Method to Capture Design Notes?

Is there a way to create "design notes" that are associated with features in
a part and/or parts in an assembly (i.e. a note on why this draft angle was
used on this feature, kind of an "extension" of renaming a feature/part to
better describe what the feature/part is or does)? It would be nice to RMB
on a feature in the tree and have a "free text box" in the feature
propertities dialog box into which unformatted text can be entered. I guess
(never having used IV) that this is similar to the "engineering notebook" in
which notes can be attached to a model, but I would like to add notes
directly to features/parts in the tree.
Regards,
Jim W.

 

If you right-click on the feature and select Feature>Properties there is a
description field that you can put that type of information in. (I'm on
2004, but am pretty sure that this has been in previous releases for some
time) Make sure you are not selecting Body>Porperties as there isn't a
Description field in that dialog. An alternative method would be actually
putting an annotation on the part model pointing at the feature in question
with a note (Insert>Annotation>Note). Using this method will also allow you
to "pull" in the annotation into a drawing of the part.

Oddly enough the help file does not provide an explanation for the Feature
Description field, yet it describes the functionality of all the other
dialog contents.

 

Jim,

There are a couple of ways to do this one is under the
configuration(s) of the part if you go to the properties of the
configuration there is a comment are to type text.

The other is use the design table ability to add notes for the design.
This way that document also is always added to the design. Under
help in SolidWoorks type in user notes in design tables under the
index. It gives a decent example.

Ken

 

Jeff/Ken, thanks for the tips. I totally overlooked the description field, I
think that will work fine for most of my "down and dirty" notes. I will also
try playing with the design table approach (I have not done much with design
tables).
Thanks again,
Jim W.

 

Jim:
Are you the Jim W. that works at ODI?

Steve

 

Nope, out in Calif.
JimW