Tag: Melissa Appel

Melissa Appel is at it again on the SolidWorks Forums

Some time ago, Melissa Appel of SolidWorks started a thread in the SolidWorks forum for “silly” drawing workarounds.  This thread got a lot of attention.  Well, she’s at it again.  This time, she’s started a thread called “Show me what we can’t do in SolidWorks annotation formatting“.

There’s already a ton of suggestions that have been posted to this thread.  There’s a mention or two of bugs.  The notorious balloon quantity spacing issue is there.  Several issues with GD&T callouts are on the list.  Better control over breaks in extension lines, extension line termination and other dimensioning issues show up all over the thread.  I even suggested the creation of a SelectionWizard so that users can set up the order precedence when they want to select from several overlapping objects in SolidWorks drawings (and where the selection filter is not desired or is ineffective).

There’s plenty of room for more input in the thread for others who have ideas for improvement with annotation formatting in SolidWorks.  What’s been bugging you about SolidWorks annotation formatting limitations?

What silly drawing workarounds are you using?

Melissa Appel, DS SolidWorks Product Definition Specialist, started an engaging forum thread on the SolidWorks Forum.  She invites SolidWorks users to answer the question:

What are the silliest workarounds you use in drawings, and what is the actual goal?

To date, there are 124 responses.  Most comments cover one or more particular cases where a silly workaround has to be used in order to acheive desireable results.

There are many topics covered.  Several comments are about well covered (and mostly resolved) topics, like the elimination of the Dimension Palette.  There’s a few solutions to problems some users experience.  Other topics cover little problems, like the fact that a user is forced to double-escape from the Ordinate Dimension command before a new set ordinate dimensions can be started.  Then there are big topics, like the fact that SolidWorks doesn’t provide any method to break dimension extension lines around other leaders and extension lines (unless they are actually cross through an arrow).

There’s a lot of good information in the forum thread, but I’m sure there are a great number of topics to cover!  Check our the forum thread and add your own or comment on existing topics.