Continuing the focus on detailing and drawings today I want to look at one of the single greatest additions to the software for this release.  Last the magnifying glass was introduced as a way to limit the zoom in zoom out repetitive task that most of did on a day basis especially when detailing drawings.  You have make make sure you are selecting the right line or profile, right?

Well SolidWorks 2010 will introduce a new tool called rapid dimension.  What is this you might ask?  As you can see in the screenshot below you will notice a pie looking icon appear when you select an edge to dimension.  By selecting one of the pie corners, whether it is 4 different locations on a diameter or 2 different locations on a line it will place the dimension automatically in the direction you select.  The picture below show a diameter dimension.

The picture below show a linear dimension which only offers 2 locations.

Now you might be wondering how the heck do you locate the dimensions and set the spacing.  You can do this by going to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Dimensions and under the Offset distances grouping you can select the distance from the part to the 1st dimension and then also the spacing between the dimension thereafter.

This might be a tool that takes a little getting used to in the beginning but it can be very handy once you start using it.  So give it a try either when you implement SolidWorks 2010 or you can download SolidWorks 2010 Pre Release 1 right now.