Creating Drawings

Drafting in SolidWorks

To draft a drawing in SolidWorks without creating a model:

1. Open a New drawing document. Choose a template.

2. Draw lines, rectangles, circles, and other entities with the tools on the Sketch toolbar.

3. Dimension the entities with the Smart Dimension tool on the Dimensions/Relations toolbar.

4. Add annotations (Notes, Geometric Tolerance Symbols, Balloons, and so on) with tools on the Annotation toolbar.

NOTE: See the next section for an alternative approach. See Drafting for further details on sketching in drawings.

Creating Drawings from Models

To generate drawings from part and assembly documents:

1. In a part or assembly document, click Make Drawing from Part/Assembly on the Standard toolbar and select a template in the Sheet Format/Size dialog box.

The View Palette opens on the right side of the window.

2. Click to pin the View Palette.

3. Drag a view from the View Palette onto the drawing sheet.

4. In the Drawing View PropertyManager, set options such as orientation, display style, scale, etc. then click .

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add views.

Note: You can have any drawing views of any models in a given drawing document.

Basic drawing tutorial

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