Where do you put notes?

[DHALE1]

I am curious, where and how is the best place to put the drawing notes. I noticed if I placed text on a drawing it will attach itself to the closest view. Won't this be bad if I delete the view. Also if you lock sheet focus and put text in. does it get removed if you replace your sheet(titleblock)? What I have been doing is making an empty view and putting notes in that. Where I ran into the problem was when I added some other notes in a different location than the normal location of our notes. They moved or disappeared, and I am not sure why. I did delete some views and replaced the sheet, and believe that they were attached to a view or part of the sheet that got replaced. What is the best practice when entering drawing notes?

 

[MadMango]

I'm not sure about a best practice... except we found it was better to combine all the Annotation Notes into a Block.

We place notes as a Block, into the lower left-hand corner of our drawings. We do not worry about Lock Sheet Focus. We haven't had to do this yet, but if the part and details leave no room for all our notes, we create an extra sheet (last sheet) and place all notes there. The only thing on the 1st sheet will be a note saying to refer to Sheet X for notes.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[TheTick]

Sounds like using "Lock Sheet Focus" would be the ticket for keeping the notes where you want them. It helps if you toggle that red "X" button in the notes property manager. This forces the leaders off and prevents the note from "seeking" geometry.

If you don't want to worry about Lock Sheet Focus", you can make your note way off to the side and then drag it to the desired location once the text is finished.

For certain things like time-date stamps and file location notes, I'll actually bury those in the format.

BTW-- a convenient way to associate a note to different view than the one it belongs to: toggle the leaders to forced on, attach the leader to geometry in the desired view, then toggle the leader off again (red "X&quot. Now that note is associated to that view.

There's no double-lock defense; there's no chain on my door.
And I'm available for consultation,
but remember your way in is also my way out

 

[DHALE1]

TheTick

Hopefully we won't have to delete many views, but eventually it will happen and a disappearing note will be missed. I tried a few of your suggestions, and found that no matter how far away or toggling the red "X" did not help. The note was deleted when the closest view was deleted. Also, I found that if I lock sheet focus it does not get deleted when I change the format. However, if you put notes in the format or "bury it", those will be deleted when you reload sheet format. You might want to take a look at this to prevent problems in the future. I came across this because an engineer wanted to show a different orientation of a part. My fear is that if others at my company forget this or don't know about it, there will be missing information on our drawings. We do alot of engineering changes so, it is important for us to come up with a standard for entering notes.

 

[TheTick]

Cut-and-paste are focus-sensitive. If you have a note that is attached to a view, and you want it attached to the sheet, you can cut (ctrl-X) the note(s), lock sheet focus, and paste.

When formats are changed or deleted, I get a message stating that there are modified entities, with an option to keep or delete them.

When I change formats, I first delete the old format and keep the modified entities, so that I can inspect what has been modified. Sometimes format notes get "bumped" out of place slightly, and that counts as modification. However, we also "bury" our revisions in the format, so that they don't get scrambled by detailing activity.

 

[doyle808]

Sounds like you have the "Dynamic Drawing View Activation (Tools>Options>System Options>Drawings>Dynamic drawing view activation) set to on. Turn this setting off and leave it off. Get used to double-clicking views to activate them and your notes will always be attached to the correct view. Double click outside of the views (on the "format&quot and put your general notes there. They will not be removed when views are deleted because they weren't attached to one, and they will still be there if you reload your drawing format.



Richard Doyle
SolidWorks National User Group Committee
Southern Region