Page 46 - Mastering SolidWorks

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14 CHAPTER 1 IntroduCIng SolIdWorkS

most common reasons to make a separate template, although any Document Property setting is
fair game, from the dimensioning standard used to the image quality settings. You can find these
settings through the menus at Tools ➢ Options➢ Document Properties.
Some document-specific settings do not appear in the Document Properties dialog box, such
as the names of standard planes or the use of axes as reference geometry. Still, these settings are
saved with the template. Settings that fall into this category are the View menu’s entity-type
Visibility option and the Tools ➢ Sketch Settings menu options.
Custom properties are another piece of the template puzzle. If you use or plan to use BOMs
(Bills of Materials), PDM (Product Data Management), or linked notes on drawings, you need to
take advantage of the automation options available with custom properties.
Two Default Template options are available: “Always use these default document templates”
and “Prompt user to select document template.” The Default Template options apply to situa-
tions when a template is required by an automatic feature in the software, such as an imported
part or a mirrored part. In this situation, depending on the option selected, the system automati-
cally uses the default template or the user is prompted to select a template.

Performance
allowing the software to apply the default template automatically can speed up the process dramati-
cally. this is especially true in the case of imported assemblies, which require you to select templates
manually for each imported part in the assembly if the “Prompt user to select document template”
option is selected.

Sharing Templates
If you are administering an installation of a large number of users, or even if just a couple of
users are working on similar designs, shared templates are necessary. If every user does what he
or she thinks is best, you may get an adverse combination of conflicting ideas, and the consist-
ency of the company’s documentation may suffer. Standardized templates cannot make users
model, assemble, and detail in exactly the same way, but they do help users start on the
same foot.
To share templates among several users, create a folder for templates on a commonly acces-
sible network location, preferably with read-only access for users and read-write permissions for
administrators. Then point each user’s File Locations and Default templates to that location.
Access problems due to multiple users accessing the same files do not arise in this situation,
because users copy templates to create new documents and do not use them directly.
CAUTION one of the downfalls of this arrangement is that if the network goes down, users no
longer have access to their templates. this can be averted by also putting copies of the templates on
the local computers; however, this has the tendency to undermine the goal of consistent documen-
tation. users may tend to use and customize the local templates rather than use the standardized
network copies.