This tutorial will show you how to create an orthographic (three view) drawing of your seat. Remember that the proper orientation for an orthographic drawing is:

To create the orthographic drawing for the seat, open the file for the seat. Make sure that the view for each respective side is appropriately labeled in the program (that what’s labeled the “front” in SolidWorks is what is actually the front of your piece). This is important because, when creating a drawing, the views will be imported automatically. Therefore, if the views aren’t correct, your drawing will show the incorrect views.

For example, here is a piece where the front (labeled “FRONT”) is not what is recognized as the front in SolidWorks. What SolidWorks believes to be the front is the side to the left of the labeled FRONT.

Change your view so that what you want the front of your object to be recognized as is in the proper view.

Top Isometric

Front Side

Select the face, then hit the space bar. The second spyglass to the right on the “Orientation” command box that appears is the “Update Standard Views” command. On the diagram below that, select the view you want the selected face to be. In this case, it is the front. Now, the views should be updated so the part will import correctly.

To make the drawing, go the “New” tab, then select “Make Drawing from Part/Assembly”. It will open a dialogue box. Select the first option (A ANSI Landscape), as the other options are either the wrong orientation or have odd dimensions that won’t fit well on a standard sheet of printer paper.

Now, we are going to create a custom template for our parts. Notice that, on the bottom of the sheet, there are a lot of boxes and information irrelevant to our needs. To edit the footer, right click and select “Edit Sheet Format”. Remove what’s irrelevant. Once you’ve accomplished this, right click again, and select “Edit Sheet”. To save this as a template, click “File”, then “Save Sheet Format”.

Now, when creating drawings, instead of selecting A ANSI Landscape, you can browse for your template.

Here is an example footer for the chair drawing.

To import the piece into the drawing, click “Standard Three View” on the View Layout tab. Make sure that the proper part is selected in the box. Double click on the part name, and the part should appear in the drawing. If the incorrect views are displayed, fix the views in the parent drawing using the method described earlier.

If you’d like to change the size of the parts, select the parts, and scroll down on the Property Manager. Select the “Use custom scale” option, and find the scale appropriate for your part.

To complete your drawing, you must add an orthographic view. To add an orthographic view, select “Model View” on the View Layout Tab. Once again, double click the name of your selected part in the

Property Manager. Under “Standard Views”, select the diagram that represents an isometric view. Place it in the appropriate location. Further down on the Property Manager, there are options for the display style of the isometric drawing. Select the “Shaded with Edges” option.

Don’t forget to edit the footer in the way we did before to accurately represent your piece.

You are also expected to make a section view of the wheel and hub assembly. To do this, import your part onto your template. You only need the side view. Once you have this, find the “Section View” command under the “View Layout” tab. Click it, and then click the center of your part. A dialogue box will open, click “okay”. Place the view appropriately, and dimension the important features. To change the material the section view shows the part is made of, double click the region you want to edit. Under the PropertyManager, uncheck the box that says “Material crosshatch” and select a new material.

To dimension your piece, select “Smart Dimension” under the Annotations tab. Dimension appropriately.

In today’s lesson, we learned to

Change the views of your piece in SolidWorks Make a drawing from a part or assembly Customize your drawing sheet, and save it as a template. Import views to complete your orthographic drawing

o How to change view sizeso How to change display styles

Create a section viewo How to change image shading