SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 24: Working with Tables and Drawings

FIGURE 24.11

A drawing with the Design Table inserted

This drawing uses a part Design Table, but you can also place assembly Design Tables onto the

drawing. This type of drawing is often called a tabulated drawing.

If you need to place something on your drawing such as a Design Table, but it does not appear that

the Design Table is going to meet your needs, you may want to simply copy the data out of the

Design Table and re-create it in a static Excel spreadsheet. The Design Table that you place on the

drawing updates if it is changed in the part or assembly, just like the drawing geometry, but you

must manually update an Excel spreadsheet that is created from copied data. Again, you must

answer the question about whether the automatic functions make up for the cost of setting them up

to work for you. In many cases they do, but in other cases they require more work than they save.

Placing Hole Tables on Drawings

You can place Hole Tables on drawings to include information such as the size, position, and num-
ber of holes or slots of a given size on a drawing. Only circular holes and through slots are recog-
nized. You do not have to use the Hole Wizard or simple hole features to make the holes. The Hole
Table will not recognize counterbored slots or even slots with a chamfer edgebreak. The position is
given relative to a selected reference position, and the holes are labeled. I do not recommend using
a Hole Table for slots unless you first test to make sure that you are getting correct data.

Like other table types, Hole Tables can use templates. As with other templates, you should locate

Hole Table templates in a library area outside of your local SolidWorks installation folder. You can