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Archive for August 29th, 2008

Learning how to properly do drawing and detailing in SolidWorks isn’t precisely the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s necessary, so I try to keep at it, even when it seems I’m making progress in an extremely slow fashion.

Anyway, I was learning how to create Annotation Favorites, when I noticed that something was different about Favorites for SW2007 and SW2008, when compared to SW2009. Well, first of all, an Annotation Favorite is any kind of annotation such as a note, weld symbol, surface finish symbol, geometric tolerance symbol, etc., that can be named and saved to be reused in the document.  They are called Favorites in SW2007 and SW2008, but renamed as Styles for SW2009. The extension of the file in which SolidWorks stores this information has also changed, but never fear, because you will still be able to use your favorites created in SW2008 and SW2007 in documents created in SolidWorks 2009. I’ll tell you all about it in a few minutes.

Using SW2008, I created a favorite by selecting a note (My Note in the image) and clicking on Add or Update a Favorite in the Note property manager on the left. I was prompted to enter a name for my Favorite, and so I named it My Little Note. 

The next step was to save this favorite as a file, so I could be able to reuse it in this or other document. Notice the extension .sldnotefvt given by SW2008. I saved this file in the annotations folder of SW2009 Design Library, just to see if I would be able to reuse it in a document created in SW2009.

And, yes, the Favorite was still available for use in SW2009.

Now, why did I do this? What made me wonder if I would be able to use the same favorites in SW2008 and 2009? Well, it’s just that, as I said before, the extension of the files for SW2009 is now different to the way it was for SW2008. In the following image, notice the extension .sldnotestl given to the same Note when it’s saved as a Style in SW2009, previously known as a Favorite for SW2008.

These favorites or styles can also be deleted and edited at any moment. To edit one of these favorites, simply make whatever changes you need to it, select it, click again on Add or Update a Favorite, select the name of the favorite you are updating from the list, and finally, save it again, same way you did before.