As I stated in an earlier post a lot of changes and additions have been made to the detailing and drawings portion of the software for 2010. The new feature I covered yesterday, Rapid Dimension, is one of my favorites and likewise the item I am going to cover today I think is equally awesome.
One of those most tedious tasks during a design process is putting your creation on paper. In previous versions of SolidWorks I always felt that drawings and detailing never got a whole lot of attention compared to actual modeling functionality. The interface and speed of drawings was always nasty to deal with but that is all changing this year. One of the great new enhancements is a new feature called the Dimension Palette.
Starting in SolidWorks 2010 when you add a new dimension you will notice a popup that appears next to your highlighted dimension. This new popup is the dimension palette and what it allows you to do is really anything that you would otherwise have to go into the PropertyManager to do. You can change tolerances, how far a dimension is carried out, position, etc. etc. etc.
You can also quickly add text or symbols to you dimension as there is open areas to the left and right, top and bottom of the dimension for your own personal pleasure.
Another cool part of this new feature is the style button (shown selected below) which will allow you to quickly access recent and saved formats to add to new or existing dimensions. You can also select multiple dimensions and add a style to all of them in one swift swoop.
Pretty cool, huh? When I saw this demonstrated earlier this year I was extremely impressed and very happy with how SolidWorks focused on streamlining the design process.
Absolutely amazing
How do you turn this feature off? It is annoying me!
This feature is really really annoying. In fact i’d go as far as to say that i’d rather chew my own knee caps off then have to use this dimension thing.
easily the most annoying feature introduced this year. it might save time for really simple drawings, but dense drawings suddenly become virtually un-editable. I have to re-lay out dense drawings to additional views because of this- you can’t toggle it off, and the mouse-away doesn’t work- the stupid thing comes back as soon as it attempts to snap to one of the lines again.
thanks, dassault.
It slows down dimensioning tremendously as it has to load as you mouse over dimensions. The auto positioning feature that I believe is the feature most of the above comments are about I believe is separate.
TERRIBLE!!! It is as bad as “moustrap” advertisements on websites.
Sorry, but I can set Solidworks, so if I click on in a dimension this “popup” doesen’t appear????? is so amazing!!!!
one of the most annoying features that robs me of time editing drawings.
How do you turn this feature off. Also auto positioning of the dimensions is very annoying.
Please reference this post
http://rocksolidperspective.com/2010/02/11/dimension-palette-fiasco/
i am trying to modify a dimension using solid works premium 2010 and the primary value dialog box in not highlighted how to i turn on the functionality of this so that i can alter the dimension please help if you can.