Show a SOLIDWORKS Sketch in a Specific Drawing View while Hidden in all other Views

Let’s assume we have a sketch drawn in a part file and we have not used it to create a feature. By default in SOLIDWORKS, this sketch will remain shown unless we hide them in the part level. Usually, designers hide those kinds of sketches because it can interfere their design process by showing unrelated sketch entities while drawing other sketches. Now, let us assume that the sketch we created in the part level needs to be shown in the drawing level. What do we do then?

The way that SOLIDWORKS works is that if the sketch is set to “Show”, in other words, if the sketch was not hidden in the part level, it will show in all drawing views at the drawing level. Having that sketch shown in all views may cause some issues and for that reason we set any sketches that were not used for feature creation to “Hide” in the part level. This helps us for a clean model in part level and also clean views drawing level. Having said that, is it possible to show a sketch only on one drawing view? We may want to create a second sheet and show that sketch on a specific drawing view. How can that be done?

The process is actually quite easy. Having heard this issue from a few customers, it should be noted that the trick is that the sketch has to be set to “Hide” in the part level and then in the drawing level, that sketch could be set to “Show” for any specific drawing view. As shown in the following image, the specific drawing view needs to be selected. Then, by switching to the drawing FeatureManager Tree, you can see that drawing view is highlighted. This makes finding the drawing view in the FeatureManager Tree much easier. Now, the drawing view needs to be expanded to show the part under it. If the view was for an assembly, there might be more parts shown under the drawing view list. Expand the associated part and find the sketch that needs to be shown. Then, right-click on the sketch and select “Show”. This ensures that the sketch is shown only for that view and would be hidden everywhere else.

The trick is that the sketch has to be set to “Hide” in the part level, and then in the drawing level that sketch could be set to “Show” for any specific drawing view.

Show Sketch from the Drawing FeatureManager Tree

The second image below demonstrates an example, where a smiley face sketch is shown only for one view and all the other views have no sign of it.

Show Sketch in One Drawing View Only