Hello everyone,

Looking for a lot of help with various tasks related to creating electrodes.  I am very new with Solidworks but ran Topsolid (hated it) for 10 years before I was able to convince management to switch to Solidworks 2017.

I have been working in a PART file environment.  I tried doing this in an assy and it seemed too time consuming although that could have been because of my inexperience. 

Things seem relatively straightforward when I have a simple component to work with but when I start working with more complex components I am having concerns that it would be too easy for me to confuse the orientation of an electrode especially in situations where we need to edm 3 or more sides of a part like the one pictured.  I can easily create planes and model my electrodes in all directions as necessary but the confusion starts when I begin working on my 2-D drawings.  I start a drawing and add a standard 3 view...  Now, depending on how the model is oriented in my sldprt file, I get all sorts of choices - Top, Bottom, Front, Back, etc for how to orient the drawing views and that's fine.  I can select the one I want...  But the rotation isn't what I had in mind...  So I use "rotate view" and set things up just how I want them to look...  Now as I am doing this, I start worrying that maybe I'll get confused in the process of all this work and exporting the file out to Mastercam and maybe cut an electrode backwards.  Some electrodes *APPEAR* symmetrical but in reality, they have slight variations that must not get reversed.

How can I give myself some reassurance that things are all oriented the correct way and that my 2-D drawings will match my Mastercam programs even on those days when my head is not in the game the way it should be?

In my old software, I was able to set up a coordinate system that established the drawing view for a particular setup (normally the top/center of a core/cavity block) and then another coordinate system looking at the electrode in the machining perspective which I'd then use to export the electrode to Mastercam. 

In Solidworks, I can't figure out how to make a drawing view oriented to a custom plane or coordinate system and I also can't figure out how to export a parasolid file oriented exactly the way I desire.  It seems the orientation of an export is automatically based on the standard SW origin.

Below is a core I'm currently working on with an electrode shown in position above it.

Any advice you folks can provide would be greatly appreciated.  I must figure out some efficient ways to get this work done with confidence.