Rotate SOLIDWORKS Drawing View to Align an Edge to Horizontal [VIDEO]

Ideally when you are creating a part in SOLIDWORKS, you want to setup your sketches and features in such a way that the part is oriented as it would be when used in the assembly or how it would be naturally positioned in reality. This has the potential to not work out so well for drawings, depending on the shape of the component. The easy solution is to rotate SOLIDWORKS drawing view or drawing views as required to achieve a clean, logical drawing that best reflects how the part would be oriented when being manufactured. I will demonstrate how to rotate a view in this video:

As you can see, I can rotate the drawing view. The difference is very subtle in this example (180.278 vs 180.264). but you can imagine how this could cause chaos for tight tolerances and you can also see how undetectable this would have been.

Another BIG advantage not demonstrated is that if I manually rotate the view and make a design change that changes the angle of the edge, I will need to rotate the view again. However, if I’ve used “Align Drawing View > Horizontal” method, it updates automatically, maintaining my design intent to have that be a horizontal edge. If I use the “Update Standard Views” method, then I will need to repeat the step of updating my standard views.

To learn more about working with SOLIDWORKS Drawing Views attend a Live Online Drawing Class from Javelin