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(continued...) These layouts can also be printed.
As if this was not a significant enough achievement, eDrawings also offer significant additional functionality when published from SolidWorks.
All within the same file size, the recipient can shade the fully annotated drawing views to reveal solids, cutouts, sections, curved surfaces and multiple components.
This becomes of significant value for rapid understanding of complex drawings and for use by non-technical stakeholders.
In shaded mode an animation command displays a dynamic transition between the views in the order that they were created.
This can be in a manual step through or continuous play mode.
Incredibly it even allows dynamic rotation of the model, including section and exploded views.
To enhance understanding still further, a coloured 3D cursor can be displayed and dragged dynamically in all views to pin-point discrete points in space.
Clicking on a section line, detail circle or view label highlights the associated view as a hyperlink, again even if the views span multiple sheets.
eDrawings are not a complete replacement file type, particularly for collaborative working, but in such cases the native file types are really the only true solution.
At present bitmaps or embedded objects are not supported and dimensional information is limited to the annotations rather than direct geometric interrogation.
There are many applications however where these smart drawings will enable far richer communication of the design than the core engineering drawing.
And the price? The publisher is available free from the SolidWorks web site.
This includes the option to install as a viewer only if required to remove the need to embed the viewer to a regular recipient.