Custom property links

- [Voiceover] In this video I'm going to show you how to link to SolidWorks values from both the custom properties as well as from your drawings. The first thing I want to point out here as I go up to File Properties, notice I've got three different sections here, I've got the Summary section, I've got the Custom Properties, and I have Configuration Specific Properties, but I want to go back over here to Custom Properties and take a look at what I've got here. You can see I'm doing a few links here, so you see this dollar prompt PRP and then a SolidWorks file name and notice it links to whatever that value is. Up here at the top of the screen you can see it is T5, that's the name of my file.

I'm linking to that, and I've got a whole bunch of these things I can use inside of SolidWorks inside of my custom properties inside of my drawings, to link to these internal values inside of SolidWorks. And this'll save us a lot of time. Notice over here I have "see notes," but I can also choose an internal value here like for instance, material. Choose SolidWorks dash Material, and you can see it links to whatever is defined over here in the tree. So it's brass, click on OK, it automatically saves it, and now those values are stuck with that part, so if I use it in building materials or if I use it on a drawing, those will automatically follow through onto that drawing.

If I go back over here and notice I've got a couple other ones here, I have this Last Saved Date, Short Date, a bunch of different things I can pull from SolidWorks. So if you go up here to the Search bar here, and search for SolidWorks link properties, you'll end up with a document that looks a lot like this. So here's a list of a bunch of these things I can actually link to inside of my drawing. So I can link to things like Author, Keywords, Last Saved Date, the Long Date, Subject, Title, all types of different things I can link to inside of SolidWorks. And each one of those values is going to have a section in front of it telling us where we're going to be getting them from.

So in this case here it's a dollar prompt PRP and then a colon followed by whatever that value's going to be. So that's kind of the format you're going to be using when you're using custom properties and linking to values inside of SolidWorks. Once you click on OK, I'm going to go over to the drawing of this part and you can see here I've got a couple of different custom properties that I'm using. So down here at the bottom I'm going to click on right-click and say Edit Sheet Format, and I'm going to hover over this one here, and notice as soon as I do, it shows me what is being displayed. So let's try it one more time here. And there it is, PRP Sheet Last Saved Date, and that is the format.

If I go up to the top of the screen, I have a similar one up here, and this time it is SolidWorks folder name followed by the file name. The little pop-up goes away after a little while so that if we read it quickly you can see I'm using both the folder name as well as the file name so I can link to those values. If I want to create a new one, just go over here to Note, click on where you'd like to have that note, anywhere on the screen, and instead of typing a value, I'm going to go over here, I can either link to a hyperlink, or I can say I'd like to link to a property, and there it is. So click on Link to Property, and click on Current Document and you can see I've got a selection here, and I can just choose one of those values.

So let's try Author, and notice it shows up evaluated to Gabe, which I already put my name in there, and if you didn't, you can always go over here and click on File Properties and type in these values. So here's Gabe or fill out some more custom properties, or we can even cut and paste and bring those properties in. Once you have what you want click on OK, make sure you do have that selected, so Author shows up there, and then click on OK. And click on OK. And now I've got that little note, I can put it anywhere I want on my drawing. And any time I'm saving my drawings it's always going to show up, it's always going to link back to that value inside of my part, or the drawing depending on how you link the two together.

Hopefully a few of these quick tips and tricks will improve your efficiency inside of SolidWorks. Check back next week for more tasty bites of SolidWorks knowledge.