Solidworks View in Access

If you set a field up as a Hyperlink and point it to the Solidworks Drawing, this will work. Pete

I assume you mean to view the drawing on a FORM, within an Access database?

if so, on your form, "Insert", "Object", "Create from File", then browse to your SW drawing. The document opens up at 1:1 scale. Go to the bottom right of the drawing, grab the size handles, and resize the drawing image to a reasonable size on your Form. It is now smaller, but clipped.

Right click on the drawing view, select "Properties", select the "Format" tab, and change "Size Mode" to "Zoom"

In all of this is there a way to have it call eDrawings and let it do its thing?

My example is Conisio, our PDM package. If you have your SW files in the vault, then the preview mode is handled by eDrawings. This means that in the preview window, you can zoom, rotate, pan, etc. Even print from there without opening SW.

I don't have any idea how complicated it is, but I know it happens, and it's a very nice feature.

WT

Check out a program called Fastlook by Kamel Software. They provide the ability to use the viewer inside of Access. Here is the info from their website

"FastLook Plus can easily become a graphics engine for any Windows application. Use direct DLL calls or our ActiveX to project and control the FastLook drawing window directly in your database application. All the power of FastLook is at your fingertips. Your application will have all of the capabilities of FastLook Plus, including viewing, zoom and pan, print/plot, redlining and linking." from

Mike Morris

I wrote a VB program that displays all assemblies, parts and drawings in a particular folder. The VB code in the form uses Sldwrks_extractBitmap.dll to extract and displays a preview of the file when the user selects a file in the list box.. I store the preview bitmap in a temp folder using the same name so I always replace the previous copy. Then when the user exits the VB form, it deletes the preview file. After the user selects the desired file, they click a view button that launches an instance of Solidworks view with the selected document. Each user has the Solidworks viewer and program installed. Our purchasing, manufacturing people, process planners, etc use this program to review changes and print manufacturing drawings.

You could the same thing form Access using similar VB code.

Tony Noll