Prioritise Professional 2D Drafting Workflows in SOLIDWORKS Drawings
SOLIDWORKS needs to recognise that, regardless of how advanced 3D modelling becomes, the final deliverable in many engineering environments is still a 2D drawing. The drawing is the document that goes to manufacturing, inspection, fabrication, purchasing, and the shop floor.
Drafting efficiency and control should therefore be treated as a core priority, not as an afterthought.
A fundamental drafting requirement is the ability to control whether annotations are attached to views or to the drawing sheet. Many drafting standards require sheet-based notes, symbols, and documentation that are independent of model views. The current behaviour, where SOLIDWORKS frequently defaults annotations toward view association, forces unnecessary workarounds and slows down professional drafting workflows.
Users should have explicit control over annotation behaviour, including options such as:
- Default new notes and annotations to sheet attachment.
- Allow users to choose annotation attachment behaviour globally through document or system options.
- Provide drafting-focused workflows that prioritise drawing creation rather than only model associativity.
Model associativity is valuable, but it should not come at the expense of efficient drafting. A professional CAD system must support both design intent and the practical realities of producing clear, compliant manufacturing documentation.
Please treat 2D drawing creation as a first-class engineering workflow and provide users with the control expected from a modern drafting tool.
A production drawing is not just a projection of a model — it is a manufacturing document. It typically contains:
- general notes and process instructions,
- inspection requirements,
- finish/coating notes,
- material callouts,
- revision information,
- weld/fabrication notes,
- purchased component references,
- quality requirements,
- assembly instructions,
- customer-specific requirements.
A particular view does not own a lot of that information. It belongs to the drawing sheet. Forcing the drafter to think about attachment behaviour every time they place a note is a needless interruption in a workflow where speed and consistency matter.
The irony is that in large drawings, associativity can actually become a liability:
- views get rearranged,
- configurations change,
- derived views get replaced,
- copied sheets evolve independently,
- annotations unexpectedly move or remain tied to objects that no longer represent the manufacturing intent.
Experienced drafters often deliberately separate:
- model-driven annotations (dimensions, hole callouts, GD&T tied to geometry), and
- document annotations (instructions, notes, tables, requirements).
SOLIDWORKS is excellent at the first category, but it has historically treated the second category as secondary.
For a production environment, a better default would be something like:
"If the user clicks empty sheet space, create a sheet annotation. If the user selects geometry or a view, create an associative annotation. Never try to guess."
That is how a drafting system should behave: the drafter decides the intent, not the software.
This is also why many long-time users compare SOLIDWORKS unfavourably with dedicated 2D drafting systems — not because they want to go back to drawing everything in 2D, but because those systems understood that the drawing itself is an engineered deliverable.
Regards,
Peter T. Maslin.
