Aled J Taylor January 6th, 2013 SolidWorks Drawing Templates with associated files: A0, A1, A2, A3, A4L, A4P, Part, Assembly, Drawing, BoM, Revision, Weldment. However, if you already have a specific format that you like your drawings to follow, there are other ways to utilize that data … Click on the icon for File Properties in the menu bar. The first step in the process is understanding how Drawing Templates and Sheet Formats work together in SOLIDWORKS. SolidWorks is one of the most popular CAD packages in industry use today. Let’s change the default plane names to XY PLANE, ZX PLANE and YZ PLANE. After clicking this button you may switch between the Novice and Advanced template selection window. For today’s article, we’ll focus on the four main items you can configure and save into a template. There are four main items that may be configured and saved into a new part template: You can also create new geometry to use in your template. You may be able to use this workflow and bring the title block to AutoCAD DWG. UPDATE for SolidWorks 2014: The following protocol is no longer necessary to achieve a different sheet format for addition sheets on a drawing. The options under the tab for Document Properties will be saved with the document template, so we will focus on this tab (Figure 14). Sample of templates that use different units of measurement. For example, you could create a block with four counterbores in the corners to use as a common fixturing plate. Congratulations! The templates are actually SolidWorks documents. A SOLIDWORKS part document is an .sldprt file and a part template is a .prtdot file. We will also change the name of the origin to ORIGIN – 0,0,0 (Figure 6). Whenever working on a part document, you may set the option to hide or show all planes. We’ll start by changing the units for our template. After we have set these items to show, click in the background. Click the System Options tab and then click File Locations. We’ll next take a look at Custom File Properties. Then you can use the DWG file as an Inventor template or copy and paste some titleblock geometry over. You may also set the option to hide or show all sketches, and hide or show all origins. Similarly, Assembly and Drawing templates use special extensions. Now that we have adjusted all the options for our template, we need to save our template as a template file. Because it is the base of your drawings, the importance of the drawing template cannot be overstated. Since the correct filed name is Part Number, and this field will be saved into your template, it will be the same for every new part file you create. Hide/show state of Origins, Planes, Sketches, etc. With bill of materials templates, we can customize and save our bill of materials format so we can then reuse this format when creating new drawings.. With the default template, SOLIDWORKS automatically brings in the item number, part number, description, and quantity in that order. Tobias Richard is a SOLIDWORKS Elite Applications Engineer from Philadelphia. You have now created and saved a part template. Click on the Options icon in the menu bar. If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, I encourage you to continue reading for an overview of how to configure, use and re-use templates in the software. Click the document icon to create a new document. You can manually type a name into the Property Name box. Drawing templates are used any time you start a new drawing. First you create a new document and configure the options and settings as desired. Windows Explorer folder showing template files. Next, in SOLIDWORKS, we will choose File→Save as. This option will help the display of curved features to appear more round and less tessellated. Aled J Taylor January 6th, 2013 SolidWorks Drawing Templates with associated files: A0, A1, A2, A3, A4L, A4P, Part, Assembly, Drawing, BoM, Revision, Weldment. SolidWorks offers multiple different sizes and shapes of pre-made drawing templates inside the programs files. Now that you know how to create a template for a Part document, you may repeat these steps to create a template for Assembly and a Drawing. One of these pre-made templates will be open and altered to make it blank. He has been working with SOLIDWORKS software since 1998 and has been providing training, technical support and tips and tricks since 2001. In this webinar, we demonstrate how to create SOLIDWORKS Drawing Templates. These settings will be saved with the template. Select No when this dialog box appears. Then browse to the C:\SOLIDWORKS 2016 TEMPLATES location and give the new template a file name. You can include items such … SOLIDWORKS provides many tools to make repetitive tasks quicker and easier to manage. We’ll go into the Options feature and point to our new directory containing our new part template. This setting may also be saved into our templates. From the “Heads Up” toolbar, set these items to show. This should allow the users to have templates that are of the best quality to start their new part, assembly and drawing file (s) with. Because of this extra detail, the information is broken out into two files. When first installing the software, you will be presented with a choice of three templates, Part, Assembly or Drawing, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 7. Although this is an option, I typically stick to the default names of the planes: Front Plane, Top Plane and Right Plane. This location should now appear in the list. Similarly, we might want our inches projects to use three-place precision (x.xxx) while our millimeter projects could use two-place precision (x.xx). One of the most commonly used libraries is the library of templates. We then need to tell the software where to look for this template, so that we may use it over and over again. The … (Figure 11.). So, why can’t they be a little more advanced and help you speed up your design? SOLIDWORKS Drawing Template The drawing template has the file extension.drwdot. Let’s start by clicking the icon for a New document (Figure 4). To change the default template: Click the New icon on the menu bar. To get the most out of the software and accelerate the completion of your projects, you can create and save customized templates containing your desired custom settings. File locations for document templates When first installing the software, you will be presented with a choice of three templates, Part, Assembly or Drawing, as shown in Figure 2.Figure 2. Click the New icon on the menu bar (Figure 25). The three default out-of-the-box templates. A SOLIDWORKS drawing can be broken into two major components. Figure 24. The Template Wizard is the only source for high-quality templates using the latest intelligence in SOLIDWORKS. Figure 2. Driver issues. The options under the tab for System Options will affect the entire setup. For our template we will add the custom properties shown in the list above. Figure 8. The Drawing Template is used to create a new Drawing, but the Template references a Sheet Format. Drawing templates contain all the document specific information that is found in the Tools > Options > Document Properties dialog. Document properties settings like units, leader head, line font ,style etc; Predefined views; Sheet format; Number of sheets; Drafting Standard; File extension is .drwdot This tab represents the file location you pointed the software to look at when browsing for a library of document templates.