CAD Forum

SolidWorks drawings terminology is all effed up. A lot of people get screwed up with the sheet, template and sheet format.

But Solid Edge is a little different. You have the Sheet, the Background, and the Background Sheet. And then all of these can be saved in a Template? Can you save the title block separately, and is that what the background sheet is? Can someone explain this in small words that I can understand?
@Imics13 ?

matt wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 4:40 pm SolidWorks drawings terminology is all effed up. A lot of people get screwed up with the sheet, template and sheet format.

But Solid Edge is a little different. You have the Sheet, the Background, and the Background Sheet. And then all of these can be saved in a Template? Can you save the title block separately, and is that what the background sheet is? Can someone explain this in small words that I can understand?
@Imics13 ?

Sheet (Working sheet) seems the same in both SW and SE, where the views are created. Background sheet seems to be hidden sheets where the title blocks are stored. They have a different background sheet for each size title block. "Background" by itself seems to be a toggle to show the background sheets for editing purposes. Here I have it toggled on, normally its off and they are hidden:
Background sheets seem similar to Sheet Formats in SolidWorks except SW has you save them out as files (slddrt). I like this better as you can point to a central library of sheet formats and easily reload drawings to the current version. I can't find a way to do this in SE. Some googling indicates there may be a macro floating around somewhere to assist doing this.

I don't think the Sheet Format term is any worse than Background Sheet. I guess I'd prefer title block. SW has complicated it more by adding additional functionality such as Border (Auto generated border and zones) and "Title block fields" (allows you to create a zone to map text to custom properties and edit by double clicking).

@jcapriotti is correct except for the last part. The way to move, copy, or transfer background sheets is to RMB on a background sheet tab.
Then select the file that contains the desired background sheets and copy them over.
A similar procedure is used for annotation and dimension styles; set up the template(s) with the correct sheets and styles, then if you need to apply those to older drawings you can do so with a wizard-like tool.

I like it better than SWX because it's a little simpler. Not a big deal.....but it's easier to explain to a new hire.

Before SW had templates, what is now called the "format" was called the template. Which is why the format file is called *.slddrt. I think the 6 letter extensions were a mess. Some email systems that were active back then truncated all file extensions to 3 characters, so you might get an email with a bunch of *.sld extensions, and you'd have to figure out which was which. Things never really felt like they were intentionally designed to work the way they worked.

Anyway, thanks for the SE drawing info, I think I get it. The background sheets are all stored in drawing templates, and drawing templates are just the same as drawing files.

matt wrote: ↑Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:22 am Before SW had templates, what is now called the "format" was called the template. Which is why the format file is called *.slddrt. I think the 6 letter extensions were a mess. Some email systems that were active back then truncated all file extensions to 3 characters, so you might get an email with a bunch of *.sld extensions, and you'd have to figure out which was which. Things never really felt like they were intentionally designed to work the way they worked.

Anyway, thanks for the SE drawing info, I think I get it. The background sheets are all stored in drawing templates, and drawing templates are just the same as drawing files.

Yes, you got it. There are no special template file types in SE. Everything is stored in the template files, which are simply *.prt, *.asm, or *.dft files stored in a central location.

FWIW, over the next six months I'm going to put together a document listing the differences between SWX and SE. It will be broken into sections to cover all the nuances under the hood as well. Also, I'll try to keep it as objective as possible.

mike miller wrote: ↑Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:35 am Yes, you got it. There are no special template file types in SE. Everything is stored in the template files, which are simply *.prt, *.asm, or *.dft files stored in a central location.

Thanks for the clarification Mike, I'm still a SE noob. I wish SolidWorks would just make templates the regular file extensions, would be easier, guess they were following Microsoft's lead.

@matt I may be in the minority but I like the 6 character extensions. All SolidWorks files types will group together when sorting. The 'prt' type is used by NX and Creo, and 'asm' is used by Creo and SE. I guess they could've gone the Inventor route and prefix the first letter (iprt, iam, idw).

Guys,

You are right. Workingsheet is for placing drawing views and so on while background is for border, title block and property texts. Solid Edge has 2D Modell sheet what is same as Autocad 2D modelspace...

To the zones, there is a macro for this:


BR,