Creating Watermarks for SOLIDWORKS Drawings

A watermark is a great tool to help easily display the stage or version of a drawing. Combined with Enterprise PDM, you have the ability to automate the watermark changes throughout your workflow.

Open up your drawing template file.

Add a CustomProperty named Watermark and enter the text you wish to display.

Right click the drawing sheet and Edit Sheet Format

Place a note into the sheet format (Insert > Annotation > Note)

In the Text Format, link to the Watermark property of the current document

At this point you can add additional formatting to the watermark, such as angle, patterns, color and font effects. Lastly, in the Text Format Pane, apply the setting "Set Note Behind Sheet"

Save the Sheet and exit.

Now when you create new drawings, you will see the watermark appear in the background.

You can now change this watermark as needed by editing the custom property.

EPDM users can update this custom property during transitions to automatically change the watermark as the drawing file moves through the workflow.