Page 159 - Mastering SolidWorks

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128 CHAPTER 4 Creating Simple partS and drawingS

Figure 4.17
a simple assembly

Creating a Simple Drawing
CAD salesmen have been telling us for 30 years that 2D paper drawings are going away. 2D
drawings may never go away, but what is happening less is drawing three views with individual
lines and arcs. Although AutoCAD is still a popular product, it is tedious for view creation.
Drawings in SolidWorks are really just automated snapshots of the model from various views.
Any change to the model automatically updates all the views. You can make section views,
auxiliary views, cutaway views, and other specialized views quickly when you are working from
a 3D model. There are some exceptions to the automatic updates, including when models aren’t
loaded and a setting called Detached Drawings, when they are intentionally not updated.
To create a new drawing, you again start with a drawing template, which contains the
document-specific settings such as units, drafting standard, and so on. You also might use a
format, which determines the paper size and has the drawing border with the title block and
other items. So, the template is the drawing file with overall settings, and the format is the
drawing border. Usually, templates are saved with the format within it, so the blank drawing
already has a sheet size and a border.
You can make drawings of individual parts or assemblies, and you can make multi-sheet
drawings with an assembly on the front and all the detail parts on subsequent sheets. Drawings
can also contain tables such as bills of materials, general tables, hole charts, and other types of
annotated charts.
You can also make drawing views from simple sketches. This is useful for layouts, schematics,
and items that might not have a physical representation.
Figure 4.18 shows a drawing with some simple views, dimensions, and annotations.

Tutorial: Creating a Simple Part
To create the simple part for this chapter from scratch, follow these steps:
1. Click the New icon from the Title Bar toolbar, and select an inch part template. (I have
included an inch part template with the download materials.)
2. Open a sketch on the Front plane.