New in SolidWorks 2014 (not mentioned in the What’s New): View rotation angles everywhere (Part 3)

This entry is part 13 of 13 in the series New in SOLIDWORKS 2014

With all the new functionality with view labels in SolidWorks 2014, some ancillary enhancements have also come about as a result from customer feedback during Beta Testing.  One of these enhancements has been the new capability to display any view’s angle within an annotation note.  Why would anyone need something like this?

Well, there are four default options for the display of the angle symbol auxiliary views.

  • Show rotation symbol with rotation angle
  • Show rotation angle
  • Show the text “ROTATION” followed by the rotation angle and direction
  • Show just the angle

If your company chooses to display just the rotation angle (as is common for GOST drawings), it is still sometimes necessary to display the rotation angle.  Because the view label is a global setting within the drawing, there’s no way to accomodate this deviation from the standard settings without having some hugely complicated user interface to track individual labels here and there.  So, instead, one additional annotation tag has been added.  The advantage is that this new tag is available for any drawing view (not just auxiliary and section views).  The new tag is <VIEWANGLE>.  Type this into any annotation note.  As long as that note is a attached to a view, that view’s angle will be shown.  As an example, this new tag can be added to the auxiliary view label after the <VLANGLE> tag (or anywhere else in the note).

View rotation angle in any annotation note

The settings and the result of using the new tag:

Adding the tag to add back the angle

Author: fcsuper

As a drafter, mechanical designer and CAD engineer, I've been in the mechanical design field since 1991. For the first 8 years of my career, I was an AutoCAD professional. I utilized AutoLISP and many other AutoCAD customization features to streamline drafting activities for 6+ drafters and designers. I authored several custom functions, one of which was published in the March 1997 issue of Cadalyst Magazine. Since 1998, I've been used SolidWorks non-stop. I've worked to utilize the SolidWorks' user environment to simplify drafting and design activities for 20+ engineers. I've created this website to provide current information about SolidWorks from a variety of contributors. More recently, I am now employed by Dassault Systemes as SOLIDWORKS Sr. Product Definition Manager to improve drawing, annotation and MBD related areas.

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