Solidworks 2013 Bible

Chapter 26: Using Annotations and Symbols

IN THIS CHAPTER

Placing notes

Inserting and creating blocks

Accessing symbols

Applying center marks and centerlines

Annotations and symbols are a major component of communicating design through drawings. SolidWorks has several tools available to help you manage these entities to make engineering drawings look good and communicate effectively.

Using Notes

Notes are the workhorse of SolidWorks annotations. You can use notes in many ways and mix them with links to custom properties, hyperlinks, and text wrapping boxes. You can also use them with styles, leaders, symbols, and balloons; you can even embed balloons into notes.

Setting up a workflow for placing notes

Here's an outline of the workflow to help you create annotations more efficiently.

Follow these steps to create a note:

1. Click the Note button on the Annotations toolbar.

2. Click in the graphics window where you want to create the note or click an entity that you want the note leader to point to, and then click where you want the note.

3. Type the note. Press Enter at the end of a line, or if you intend to force the note to wrap later, just allow the line of text to be as long as necessary. While you create the note, the text box expands to the right until you press Enter, and it expands down every time a line is added.

At the end of the last line of the note, do not press Enter ...