When a printed PDF is a Part included in the assembly

[Tom G]

Fire!
It's dangerous, and harmful. Some folks take it seriously. There's even laws and stuff about that.

For a fire protection system, the controller alarm box requires safety instructions printed and framed on the wall next to the box. It has blanks to fill in the fire department's telephone number and useful instructions like to evacuate the area on fire. I'm designing the entirety of the shelter, its chemical systems, electrical components, and everything within. That includes this sheet of paper with a PDF on it.

I made a simple picture frame: plastic Frame, acrylic panel, backerboard, and then pretended that I made latch hardware that no one would ever see anyway. That much is easy. I can leave it at that for production. Then I got curious to learn.

I also modeled a sheet of paper, 8.5" x 11" x 119 um. I tried placing the PDF on the face of the paper, in the part. It doesn't attach. It floats independent like a reference document. Start a sketch, Insert Object, and the object doesn't go into the sketch. What I have done is to use a 3rd party converter to convert the PDF to DWG, then insert the DWG as a sketch upon the face of the paper. It is ugly, and its file size is 50x larger than the PDF itself.

Is there a better way to place a PDF upon a sheet of paper within a part?

The russian nesting doll or onion metaphor becomes ironic. The PDF goes on the paper part. Paper goes in the frame. Frame goes on the wall in the building assembly. Assembly goes in a drawing to show general arrangement views. Drawing is released as a PDF.

[HerrTick]

I recommend absolute minimal detail. Something like a model of a sheet of paper and text referring to the specific document. You absolutely don't want anything to indicate the document layout and text is in any way controlled in SolidWorks.

[jcapriotti]

Convert your PDF to image file, jpg or png. Then mode your sheet of paper, and add a decal to the face.

Add decal:

image.png (26.59 KiB) Viewed 742 times

Select file. If you have transparency needs you can select it.

Then map to the front face and stretch to fit.

[Tom G]

Convert your PDF to image file, jpg or png. Then mode your sheet of paper, and add a decal to the face.

Thank you @jcapriotti . I knew there was something I was overlooking. That is it.

[Glenn Schroeder]

Thank you @jcapriotti . I knew there was something I was overlooking. That is it.

The only drawback to that method that I'm aware of, and it might not matter to you, is that the decal won't show in a drawing view unless it's set to "Shaded".

Edit: . . .though on second thought that could probably be overcome. I think it would work to set up a display state with that set to shaded and every other component set to a line view, then reference that display state in the drawing.

[jcapriotti]

The only drawback to that method that I'm aware of, and it might not matter to you, is that the decal won't show in a drawing view unless it's set to "Shaded".

Edit: . . .though on second thought that could probably be overcome. I think it would work to set up a display state with that set to shaded and every other component set to a line view, then reference that display state in the drawing.

Yeah, we just show the front view shaded.