Combining Multiple Properties

During the last couple of days I have been attending a SolidWorks workshop for Enterprise PDM implementation. The workshop has been very interesting and I’m sure all who attended have gained many ideas and and new concepts to use in future data management implementations.

During lunch one of the attendees (Simon Turner) got a phone call from one of his colleagues asking if custom properties can be combined?

First of all if you don’t know Simon let me fill you in… Simon is Technical Director of Solid Solutions Management, amongst his many roles he is a major part of the API team at Solid Solutions. We believe he played a part in programming the Matrix that we live in.

 

Back to the Question… It took a couple of minutes but Simon and SolidWorks stepped up to the plate and worked out a great and simple solution.

Example: You are doing design work for a client and you want a “Client Code” that comprises of part number (SW-Part Number), client name (Customer) and location (Location).

1. Add a Custom Property to your Part template

With the properties: “SW-Part Number”, “Customer” and “Location” already added to the template. Add another property called “Client Code”. For the value add the following:

$PRP:”SW-Part Number”-“$PRP:”Customer”-$PRP:”Location”

This works for any property and any number of properties with whatever separator you like!!

 

2. Add this to you Property Tab

Using the same properties and syntax as above you can create a new or add to an existing property tab.

If you haven’t used the new property tab and property tab builder, make sure you check out the SolidWorks 2009 What’s New Manual (found under the SolidWorks help menu)

Technorati Tags: Custom Properties,SolidWorks Tips and Tricks,SolidWorks

Comments

[Brian]

How did you get the yellow message box at the top? I searched the help and couldn't find anything on it.

[Justin Burton]

Hi Brian,

To get the yellow message box you need to open the tab in the tab builder and select the "Custom Properties" window as a whole and not any of the group boxes that you add. You will then see an option for adding a message, type in here and it will be shown as per my post.

Hope that helps!!

Justin

[Brian]

Thank you, it worked great.

[Marcus]

I have tried this and used apostrophe when I wrote in the custom properties. When opening the Tab builder the apostrophe disepears just as it has on the picture above, so when you open the Custom Property again the apostrophe is gone and it does not work any more. I have tried several times.

[Jared]

I tried combining properties using this method and it works great the first time you set the individual properties. However, if you subsequently make changes to the individual properties it does not seem to update the combined property with the new individual values.

I was able to get around this somewhat by making the combined property a list instead of a text box and making the first choice the combining code and allowing custom values. The user then has to drop down and select the combining code to initally set, and later update, the combined property. A little hokey, but not sure of an alternative with what swx has allowed us to do with this property tab builder.

[Nick Tanner]

Does anyone know how to combine part properties in the drawing custom properties?
I don't want to create a new custom property in the part (due to legacy data), but would like to have a single property in the drawing.
For example, I would like the drawing to containa single material property made from 2 part material properties:
The drawing Material property should be made by combining $PRPSHEET:"Material1" and $PRPSHEET:"Material2"
I know I can do this by just showing the 2 properties as text next to each other on the drawing, but this won't come through into our PDM system.

Any ideas?

[u]

It seems that 2010 has some kind of bug.
When I try to add custom property to my equation which should be placed in a cell of Bill of Materials it simply doesn't evaluate the real value. For instance, I want to add to cell `Weight` "x" `Height` "x" `Length` so instead of evaluated equation i.e. "10x150x300" SolidWorks simply puts in cell "xx" . Numerical values are omitted , they can't be evaluated from my custom property.

[paulo sergio]

boa tarde. tenho muita dificuldade em fazer um furo em angulo em uma peça cilindrica, ja tentei de varias formas e nao consigo. gostaria muito uqe me ajudasem se pudese.muito obrigado.
thank you