When in the SOLIDWORKS drawing environment have you ever wanted to change the colour of a dimension or annotation in a view you just brought in as a model item (whether to bring attention to a certain dimension or due to use of colours in your company drawing standards)? Well we have the solution for changing dimension colours in this tech tip:

Coloured Dimensions

The Line Format toolbar will give you the ability to change the dimension colour. To enable the toolbar right-click on the CommandManager bar and select Line Format from the shortcut menu.

Accessing the Line Format Tools

The Line Format toolbar will now be enabled. The toolbar contains Layer, Line Thickness, and Colour tools for drawing entities and annotations:

Line Format Toolbar

Changing Colours

You can pick one or more dimensions/annotations at a time then select the Line Colour tool from the Line Format toolbar

Change Dimension Colour

And then choose the desired colour from the Edit Line Colour dialog. Pick OK to finish and the dimension[s] will have changed colour.

Edit Line Colour

Using Layers

Another option is to use layers, similar to DraftSight and other 2D CAD tools, you can create drawing layers and then pick entities to be added to the layer. Layer properties such as colour will be applied to the entities (note that line thickness and style will not be applied to dimensions).

1. Select the Layer Properties button from the Line Format toolbar
2. In the Layer dialog pick the New button to create a new layer
3. Enter a layer name e.g. dimensions
4. Choose the colour required for the layer
5. Pick OK on the dialogs to finish

Layer dialog

Then select the dimensions/annotations that you want to be added to the layer and pick the change layer button, and choose a layer from the select box. The dimensions will then change to the applied colour of the layer.

Change Layer

Learn more about Drawings

Attend our SOLIDWORKS Drawings training course either in a classroom near you or live online to get a better understanding of creating drawings