- The SOLIDWORKS design library is a huge time saver.
And really useful for creating drawings as well as working
in assemblies, as well as parts and using for sketches.
So think about the design library
like a regular library, right?
Like a book you can go grab a book
and pull it out of the library.
Of course you can put a book back into the library.
So you got to start putting books in the library
before we can use them.
But SOLIDWORKS does come preloaded with some cool
things that are already in the library.
So right over here on the right hand side of the screen
you can see I have the design library right here
and inside of there I've got a bunch of different folders.
I have annotations, assemblies, features, forming tools
all this cool stuff inside of this library.
And if you want to add something
to like the annotations bar here.
I'm going to go ahead and just click on plus add the library.
And what I'd like to add would be like this note right here.
So if you spent the time making this note right?
more than likely you didn't know off top of your head
that the aluminum 6061 T 65
one, one
is per a S-T-M-B two, two, one.
You'll look that up, right?
So if you're going to do all the work to look all those things
up and figure out what the note should say,
might as well save that note to the library.
So over here, I'm going to go ahead and create that note.
I'm going to call it Al Al
and then ano to the annotations click okay.
And now that note has been saved over here
in my design library, and here it is.
So if you want to use it just drug that out to your design
or to your drawing and we can place that notice many times
as we'd like in our drawings.
So it just saves us all that time
of writing out the note, finding
and researching what standards I should be using and so on.
And you can have as many different notes as you'd like.
In fact in my computer,
I've got notes for every different types of material,
every different type of finish.
And so on that I want, I don't want to type that again.
I don't want to go look those things up again.
Let's just bring 'em in from the library.
It really saves us a lot of time.
If you don't like a note hit delete
on your keyboard to get rid of it
and keep the original one.
Also over here under the design library,
I do want to point out that beyond just notes
like we can put full assemblies over here, like a mold base
here's the entire mold base.
So if you're working in an assembly
you can bring in the entire mold base.
If you're using fasteners, like things you download
from McMaster Carr, like nuts and bolts and washers.
Save those back to the library.
That way you've built yourself a library of McMaster Carr
parts that your company uses.
And anytime you want to use those in an assembly
you can just literally drag and drop 'em into your assembly,
and they're there.
Same thing down here,
with parts you can store individual
parts in there. How about like hardware?
Here's some different hardware in there.
Here's some insert knobs, , some sheet metal pieces
or fasteners, lofted bends.
All this stuff is preloaded, but I can load in my own data.
In fact, SOLIDWORKS actually allows you to download some
of additional data for your library as well
If you want to use some of theirs or again just
create your own library but definitely use a library.
And if you already have a library on a company
shared folder somewhere or another location
you're trying to access
right up here at the top of the screen is add File location.
So I can add an additional library
and I can also create new folders in here.
So I have a bunch of things I can do with the library.
And finally, I do want to point out
that below the design library is also toolbox
and toolbox is just another library that's been added in.
We can use those pre-loaded components
inside the toolbox inside of your design.
Anyways, the design library is pretty awesome.
So make sure you're using it.
It definitely will save you a lot of time in the long run.