the different information being displayed on a typical Sheet Format Title Block is coming from. The property values that appear in the title block represent different types with values gathered from different sources. The colour coding used in the image of an example title block at the bottom of the page breaks down as shown: Plain Text The black values are just plain text typed into notes Part Custom Properties The blue values are stored as Custom Properties in the part or assembly

Drawing Custom Properties The red values are stored as Custom Properties I the Drawing

SW (SolidWorks) Special Properties The green values are SW Special Properties that exist in the drawing and extract information from it

Opening a Saved Template

When you click on New Document on a standard install of SolidWorks it will bring up a window like the one displayed below. This displays the three standard templates for the three different types of files in SolidWorks; Part, Assembly and Drawing.

If you would like to display custom templates we need to do two things;

1. Add the templates file location to the list in the option 2. Change the New Documents windows display

1 - Adding File Location: Select Tools, Options, System Options, File Locations and use „Browse‟ button on the right to find and select the file that all you templates have been saved.

2 - Changes the Windows Display: Select New Document, in the bottom left hand corner of the window select the „Advanced‟ button, this will change the display so that each file location that has been added in the option will be presented as a Tab at the top of this window. We added ours to the standard „Templates‟ folder and that is where it is displayed.

Case Study Example of Making a Template

The first step is to create our own Sheet Format file, instead of starting from scratch we will take an existing sheet format being used on the drawing below and modify it.

This is a zoomed in view of the Title Block in the Sheet Format that will be modified. As the first task is creating and saving a Sheet Format File.

Right click on the sheet and select Edit Sheet Format, the notes and lines in the title block and border will now become active to edit and any views on the sheet will disappear.

The first thing we would like to do is add out company logo to the Title Block area. First we will draw a couple of lines to make a boxed area for the logo to be place in. The lines in Title Blocks are nothing more than sketch lines. So from the sketch toolbar, select the line tool and draw some line on like displayed.

Note: Its worth noting that you can add Dimension/Relation to the Table sketch but it is not necessary as the „State‟ of the sketch is not important as it is for visual purposes only. If you do add dimensions, it is important that you „Hide‟ them otherwise they‟ll show up on the sheet. To insert the logo from the Insert pull-down select Object, and select create new option

To exit out of the „Paint‟ environment click in a blank space of the page. (You can Insert, Picture, but this doesn‟t let you edit the picture and considered less reliable). You can then resize the picture either by dragging the corner or in the property manager, then drag into position.

Next we will add a note which displays two pieces of information;

1. SW-Folder Name. (This is a SW Special Property). This is the path of the current document on disk. This is useful on a drawing because if someone in the shop floor were to ruin the drawing, they would have the path to locate it on disk to print new.

2. Stock-Size of the component, this is a Custom Property of the part file. This is a

piece of information relevant to the part file.

The way this information is added to our drawing is to start with a standard „Note‟ from the Annotations toolbar which is added to the sheet format. The first part of the note is just Plain text typed in as follows; Location of File on Disk: Note: The Note has been added above the table to give us more space to work, once it is finished and re-sized it will be dragged into place on the table.

Once the Plain text has been typed in as desired, click on the „Link to Property‟, button in the Property manager of the Note tool, (Shown above).

This will bring up the „Link to Property‟ window. In this window you can choose properties from either the Drawing (Current Document) or the Part (Model in View Specified in Sheet Properties). We are first entering information about the Drawings files path, therefore we select Current Document. Then from a drop-down list you select the property you would like to display, in this case the path which is „SW-Folder Name‟.

Link to Property

The second piece of information to be added is the Stock-Size of the component, but before we add it in we will start the numbering sequence for our different properties by clicking our curser at the beginning of the text and selecting „Number‟ on the formatting toolbar.

We then click our curser on the end of our text and hit return; this will start a new line with the number „2‟ where we can type our second Property, „Stock-Size:‟. Once this plain text has been typed again we click on the „Link to Property‟ button. This time it is a Custom Property of the part file which will be added, so from the window we select „Model in view specified in Sheet Properties’.

From this pull-down all the Properties of the part are displayed, anything beginning with SW on the list is a SolidWorks Special Property (they will always be on this list) the rest of the properties such as Description, Finish, Material etc are Custom Properties that have been added to the part file Custom Property window, see below.

So if it does not appear in the dropdown list, it means it means it has not been added to the Custom Properties window.

The number gets added

In this situation where we would like to add a property to the list, instead of opening up the part file and selecting File, Properties… we have a shortcut which is to hit the File Properties button in the Link to Property window.

You can then type in the Custom Property as seen below. (Whatever is seen in the Evaluated Value column is what is added to the Drawing when selected)

Once this is done the Custom Property can be picked from the dropdown and added to our note, all we have to do now is resize the text (from formatting toolbar) and resize the note to fit the space (drag the corner to size). The note can then be moved into place into the table

The next task involves getting rid of all the specific information to the drawing that this sheet format is being made from, things like peoples names and dates and company name, see below

File Properties

Company name Drawing Information

This is edited in the Custom Properties of the Drawing document. From the File, Properties… adjust the information as follows;

The company name is NT CADCAM, and all the personalised drawing information is represented with an „X‟ as the field can not be left empty. This will update the table as seen below.

The Sheet Format is now complete and we shall now save it. This is done from the File, dropdown, Save Sheet Format option. The save window opens and it automatically will take you to the collect file location where the File Formats are saved (specified in the options). The file can be saved here as „NT-CADCAM SF‟.

Template

Now that the Sheet Format is complete we will put the template together. The first thing to do is to assign the Sheet Format we just made to the sheet. This is done by RHM clicking on the sheet and select Properties (this is the sheet properties), from this window we can choose what Sheet Format is being used. It should currently read „c - landscape.slddrt‟, use the browse button to browse off and find the „NT-CADCAM SF‟ sheet Format. Note: whilst we are in the sheet properties window, we can set some other things for our template such as Sheet Scale, Type of Projection and Datum System, see below.

Remember that we are still in the Sheet Format Editing Environment, since we have finished with the Sheet Format we will now go back to the Sheet Environment, RHM, Edit Sheet… and then to fit the Drawing to the screen hit zoom to fit (or double click middle mouse button). The sheet should look like it does below.

As what we are aiming to do is create a blank document for people to use, we do not want the Drawing views of the part which is currently showing, so select them and hit delete. Notice that when the view of the model has been deleted all the Part Custom Properties in the Table Block disappear because they have nothing to reference.

At this stage you could save this as a template but we will do a few more things before saving. Firstly we will set up all the Document Properties that this template should hold. This can be accessed by Tools, Options and selecting the Document Properties tab. Anything that is listed under the Document Properties tab can be set for a template, things like Drafting Standards, Units, Font Sizes, Arrow Heads etc. We will also select Auto Insert on view Creation from the Detailing heading.

Automatically adds dimensions and centre marks

The next thing we will set for this template is „Predefined Views‟. A Predefined View allows you to add a view to the drawing template which can be populated later with a model. We will add Predefined View for Front, Right, Top and Isometric views.

The Predefined View will show as a dotted outline, and you can specify exactly how the view should be set up in the normal way through the property manager. The other predefined views can then be added in the same way or projected from the existing view. The advantage with projecting is that the views will have alignment to each other. The Isometric views Display Style has been changed to „Shaded with Edges‟.

The template is now complete, now we have to save it. Select File, Save As… and from the window change the file type to Drawing Template (*.drwdot). Then tick the Save as a Copy tick box and name your Template.

This should automatically take you to the correct file location for the Templates (as specified in the Option) just like the Sheet Formats did. Press save. The template has now been saved; we will test it by using it. Close all windows down and select open up a part which has Custom Properties specified, for this example we will use the S-103 Part file supplied. We then select the option Make Drawing from Part option from the File pull down menu. From the templates window which pops up you should be able to see the NT-CADCAM template that we just created

Predefined View

If you select our new template it will open up the S-103 model in our template. When the drawing opens up the views are added as specified the centre marks and dimensions have been automatically added and all the properties in the Title Block have updated to show the parts Custom Properties.

Let‟s take a closer look at the title block area. The SW-Special Property for the path of the drawing that we added to our note is not showing anything. This is because we haven‟t saved the drawing document yet, as soon as its saved the path will be added.

The only other thing we need to do is enter information about who is doing the Drawing, as well as relevant dates etc. These get entered into the Custom Properties of the Drawing file.

Define Title Block (Optional) As you saw from the case study, the usual way in SolidWorks to update the Drawing with the personal information about who is creating the Drawing and relevant dates etc is to select File, Properties… and enter them in the window. Many people found this method long winded and not very intuitive, so in SolidWorks 2009 „Define Title Block‟ was introduced. Define Title Block is an automated method of identifying and filling in the sheet formats. It‟s a little bit of extra work upfront but will make drawing templates much more useable.

Method: Before saving the template, edit the Sheet Format (RHM, Edit Sheet Format…) then RHM the sheet and select Define Title Block, this will open up the property manager for the tool, you then drag the box around the title block and select the notes that need to be activated in it and click OK. RHM and select Edit sheet.

Now in the Sheet when we then hover our curser over the title block area we defined (dragged the box around) it highlights and we see the title Block Area curser. If you then double click, it will highlight the notes that we previously selected, to edit these highlighted notes, double click on them and edit on the sheet.

Anything that you type into these notes in this way will be added to the relevant Custom Properties area, in this case the custom properties of the Drawing.