How to Edit SOLIDWORKS Electrical Projects with DraftSight Professional

DraftSight Professional is a 2D design and drafting solution provided by Dassault Systems that lets you create, edit, view, and markup 2D drawings.  DraftSight has a familiar user interface and minimal learning curve which provides an easy transition from AutoCAD®.

With this in mind, DS SOLIDWORKS had a great idea to allow DraftSight functionality to be easily accessed and integrated within their SOLIDWORKS Electrical product.  Any sheet within your SOLIDWORKS Electrical project can be opened with DraftSight Professional directly from your SOLIDWORKS Electrical interface.  From here, you can make any edits or changes within DraftSight Professional and save the file. Which will then be automatically updated in your SOLIDWORKS Electrical project.

To open your sheet in DraftSight Professional simply right-click on the sheet in SOLIDWORKS Electrical and select “Open in DraftSight” (note: to see this option the sheet must be closed in SOLIDWORKS Electrical).

Open with DraftSight

When opening a 2D file you may receive the following message:

Cannot open file in DraftSight. You must start DraftSight and load the add-in: SOLIDWORKS Electrical for DraftSight

If you run into this message and have a license of DraftSight Professional installed on your machine, simply open DraftSight and turn on the add-in as suggested through Tools > Add-Ins and select SOLIDWORKS Electrical Add-in.

Example of a Simple Panel Layout opened for editing in DraftSight Professional

Once you’ve activated the add-in you can now open your electrical drawings with DraftSight freely and make any changes or revisions as needed.

Get DraftSight Professional

If you want the SOLIDWORKS Electrical DraftSight integration then visit the Dassault Systèmes DraftSight Store to purchase a copy of DraftSight Professional license plus a 12 month subscription for upgrades and service packs. Note that DraftSight Professional currently runs on Windows only.

Buy DraftSight Professional