Dates and Custom Props

Hey All:

I'll start by saying that I'm pretty familiar with solidworks custom
props.

I'm revamping our formats, and I wasn't the original author.

In the "date" space, they've been using the "SW-Short Date" property.
This does the job in the short term, but as someone pointed out last
week, it changes every time the drawing is edited.

So, a two-year old drawing will then show today's date in the title
block instead of the original date, which isn't desirable.

There are other date props inherent in solidworks, but they are all in
the long format and there's no room for this.

Ideally, I'd like this date to either be driven off the model by a
short form of the "date of creation", or to have it pop in the date the
drawing is created and then retain this date indefinately.

One of the old timers swears it used to work this way but unless this
property is hidden I think he must be mistaken.

Anyone know of an automagic way of making this happen?

If not I'm going to create a "DATE" property and just link to this.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

 

That is what I use, (a custom Date property linked to the part or assembly
document), I use the "SW-Short Date" for the print out date, this ensures
that they are using a drawing printout "batch", from around the same time.

 

I have a macro hooked up to a hotkey that updates the date property when
I choose at the push of a button.

Matt

 

Pete,

But doing this will cause the date to always be the current date. I use
header/footers in the drawing template to show when the drawing is actually
printed (PRINTED &[date] AT &[time]).

I believe what tabrake wants is for it to insert the date the drawing was
created and never change. I have not found a way to do this with a custom
property either. However, if you insert a note into your drawing template,
with SW2005, you can link to the created date in short date format (wasn't
available in SW2004).

You could link a note in the part/assembly template if you wanted to do the
same thing. But it would simply be a note. Not very useful for anything.

 

CustomPropertyManager from Kent Contract Services
(www.KentContract.com) has a "Created Date" function that will do
exactly what you want....adds the date the drawing was created, and it
stays put.

 

Matt:

Now yer talkin'.

I figured that SWX didn't have this built in yet, so a macro is the
next best thing.

I don't suppose that you'd be willing to help a brother out by emailing
it to me?

Thanks,

Todd

 

You'll have to go see his web site....

 

Hi Steve:

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I've checked out the Kent tool at
one point.

I like these tools -- much better for entering in props than SWX. I
tried to get the one from NH cad in use at the last place I worked, as
they were using design tables for entering in all the prop info. They
were convinced that it couldn't be done without it, even though I
proved it wasn't necessary...

Anyway, here I probably have the ability to make that happen, but with
baby steps. Our company was just bought out, added 20 people to a 5
person engineering group, and so I'm trying to make small, effective
changes. Automating the creation of drawings is job 1.

out,

Todd

 

Steve:

Sorry, I'm a bit slow this morning -- whose website? Matt's? Got a
link?

Thankya

 

Sorry, here's the link:


http://mysite.verizon.net/mjlombard/

Follow the "macro library" link, it is called "date", oddly enough, in
the drawings section at the bottom.

Matt

 

Beautiful. That's exactly what I want.

Hopefully, if we ever get to using 2005 the rumors of an automagic
built-in date are true. In the meantime, this will work well.

Thanks,

Todd