Ballon Question (Is this Possible?)

[BodyBagger]

We tend to have very complicated assembly drawings and it is very easy to miss some balloons. I have tried changing the line and balloon circle thickness which does help but it also seems to crowd the drawing even more. What I would like to do is fill in the balloon circle with a color like yellow. This would really make the balloons stand out without over crowding the drawing more. If this can be done I think it would open up some new possibilites like having different colors for different products like all fasteners are yellow, and adhesives are red. Just ideas....

Thanks,
BB

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

That could be useful. One downside could be, when printed, the colours could obscure the text.

 

[fcsuper]

You could mark your balloon with an asterisk or something similar. Does the new Qty function for balloons allow manual override entry in the qty field?

Matt Lorono
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources & SolidWorks Legion

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solidworks & http://twitter.com/fcsuper

 

[BodyBagger]

Hi CBL,
The more I think about it the more I like it. It could be useful in many respects. The colors could be shades from the color palette, user selected so that you could grab the colors that work the best for your printing needs. Macro maybe?? Lets see who chimes in with more input.

Regards,
BB

 

[AnnaWood]

How about putting your balloons on a layer with a different color. Will not fill in the center, but the ballons would be different colors.

Cheers,

Anna Wood
Core i7 EE965, FirePro V8700, 12 Gb RAM, OCZ Vertex 120 Gb SSD, Dell 3008WFP 30" Monitor
SW2010 SP2.1, Windows 7 x64

http://www.solidmuse.com

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[CADFlyer]

If you use the "Design Checker" Add-In, there is an option for identifying item numbers in BOM which are not ballooned.

It should help your problem if you only need 1 balloon per item #

i do like the idea of shaded balloons... anything to make key information stand out better can only help

 

[NL8]

CADFlyer,

you don't even need design checker for that function. Just click on the BOM so that you get its property manager, then look along the left edge of the table. You'll see three arrows stacked together pointing left. Click on the arrows, a fly-out will show up on the BOM (digital only, will not print, nor stay visible once you've clicked away) that will show you which components have been ballooned and which haven't. It's not always 100% accurate, but it's really really close. Tends to occasionally say that a part you have ballooned isn't.

Joe Hasik,
CSWP/SMTL/MTLS
SW 09 x64, SP 4.1
Dell T3400
Intel Core2 Quad
Q6700 2.66 GHz
3.93 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600

 

[macduff]

How about just making the balloons & text larger size? I know you said you're tight on space, but you should be able to increase the size a bit.

Joe, off topic, how do you add your LinkedIn icon to your eng-tips signature?

Thanks,

Colin Fitzpatrick (aka Macduff)
Mechanical Designer
Solidworks 2009 SP 4.1
Dell 490 XP Pro SP 2
Xeon CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GB of RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB
3D Connexion-SpaceExplorer