solidworks 2010…annotations & balloons

One of the areas in SolidWorks 2010 that I see has the largest amounts of BIG improvements is drawings and detailing.  I think these areas have always been an afterthought of SolidWorks as the focus was always on the modeling portion of the software but I think the last 2 years have shown a shift in focus from the development team at SolidWorks.  The next grouping of posts are going to cover some of the updates in these 2 areas.

This post is going to start with some of the updates to the detailing portion of the software.

Annotations

One of the areas that I have always struggled with is the ability to attach annotations to dimensions on our drawings in the way that I would like to see them.  This has been updated in SolidWorks 2010.  It is now easier to attach annotations to each other.  The annotations this covers are geometric tolerance symbols, datum symbols, and surface finish callouts.

You can now attach annotations to dimension extension lines, move annotations around dimension extension lines, and also use handles to detach annotations from extension lines.

Balloons

One of the items changed in balloons is that you can now set them to follow the item numbering of a selected BOM inside your assembly under Balloon text source in the Balloon PropertyManager.

Another significant change is that you can include a parametric quantity to your balloon in 1 of 4 directions.  There seemed to be some things that were brought up during the blogger visit to SolidWorks headquarters in August about the spacing of the quantities but all in all this is a great addition for anyone that has had to balloon an assembly in the past.  You can see a quantity added to a balloon and the Balloon PropertyManager in the screenshot below.

Another key addition to balloons in this release is the ability to have a custom size for your balloons.  You can access this option by going to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Drafting Standard > Annotations > Balloons and then change the “Size” setting under Single balloon and Stacked balloons to Custom Size and specify your size.  You can see all this in the screenshot below.

These are just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the updates done to the detailing portion of SolidWorks 2010 so stayed tuned right here to see more of what has been updated.