New to the forum. Is there a way to auto balloon all the features of a single part? I have a part with 1,350 features and not looking forward to doing them all by hand.
New to the forum. Is there a way to auto balloon all the features of a single part? I have a part with 1,350 features and not looking forward to doing them all by hand.
I may have misunderstood. Reading that again, it sound like you want to balloon features and not individual components. If that is the case then this won't work.
Can you post a picture of the desired result? I'm not comprehending what a feature is meant to be in this context.
It would be fairly straightforward to write a macro that traverses each feature in the design tree of a part and adds a note to the drawing view for any visible faces or edges that are children of that feature. This would not be guaranteed to "balloon" every feature as it is possible for features two have no visible faces.
If by "feature" you mean "thing that should be dimensioned", that isn't quite as easy.
Also, what is the purpose of this drawing? How is it used?
Frank Begert wrote:
New to the forum. Is there a way to auto balloon all the features of a single part? I have a part with 1,350 features and not looking forward to doing them all by hand.
Please post a screen-shot of your part and feature tree.
If by "Features" you mean separate bodies of a multi-body Part, then insert a view of the Part into a Drawing, insert a cut list from it, then right-click on the view and choose "Annotations > Auto-Balloon" from the drop-down.
SOLIDWORKS INSPECTION ADD IN
Wtf who does this? I have never seen this before. Too busy doing productive work.
The best way would be a macro. You would have to iterate through all of the components in a view and place balloons on them with the method shown in this link.
2013 SOLIDWORKS API Help - Add Auto Balloons to Drawing Example (VBA)
This code may help with navigating the components in each view. You may have to modify it though.
Sub ProcessDrawingComponent _ ( _ swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks, _ swDraw As SldWorks.DrawingDoc, _ swDrawComp As SldWorks.DrawingComponent, _ sPadStr As String, _ sChildrenOnSeparateLayers As Boolean _ ) Dim vDrawCompChildArr As Variant Dim vDrawCompChild As Variant Dim swDrawCompChild As SldWorks.DrawingComponent 'Dim swChildComp As SldWorks.Component2 Debug.Print sPadStr & swDrawComp.Name 'Add your auto balloon logic here 'ChangeComponentLayer swApp, swDraw, swDrawComp, swDrawComp.Name vDrawCompChildArr = swDrawComp.GetChildren If Not IsEmpty(vDrawCompChildArr) Then For Each vDrawCompChild In vDrawCompChildArr Set swDrawCompChild = vDrawCompChild 'Set swChildComp = swDrawCompChild.Component If sChildrenOnSeparateLayers = True Then ProcessDrawingComponent swApp, swDraw, swDrawCompChild, sPadStr + " ", sChildrenOnSeparateLayers End If Next End If End Sub Sub main() Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks Dim swModel As SldWorks.ModelDoc2 Dim swDraw As SldWorks.DrawingDoc Dim swSelMgr As SldWorks.SelectionMgr Dim swView As SldWorks.View Dim swDrawComp As SldWorks.DrawingComponent Dim bRet As Boolean Set swApp = Application.SldWorks Set swModel = swApp.ActiveDoc Set swDraw = swModel Set swSelMgr = swModel.SelectionManager Set swView = swSelMgr.GetSelectedObject5(1) Set swDrawComp = swView.RootDrawingComponent Debug.Print "File = " & swModel.GetPathName Debug.Print " " & swView.Name & " [" & swView.Type & "]" ProcessDrawingComponent swApp, swDraw, swDrawComp, " ", (MsgBox("Place Subassembly Components on Separate Layer?", vbYesNo, "Confirm") = vbYes) End Sub