3 Replies Latest reply on Sep 19, 2012 11:02 AM by Corey Hinman

Watermark /Adding a variable to the printed copy without opening the drawing

Craig Lalumiere Sep 19, 2012 10:11 AM

Good Morning Everyone!

I am trying to stamp a work order on a drawing either though PDF or on the Solidworks drawing before the print gets printed.

The way my work flow goes is once it passes through drawing reviews it heads into a production stage where currently I have a dispatch script request a work order number and writes it to a variable.

I came up with three ways of doing it but I can’t see the whole picture on how to.

) Somehow in Adobe when creating the PDF it pull the Meta data from its properties and place it on the PDF with the watermark tool.
) Have some kind of script added to the batch print function with the Solidworks task function where it will pull that data and print it on the drawing
) Include it on the title block of the drawing (the problem is we have very large drawings and to do this I think we would have to open and save every drawing to update. This would take a lot of time and another seat of Solidworks)

Anyone see a better solution on how to do this or a way to make any of my ideas work properly?

Re: Watermark /Adding a variable to the printed copy without opening the drawing

Brian Dalton Sep 19, 2012 10:42 AM (in response to Craig Lalumiere)

Craig-

We use a variation of 3. ) where the variable is linked to a watermark (annotation) on the SW drawing. It's true that the drawing is not updated until it is opened after the variable is set, but you need to open it in order to print it or save it as a pdf anyway, so I don't see that as a problem. The only downside is that it shows incorrectly in the EPDM preview window if the variable is changed but the file has not been updated.
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- Re: Watermark /Adding a variable to the printed copy without opening the drawing
  
  Corey Hinman Sep 19, 2012 11:02 AM (in response to Brian Dalton)
  
  Sorry, didn't see your post until after I posted this one
  
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Re: Watermark /Adding a variable to the printed copy without opening the drawing

Corey Hinman Sep 19, 2012 11:02 AM (in response to Craig Lalumiere)

Set a note on the drawing that by default is blank, and linked to the variable that dispatch will set. Once dispatch sets the work order value, run it through the transition to generate the pdf. This opens the file and does a "save as", at which time the variable should be good to go!
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