How to Link SOLIDWORKS Flag Notes to Balloons or Notes in a Drawing

One of the great new features that has been introduced in SOLIDWORKS 2016 is “Flag Notes”. Flag notes are a method of cross-referencing one area or feature of a drawing to a list of notes.

In order to add SOLIDWORKS flag notes to a drawing you have to follow these steps:

1. Add a Note to your SOLIDWORKS drawing
2. Click on Number from the Formatting toolbar to apply number formatting to the text.

Formatting the note

3. Now click on the number in the text box.
4. Check off the Add to Flag Note Bank option in the Note PropertyManager.
5. You can also define a specific symbol for your note from the Border drop down menu in the PropertyManager.

Defining the flag note

6. You can add extra lines to your note and then go through steps 3 to 5 to add them to the flag note bank as well.
7. After adding a note and associated a symbol to it, you can then add balloons that will be linked to the notes. To insert a balloon navigate to Insert > Annotations > Balloon and select a feature to add the balloon to.
8. From the balloon PropertyManager select the Flag Note Bank check box and then select the appropriate note you want to link to the balloon from the list. Notice that the balloon will match the note number and symbol. You will also notice that if we hover over the balloon the linked note will appear in the pop up message.

Linking note to flag bank

What’s really nice about this feature is that even if you make changes to your notes such as adding a new note in between the current notes, the number scheme will be updated along with the balloon number. The same goes if we delete a note. We do not have to go back and manually update the numeric order.