8 Replies Latest reply on Apr 22, 2014 5:40 PM by Kelef Man

    Can the *decimal* units used be modified?

    Ramon F. Herrera
    Ramon F. Herrera Apr 21, 2014 8:25 PM

      The standard unit used by SolidWorks is the meter. Fair enouh.

       

      What if the user needs to design a microchip measured in nanometers?

       

      Or a very large space ship or planetary system measured in tens of kilometers?

       

      This should be doable, correct?

       

      Notice that all I need is to move the decimal point around, I am not referring to using inches/yards, etc.

       

      Can we work in user space coordinates?

       

      TIA

        • Re: Can the *decimal* units used be modified?
          Glenn Schroeder
          Glenn Schroeder Apr 21, 2014 9:21 PM (in response to Ramon F. Herrera)

          Go to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Units to set those parameters.  I don't know if you'll get all the options that you mentioned but there are quite a few.

          • Re: Can the *decimal* units used be modified?
            Dwight Livingston
            Dwight Livingston Apr 22, 2014 8:30 AM (in response to Ramon F. Herrera)

            Ramon

             

            No, you cannot scale SolidWorks and have it show a decimal where you want it to. If you want to work at your own scale, you have to apply a scaling factor yourself.

             

            Dwight

            • Re: Can the *decimal* units used be modified?
              Glenn Schroeder
              Glenn Schroeder Apr 22, 2014 8:33 AM (in response to Ramon F. Herrera)

              By the way, you said the standard unit used by SolidWorks is the meter.  That's only the unit set by your drawing template.  If you open a new drawing, make the desired change in Document Properties, then Save as Drawing Template, all new drawings using this drawing template will reflect the change.

                • Re: Can the *decimal* units used be modified?
                  Ramon F. Herrera
                  Ramon F. Herrera Apr 22, 2014 11:03 AM (in response to Glenn Schroeder)

                  Many thanks go to Glenn & Dwight. I am a total newbie and this issue has been confusing.

                   

                  Allow me to explain further: I am not your typical SolidWorks user per se, but a software engineer. My interest is to add value (utilities, Macros, Addins) to the application. As a first project, to get my feet wet, I assigned myself a "Copy & Paste" utility. The "copy" side (which is ready) is an Acrobat plugin that scans the current page, grabs all the Elements of type "path" (ie, line segments and curve segments) within the selection rectangle and places them in the Windows Clipboard.

                   

                  The SolidWorks side -which I am about to start developing- takes the lines from the Clipboard and "pastes" (draws) them in SW Sketch.

                   

                  As a preliminary proof-of-concept, I wrote a super-simple application that draws 6 horizontal lines. Much to my surprise (coming from the world of point and picas) the units looked like: 0.000123 and that makes hard for me to determine which points are inside the rectangle and which are not. Heck, removind and adding zeros with our eyes can be confusing...

                   

                  Luckily, I just found that when I create a new document (only the very first time!), I am offered the choice of using centimeters, which is often appropriate for the dimensions of objects that I copy+paste.

                   

                  I guess my program will have to inquire "under what units are we working?" and scale the traces before pasting them.

                   

                  Thanks again....