Today we’re going to be talking about creating a drawing template. This process is fairly quick and easy and will save you lots of time in the long run. Your templates are found on the Advanced tab. The novice tab will just use your default template.
To start, we need to open up a blank drawing and make some changes to it. Select a predefined format, I’m going to select a B size.
Editing Format
First edit the format. Right click the sheet, and select Edit Sheet Format We’re going to do some minor edits, but you can always add more to your format if you’d like. I’m just going to add my initials, and the creation date of the part.
Since my initials won’t change, I’m just going to add them straight onto the drawing using a note. No need to drive this. However, if you have multiple users sharing this template, you can have it driven from the Author in the custom properties.
There are a lot of custom properties you can create and drive from here. In this case, we’re just going to use the basic, SOLIDWORKS programmed ones. On the left side, press the Link to Property button.
We want this to be the date in which the part was created, so we will select model found here. Select the property for SW-Creation-Date (Date).
Editing The Sheet
Now let’s edit the sheet. Right click the sheet and press Edit Sheet. We’re going to add a predefined Isometric view. Just open any part you want and bring in an isometric view. You can do this from the menus, but I find this is faster with a simple part, and easier to keep track if you have multiple views. As well, bringing in a test part will make you notice that your date field is too large for the box you have! Let’s go in and edit that.
Let’s move the Isometric view up here and add in a revision table. We will just use the default here.
Saving The Template
Now we must save the template. Go to File > Save As… and select Drawing Template. I’m going to give it a new name because I still want my default, blank template. You’ll get a warning, basically stating that the views will go blank. This is fine, just press OK. Now your template is saved! Let’s open it up and test it out with a different part.
You cannot open in insert a part traditionally when you have predefined views. You can do this if you’d like, but you might want to just use Insert Model when right clicking the view.
Final Note
Just as a final note to add in, all Document Properties are driven by the template. If you change any of these settings, you can save them and make them permanent by saving the template again.
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