If we have a drawing, and ended up drawing off the "sheet", is there a way to move just the sheet around rather than all the parts of the drawing?
Thanks in advance!
There is a selection to enter a custom sheet size when you create the drawing. I don't see how 'moving' the sheet fixes everything, you can scale that view to a user defined setting too. I may be confused and misunderstand your question.
May 2, 2017 10:20 PM
Hi Robyn:
You can change to larger sheet size ( for example, from A3 to A2 ) or you can customize the sheet size, but later on you might have issue to print the drawing on standard size paper. Please find attached file for your reference.
Regards
Just change your view scale to match the paper size...
No you can not move the sheet but would have to scale down or move the views or whatever you've drawn.
I am guessing that you have a bunch of views of different parts and then you have drawn lines on the sheet that go from view to view.....
Which means that now that your lines are extending beyond the sheet, when you try to move something, you can either move all the views together or all the drawn lines together, but not both at the same time. And when you try to just increase the sheet size, the 0,0 point stays right where it is, so your lines are still going off the sheet.
I am not sure what the best way to go about this is, but I would say that you need to change your process.
There are a couple of ways I can think of to do this, not sure which the is best way. You could create a little assembly, with the parts where you need them to be in space....and you could even put a sketch into the assembly that looks like your routing lines. Then bring that into the drawing and show the sketch, and now you have it all into one view.
You cold do it the way that you are doing it, except, instead of drawing your lines on the sheet, place them into an empty view.
That way, you can select all your views at once and move them all together.
Either way, I am not sure that putting the lines on the sheet is the best course, for exactly the issue that you are having.
That's an excellent point Dan Pihlaja
She could also use 'references' to connections common in schematics to show the connection to a ground plane, VCC or similar. Effectively reducing the need for "traces" or "wire's" as shown on her drawing.
In busy schematics you never see the entire trace.
I also use and convert these types of sketches to block (in case you want to reuse in other drawings/sheets) which you can easily scale, move, rotate, etc.
Thanks for all the answers everyone. Like Dan Pihlaja said, if I scale the sheet size the origin point of the sheet stays the same so the lines still remain off the sheet.
I also wasn't the person who made this drawing, it was my coworker. He didn't use views at all, and it's all literally drawn right into the drawing, so he started with some items and then as he continued and realized he needed to add more he continued off the page. He is certain that there used to be a way to move the sheet, but possibly that has been removed or he is thinking of something else entirely.
If you NEED to do it this way, then the best way is to add the lines/sketches to an empty view....that way, you can just drag the view around wherever you want and even scale it using the view scale.
I was once asked to create a building layout of a new building that my previous employer was putting up. At the time, all we had on our tubes was Solidworks. So I started out by trying to do it like I would in AutoCAD. Drawing it in 2D in a drawing.
However, it soon became apparent that Solidworks is NOT designed to be a 2D only entity. It bogged down the drawing do badly that I eventually had to start over.
What I ended up doing was actually modeling the layout (just making everything the same height, except the floor). And then bringing that into the drawing (in a top down view) and labeling it like I needed it. In the end, it would have been faster with a different solution, but I used what I had.
Solidworks is NOT designed for 2D only drawings.
Robyn Beeching wrote:
Thanks for all the answers everyone. Like Dan Pihlaja said, if I scale the sheet size the origin point of the sheet stays the same so the lines still remain off the sheet.
I also wasn't the person who made this drawing, it was my coworker. He didn't use views at all, and it's all literally drawn right into the drawing, so he started with some items and then as he continued and realized he needed to add more he continued off the page. He is certain that there used to be a way to move the sheet, but possibly that has been removed or he is thinking of something else entirely.
Hello Robyn,
I'm pretty sure your coworker is mistaken about that. And if you don't mind me saying so, he left you a mess to clean up. You should be able to select multiple lines and move them instead of the sheet, but it looks like he inserted some drawing views and added lines. If that's the case, then you'll probably need to Ctrl+select all of them and move them together, and then move the lines. I just tried, and I can get multiple sketch entities to move together, and I can get multiple drawing views to move together, but I can't get a combination of lines and drawing views to move together.
However, even with that being said, it looks like the stuff is larger than the sheet anyway, so I don't see how that will help you unless you make the sheet larger, or make the lines and views smaller or closer together.
Good luck,
Glenn
Robyn, you may not like this but...
you can Save As a DXF. then open the DXF and select "Create new SOLIDWORKS drawing" "Convert to SOLIDWORKS entities"
Once you have done that you can window select everything and move it to your hearts content.
I had him clarify and he said it wasn't actually moving the sheet, but when you went to print you could pick a sheet size and drag it underneath what you wanted printed. And I can move all the lines at once, but the inserted pictures or "sketched pictures" as a group, they will only move one at a time.
I can't turn everything into a single block, I've tried and for some reason it won't. I don't know if it's because the pictures are inserted using the "sketch picture" option? I don't know if there are better ways to insert pictures that would be better.
In the end, I think the only solution is moving all inserted pictures individually and possibly the lines all at once? Just when he had first mentioned moving the sheet around I had thought to ask about that as it seemed much simpler to do.
It will be something that we will leave for the moment, as we needed it for a manual and I just made a pdf of the entire drawing and edited out the background so you couldn't see the sheet in the background.
Thanks everyone for your help! I'll try and steer my co-worker in a different direction for the next one so we can avoid this issue.
If you are just "Printing" then you can do something sort of like what you described: "but when you went to print you could pick a sheet size and drag it underneath what you wanted printed"
I think that is what he might have been referencing.
Thanks Dan Pihlaja, turns out that is exactly what he was thinking of!
Then please mark Dan Pihlaja answer correct
Yes you can not have them in the block. Please vote for SPR #: 613335
