So over the last week we have looked at a whole bunch of new enhancements to the drawings and detailing portion of the software. Well this one I guess can kind of be grouped into that but it also has to do with part and assembly files.
Raise your hand if you have ever wanted to add a tolerancing chart to your part and/or assembly. Well in SolidWorks 2010 you will now be able to do that. This will be extremely nice if you are a company that runs productions or a machine shop and you have people out on the floor that are looking at your 3D models. How did you communicate to them in the past all of the information that is normally put on the drawing? Now you will be able to insert a title block into your part and assembly files so that you can have all of that information readily accessible for anyone that might be opening that file and checking it out.
In order to insert one all you need to do is go to Insert > Tables > Title Block Table. You can either user the default SolidWorks table that they provide you or you can create your own and use that. These title block tables act the same as they do in drawings by being able to pull information out of your properties in order to populate the necessary cells.
You can see an inserted Title Block Table in the 2 pictures below. The first screenshot shows it in a part file and the second screenshot shows it in an assembly file.
I would love to hear how you think you could use this new option. I outlined some of my ideas about uses above but I would love to hear what you think.
Jason, I might use it, before I make any drawings, if I were to send this part/assy out to a supplier so they could have some basic information. Otherwise it looks like a waist of time because my profile card in my Smarteam PDM already has this information.
Steve
Excellent articles about SW2010. I saw the title block tool also. It is a great idea, however I was disappointed to realise that there is no way of bringing the titleblock from a part into a drawing.
I.E. after spending the time filling out the titleblock in the part, when you want to go make a drawing, you’d think that you could copy/paste/get/put/link the titleblock into the drawing. I didn’t have any joy getting it to work. Should submit an Enhancement Request.
As for filling out a (e)PDM card etc. there now are so many ways to enter custom properties. Property Tab builder, this titleblock tool in the part, and the old File -> Properties. This makes the Assembly Visualisation tool much more useful, in that people can add loads of properties into parts such as cost, vendor etc.