Automatic Border: A New 2016 Feature to Automatically Create Drawing Sheet Borders

By Silvio Perez

If you have ever needed to create borders for drawing sheet templates, we all know that it can be a time consuming task. We would need to physically sketch out the border in SOLIDWORKS or we had the option to import a DXF/DWG. The problem with that is that there was no easy way to adjust the amount of columns or rows there were originally created or even the offsets of the border to edge of sheet.

Now in SOLIDWORKS 2016, this task has been drastically improved to save time and effort by introducing the Automatic Border feature. It is located on the command manager under the Sheet Format tab after you are in Edit mode for a sheet format. You can also find it by right-clicking on the drawing to edit sheet format. Once in Edit mode, you can right-click again and find Automatic Border.

Automatic Border option selected

After selecting the feature, you have the option to delete any entities you don’t want such as a title block that your existing template might have. You will notice that after adjusting the border, the entities that make up the block will not adjust sizing.

When selecting the Next arrow icon, you will see a border appear on the drawing and a way to adjust the following:

  • Rows
  • Columns
  • Margins
  • Center Zone Dividers

Automatic border menu

These are the major options within the PropertyManager, but it does include a few other options that can be referenced here.

What’s great about this feature is if you display your zone lines, the border markers are linked to those zones and will notice the size and adjust accordingly.

After completed the border options, you will see it overlaid on your current drawing. At this point you can save the sheet format and link it to any desired drawing. For more information regarding how to do that, refer to this Drawing Template vs Sheet Format blog.

Overall, Automatic Border is a great addition to the family of drawing features. It streamlines the process to create new border or even adjust existing ones. Check out my video to how it works here!

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