Best Approach for Silk-screen Text

[rjason71]

I need to add silkscreen text to a sheetmetal part. This is new to me and I was wondering how someone who has experience with this might tackle the issue.

Do I add text to a sketch? Do i just add text to the drawing?

Is there a way to center text at an intersection?

thanks.

 

[Updraft]

You've got a few options, from using a decal, to placing an image, to making a text feature. Most of the time you just need to show the location of the text with a bounding box and then refer to a separate drawing with the actual artwork. If you actually have to put the text on the part try avoiding making it a feature, as a text feature causes a huge demand on the regeneration of features. The compromise to this that I sometimes use is to put a sketch on the surface with text in it, but don't turn it into a feature. This gives simple control of the text via the sketch, but avoids the slowdown of the feature. However, the sketch is visible through the part.

If you use the bounding box and want that to be a feature I suggest using a sketch for the box, but instead of making it an extruded feature or cut (which would be a problem for subsequent sheet metal bends) make it into a split line. This will show its dimensions in a drawing, but has no depth.

It all depends on what you are trying to show.

- - -Updraft

 

[Standing]

I like Updraft’s ideas. The following is how we create our Silk Screen drawings.

Silk Screen & Art Work on Drawings
To create artwork for the vendor in your SolidWorks drawing; place the text onto the sheet metal model at .005 inches deep. Now place this model into an Assembly. When this Assembly model is placed onto the drawing you see text in an outlined form. Outline corner marks and dimension per silkscreen drawing requirements. Now hatch each peace of text using Solid Properties in the Area Hatch/Fill dialog box. Now here is the trick, find the sheet metal part model not the assembly in the drawing tree. Right mouse click on the part, drag your cursor over Show/Hide, then click Hide Component. Also hide any Pem nuts. Your outline corner marks and dimension with hatched areas are all that is left.


Bradley
SolidWorks Premim 2007 x64 SP4.0
PDM Works, Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB, nVidia 3400

 

[rjason71]

Do you add text as a "note" or as "sketch text".

 

[Standing]

sketch text at .005 deep

Bradley
SolidWorks Premim 2007 x64 SP4.0
PDM Works, Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB, nVidia 3400

 

[Updraft]

Use the Sketch for the text. Bradley's suggestion of .005" would be too deep for some of the applications I had. If you are going to extrude it as a feature and want it to represent the actual silkscreen then you could make it whatever depth you want. Since my silkscreen use was only for marking I either made it .0001" or usually did not even make into a feature. I usually left it only as a sketch. You can easily show or hide the sketch and you can (and should) name it something descriptive such as "Silkscreen Text".

Do yourself a favor and try a simple part and extrude the text into a feature. Run the feature statistics on the part with this feature both resolved and suppressed. Unless you have a helical sweep it is often the highest regen time of any feature you have. For this reason I only use text as a feature when I absolutely have to. This has only been when I was molding text into a plastic part. Even then I had configs of the part with this feature suppressed and resolved.

- - -Updraft

 

[drawoh]

rjason71,

We can do panel artworks entirely within SolidWorks.

[ol]
[li]Your panel is an assembly, and the artwork is a separate part. This means your panel looks like the final part.[/li]
[li]Make configurations for panel with artwork, panel with artwork and registration marks, and for panel without artwork.[/li]
[li]Create a drawing from your artwork model. I delete the title block.[/li]
[li]Create a new layer called something like "OUTLINE".[/li]
[li]On the drawing view, change all the lines to the new layer.[/li]
[li]Create a new layer called "HATCH" or something like that.[/li]
[li]From the HATCH layer, fill in all the outlines with a solid hatch.[/li]
[li]Turn off the outline layer.[/li]
[/ol]

Done!

All the standard assumptions about 3D design practise apply here. If someone sees a spelling mistake on your assembly drawing, you can fix it, and the spelling will be correct on your panel drawing and your artwork.

JHG

 

[rjason71]

Thanks for all the great advice. I have been experimenting all day and my biggest problem is trying to use sketch text with any ease at all. I cant place it unless its on a line, I would like it to sit at an intersection of 2 construction lines but there is no way to sdjust the catch point, and you can't copy or pattern the text. I have a panel with 96 jacks and I need a silkscreen pattern for all the callouts. I ended up bringing in a dxw from ACAD in order to do what I wanted.

 

[ctopher]

I have created them similar to drawoh's suggestion.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 4.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-21-07)

 

[rjason71]

I have an assy drawing with 4 sheets. The silkscreen spec is last and there are some other parts of the assy that are detailed on other sheets.

I am having a problem changing my layers. When I try to change the font outline (which is it's own part) to a layer called outline, as stated above, all the parts in all views throughout the drawing also change to the outline layer. So when I turn off the outline layer, also stated above, all the geometry in all my views is also turned off.

Any ideas?

 

[drawoh]

rjason71,

I control layers on the silkscreen view using by right clicking on the view and selecting "Component line font...". As far as I know, these changes are limited to the drawing view you selected.

JHG

 

[rjason71]

Component line font seems to work fine. Thanks.

Is there a way to "group select" items for hatching? I have a part with about 100 individual text entries. I have to click the inside face of each in order to hatch them, very time consuming. Is there a better way?