Linking Part Material To Drawing Template

First off I wanted to thank people that have answered my questions in
the past, and let folks know I did search for this answer. We are
finally out of the dark ages (SW 2004) and running SW 2008. We're
going to run it for a few months before setting up PDM Works.

I'm trying to setup my Drawing Template to be more automated, and I
can't figure out how to get it to callout the Material I choose in the
Feature Tree of the part file. I've added this to my Drawing
Template: $PRPSHEET:"material" but when I insert a part view into my
drawing sheet, this doesn't update with the material info I had
selected in the parts Feature Tree.

Any help would rock.

~pope

 

Pope,

I would advise not using the Material value directly. There's three
problems with this when it comes to materials and the SolidWorks
material database library. First, the material names used in
SolidWorks standard library are not the correct or even common names
for those materials. Second, if you need accurate specification, the
standards that define the materials are not even mentioned of the
library, making references to material incomplete. Third, the names of
the materials are not capitalized, so they are not formatted correctly
to be used directly on a drawing in the first place.

Solution, change your library to add this info and correct formatting
(create a new library to do the same) OR enter the info manually on
the part in a custom property, then have that value pulled into the
drawing via the method mentioned above.

If you choose to use a custom property in the model, simply link to
that value in an annotation note on the drawing using the method
above. If you still wish to use the material value of a model
directly, you'll need to do one extra step (also involving the use of
custom properties):

In the drawing, create a custom property called something like
Material or whatever you wish. Do the same in the model. For the
value of the drawing's Material property, type "$PRP:"Material" For
the value of Material property, just click on the down arrow of the
entry field and select Material. Back on the drawing, create an
annotation link that links to the DRAWING's custom property Material.

That's it. Easy? Well, not really, but not hard once you know.

Matthew Lorono
http://sw.fcsuper.com
http://www.fcsuper.com/swblog

 

Matthew,

Thanks for the answer. I can understand the problems in linking now.
However I think I'll follow your suggestion and make our own custom
material database. 90% of our parts are out of 6061-T6 so as long as
I add that (instead of 6061 Alloy like it defaults to) we should be
fine.

The thing I don't understand is, even if I do want to use the SW
Material Database, I still can't get that to show up in in my drawing
when I add $PRPSHEET:"material". The only way I can get it to show up
is if I had a custom Material in the Properties box.

Thanks

~pope