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Dates and Custom Props

Hey All:

I'll start by saying that I'm pretty familiar with solidworks custom props.

I'm revamping our formats, and I wasn't the original author.

In the "date" space, they've been using the "SW-Short Date" property. This does the job in the short term, but as someone pointed out last week, it changes every time the drawing is edited.

So, a two-year old drawing will then show today's date in the title block instead of the original date, which isn't desirable.

There are other date props inherent in solidworks, but they are all in the long format and there's no room for this.

Ideally, I'd like this date to either be driven off the model by a short form of the "date of creation", or to have it pop in the date the drawing is created and then retain this date indefinately.

One of the old timers swears it used to work this way but unless this property is hidden I think he must be mistaken.

Anyone know of an automagic way of making this happen?

If not I'm going to create a "DATE" property and just link to this.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

Reply to
tabrake
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That is what I use, (a custom Date property linked to the part or assembly document), I use the "SW-Short Date" for the print out date, this ensures that they are using a drawing printout "batch", from around the same time.

Reply to
pete

I have a macro hooked up to a hotkey that updates the date property when I choose at the push of a button.

Matt

Reply to
matt

Pete,

But doing this will cause the date to always be the current date. I use header/footers in the drawing template to show when the drawing is actually printed (PRINTED &[date] AT &[time]).

I believe what tabrake wants is for it to insert the date the drawing was created and never change. I have not found a way to do this with a custom property either. However, if you insert a note into your drawing template, with SW2005, you can link to the created date in short date format (wasn't available in SW2004).

You could link a note in the part/assembly template if you wanted to do the same thing. But it would simply be a note. Not very useful for anything.

Reply to
Seth Renigar

CustomPropertyManager from Kent Contract Services

formatting link
has a "Created Date" function that will do exactly what you want....adds the date the drawing was created, and it stays put.

Reply to
stevenr

Matt:

Now yer talkin'.

I figured that SWX didn't have this built in yet, so a macro is the next best thing.

I don't suppose that you'd be willing to help a brother out by emailing it to me?

Thanks,

Todd

Reply to
tabrake

You'll have to go see his web site....

Reply to
stevenr

Hi Steve:

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I've checked out the Kent tool at one point.

I like these tools -- much better for entering in props than SWX. I tried to get the one from NH cad in use at the last place I worked, as they were using design tables for entering in all the prop info. They were convinced that it couldn't be done without it, even though I proved it wasn't necessary...

Anyway, here I probably have the ability to make that happen, but with baby steps. Our company was just bought out, added 20 people to a 5 person engineering group, and so I'm trying to make small, effective changes. Automating the creation of drawings is job 1.

out,

Todd

Reply to
tabrake

Steve:

Sorry, I'm a bit slow this morning -- whose website? Matt's? Got a link?

Thankya

Reply to
tabrake

Sorry, here's the link:

formatting link
Follow the "macro library" link, it is called "date", oddly enough, in the drawings section at the bottom.

Matt

Reply to
matt

Beautiful. That's exactly what I want.

Hopefully, if we ever get to using 2005 the rumors of an automagic built-in date are true. In the meantime, this will work well.

Thanks,

Todd

Reply to
TODD

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