Is it awkward to produce multilingual product documents from SolidWorks drawings? Not anymore since CustomTools for SolidWorks automates printing as well as file conversion of documents

CAD documents can be effortlessly translated to different languages during printing and conversion to different formats for example to PDF. CustomTools is designed for attribute management of SolidWorks documents. User interface and the attributes as well as the attribute properties can be freely defined. By using customisable dictionaries data for attribute fields can be also retrieved from a dictionary (Fig. 1).

CustomTools contains a tool to run batch jobs. It is possible to print desired documents (eg all drawings related to an assembly) to a certain printer with pre-defined printing settings.

Furthermore the language for which documents are translated to for the duration of the batch job can be defined. In that case values of the attribute fields associated with the dictionary are translated along with drawing template (Fig. 2).

Original documents remain unmodified after batch job. Batch jobs can be also saved for the later execution. Then it is not necessary to neither select files to process nor redefine options for the job when re-executing the job. Moreover it is possible to direct attribute values, visibility of drawing layers and manufacturing quantities during batch job. In addition to SolidWorks documents also other file formats are supported.

Batch job execution is only one of the many tools included in CustomTools. Benefits start already from SolidWorks deployment since it is straightforward to create drawing and BOM templates with CustomTools. Furthermore CustomTools contains tools for exporting item structures to external systems and importing item information from other systems.

It is trouble-free to manage attributes and files with CustomTools since all attribute fields can be defined to suite precisely your enterprise needs.All settings are managed through so called profile files so for example subcontractor can change design environment to correspond different enterprises by couple of mouse clicks. Changes to the profile file propagate instantly to all users using same profile in multi-user environments. Eventually searching for existing 3D models and drawings is an effortless operation. CustomTools automatically maintains model database invisible to the user. Models and referenced drawings can be searched based on any attribute.

ATR Soft Oy is based in Turku, Finland. www.atrsoft.com