You want to mark-up products and share the information; we have the tools to help you.

How many times have you not needed to communicate something about your SolidWorks design to a colleague only to press the “Print Screen” key on the keyboard, opening MS Paint, pasting the screenshot, drawing something supposedly resembling a mark-up, saving the image and finally sending it in an email to the colleague?

Quite a painstaking process, isn’t it? Not only do you need to switch between three different applications (SolidWorks, MS Paint and your email) it’s not unlikely that the email will only be one of many in your colleague’s inbox, hence it’s a good chance it will be overlooked. And when you finally call your colleague to ask about it the chance is that it will take several searches and lots of scrolling to find the specific email. If you manage to find it at all that is.

Thankfully, there’s a far easier way of doing this! Through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform you can create mark-ups of your models directly in SolidWorks using the add-in for 3DEXPERIENCE, as I show you in this blog post.

You can also create mark-ups of your CAD data directly on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform – without using SolidWorks! That means you don’t need SolidWorks every time you have to review CAD data or create mark-ups.

The application for this is called 3DPlay and with it you can view CAD data (and other types of documents, e.g. Composer projects *.smg, PDF files, *.dwg files and images such as .jpg or .tiff). To view CAD files in 3DPlay, you simply drag-n-drop the file into the application.

At the bottom of the application you can access different tools by clicking the small arrow to show the palette.

There are two different types of tools divided onto two tabs in palette: One set of tools to view the model by rotating, pan, zooming and selecting display style (shaded with edges, hidden lines visible, etc.) and one for measuring, exploding, sectioning and mark-up of the model. Note that the explode feature doesn’t need any pre-made exploded view.

To mark-up the model, select the pencil in the “Tools” tab in the palette. With the pen it’s possible to draw circles or ellipses and the application will automatically make them smoother.

Note though that if the circle or ellipse is too rough around the edges the software won’t recognize the shape and smoothen it so it could require some practice. It’s also possible to add text to help explain the mark-up.

Once the mark-up is created, it can be shared in a community without having to save it as an image – directly through the 3DPlay app. In other words, you don’t have to switch between different applications to create and share the mark-up. To share the mark-up, click the 3DSwym icon second to the left in the toolbar and then select the option “Share to 3DSwym”.

It’s then possible to select in which community (i.e. which forum) you want to publish the mark-up, a title for the post and optionally a description. Once you’re done, click “Publish” to submit the post.

When the post is published your colleagues can see it directly in the community and don’t have to search their mail inbox for the image.