SOLIDWORKS Electrical Revisions-Tracking and Editing Changes Made in a Project

This guide provides the method for using the built-in revision control inside of SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2D Schematics. Using the built-in revision control allows for tracking and editing updates and changes that are made to the project. 

This is not a troubleshooting guide. If you have any technical issues with SOLIDWORKS, please contact Hawk Ridge Systems technical support.

This document is only to be distributed and used by Hawk Ridge Systems customers. Any other use is prohibited.

Getting Started:

Anytime there are any changes made to a document, a revision number, a verification date, validation date, and the creator are updated in revision management.  SOLIDWORKS Electrical automates the process with just a few clicks. Not only that, when the document is revised you can take a snapshot of the design.

When using one of the standard project templates installed in SOLIDWORKS Electrical, you should see a revision block and title block on the very first page like this:

Every new project is the initial revision. The initial revision number is 0. Displayed in the title block is revision number, the date it was created, and the name of the creator. Also note that in the bottom right corner, there’s another box that lists Revision 0. We can add revisions at the individual drawing level, book level, or project level.

ADDING REVISIONS

1) Right click on the Document book or drawing you want to revise, and select the Revisions option.

2) Make your entries and Validate the revision. The revision configuration box will be displayed allowing you to select Customize or Revisions. Select Revisions to see the revisions table. Validating your revision allows other users to approve a design. Now your user name and the current date will be display in the Validated fields:

3) the Validate button changes to Verify. This allows other users to approve a design. Now your name and date will be displayed in the Validated by and Validated on columns. The names for validation and verification can also be changed here. Next click on Verify:

4) Once you click Verify, a dialog pops up asking if you want all the book documents to be set to the same revision. In this case, we’ll click yes and Okay because we want all them to start at 0. However, it’s important to point out that individual documents can be at different revisions than each other and the document book. If you only want to revise an individual page in the project, rather than the whole project itself, you would go through the same process, but instead of right clicking on the book, you will right click on the page.

5) Update reports and terminal strip drawings dialog appears next. Select Update drawings to update all reports, design rules, and terminal strip drawings within the project. Or, Continue action without updating to complete the revision without changes to the drawings. Next Click Okay. 

6) Next is the Print book or Export book to PDF file option. This allows you to print off the drawings or export them to a PDF:

7) Once you complete your print job or export to file, the Take snapshot dialog box appears. A snapshot is a project backup done at a special time, such as a new revision index creation. The snapshot offers the possibility to restore an old version of the project, it must not be confused with the project archive. Click Take snapshot:

8) The Snapshot dialog box appears, allowing you to rename your Snapshot and save it. Next click Okay. An archive of the snapshot will be created and a snapshot confirmation dialog box will appear. Click Okay to close this box. 

9) The revision block will be updated. Now you can move on with your design:

Note: revisions are applied separately to books and drawings (examples below). Therefore if you add a revision description to the book it will not be applied to all drawings. It’s also important to make sure that you have the right attributes on your title block. Revisions at the project level write to different variables than the document level. So if you individually revise a page in the project, but your title block on that page has the project revision attribute, it will still show the previous rev number/letter. It is recommended to use project revision attributes on the cover page, and document revision attributes on the other pages with title blocks. When you revise the project and push it to the other documents everything will be up to date.

Project Revision example

Drawing Revision example