Adding a date to drawings can be a tedious task. That’s why setting up your drawing templates to automatically input this data for you is a no brainer. To do this, first open up an empty drawing template, that you use for your drawings.
Once open, right click and select ‘edit sheet format’. Go to the annotation tab on the command manager and select ‘note’. We will use this to link up to the existing property of the drawing.
Place the note where you want it and move over to the properties tab on the left. From here, select ‘link to property’. This will create a new dialog box where we can insert the property into the note we have just placed into the drawing. From here, make sure current document is selected and activate the Property name dropdown box.
We have a selection of properties to chose from, with a total of 4 related to dates.
-
- Created Date, the date the drawing was first created.
- Short Date, a short hand version of the current date,
- Long Date, a long hand version of the current date
- And finally, last Saved Date, the date the document was last saved.
Depending on which date you want to display, these should cover most requirements. For this example, we will link the note with the last saved date property so we can tell when this was last modified and saved. We will also set the date format to long. This can help remove confusion between users who use different date formats. So no more worrying if it’s a the second number is displaying the month or the day.
Click ‘OK’, and you can see that the date has been pulled through. If this is being created on the blank template, it will display the current date.
You now have the drawing set up to automatically display the date the drawing was last saved. So, to propagate this note out to any new drawings, you want to save the template. To do so, go to ‘File > Save As‘. Instead of saving as a drawing, save as a drawing template using the dropdown menu. Save the template into a location set in the file location properties so SOLIDWORKS can see it.
Every time you create a new drawing with this template, the date will now automatically update when it is saved, a great way to add some automation to another aspect of SOLIDWORKS.
If you would like anymore information on how to automatically add dates to drawings. Please get in touch with the Innova Systems Technical Support team (supported customers only).
We hope you found that useful!
Have you seen our blog archive where we have posted plenty of helpful articles? We also have a fantastic video library filled with easy-to-follow videos on a number of topics inspired by other SOLIDWORKS users – take a look. Also, don’t forget to follow Innova Systems on twitter for bite size SOLIDWORKS tips, tricks and videos.
