Documenting the decisions made during the design process (design intent) can be valuable in making your data more understandable and easier to modify. SolidWorks® software provides options to more easily capture your design intent.

Comments

You can add comments to features to help document the use, notes, or additional information. You can also add a date/time stamp to the comment.

When passing over the feature, the comment appears in a balloon (see image below). Adding comments is a simple, effective means to add notes to your design.

The FeatureManager also has a folder for Comments and Design Binder. Features that have comments will appear in the Comments folder.

Design Binder

The Design Binder is an embedded Microsoft® Word document that allows you to also capture the screen image so it can be pasted into the document (see example below).

Equations

When working with an equation, you can add a comment to the end of the equation. The equation ignores everything from the right of the `. Note the use of good names and readability.

Design Tables

When creating a design table there are a number of different means in which you can add comments. The following diagram shows Comment 1 and 2 that are treated as a comment within a design table as they do not have a column and row containing values. The other means is to add "$COMMENT" as the heading as shown by Comment 3.

Configurations

When you are creating a configuration, you can use the comment field to add a comment to that configuration.

Dimensions

When a sketch or feature dimension will be re-used in an equation or design table, give the dimension a meaningful name. The following diagram shows the difference between a named dimension (with a good feature name) and one using the default D1. This value can be set by selecting the dimension, pressing the right mouse button, and select Properties. This will make the equation or design table more readable.

Features

The following figure show the difference between a FeatureManager design tree that used names and one the used to the default names. The named version will be much easier to read and modify. Note that less important features, such as cosmetic fillets and chamfers, are not named and are instead located at the end of the FeatureManager. Place and group the important features toward the top of the FeatureManager.

To make this process easier, enable the Name feature on creation option on the Tools/Options/FeatureManager dialog box. This will highlight the feature name and allow the feature to be named.

Another option is to use folders to help force the user to think about functionally group features. When creating a new feature that is related to the Ang Mtg Face, it should not be placed at the end of the FeatureManager tree. Roll back the part to the appropriate location and then insert and name the feature.

Conclusion

Documenting your design and capturing the design intent and relevant information makes your design more re-usable and easier to modify later. A key is the consistent usage and application of these principles. Document, communicate, and enforce the agreed upon principles. These best practices can be added to a shared HTML or Microsoft Word document.