CATI Technotes: How to use the SOLIDWORKS Design Checker

This month we are going to begin a deep dive into the SOLIDWORKS Design Checker. We are going to take a look at how this tool allows a company\user to maintain consistency across their documents. The Design Checker is a utility that verifies settings in a document such as dimension standards, annotation settings, fonts, materials, units, ect.

The SOLIDWORKS Design Checker is an add-in that is available in SOLIDWORKS Premium and SOLIDWORKS Professional only. This can be turn on by going to Tools, Add-ins and checking the box next to SOLIDWORKS Design Checker.

The Utility can be launched from the Tools pulldown menu (with or without a document open)

The Design Checker will open with a dialog box allowing you to select one of the available modules.

The available modules are:

Build Checks – use this tool to set the requirements for evaluation.

Check Active Document – use this tool to validate your current document.

Check Against Existing File – use this tool to validate the active document against design checks from existing files.

Learn Checks Wizard – use this tool to retrieve design checks based on attributes from an existing SOLIDWORKS document.

The Welcome to SOLIDWORKS Design Dialog box allows you to access the following options:

Create a New Standards File – build a new .swstd file.

Open an Existing Standards File – browse to a .swstd file to check an active document.

Check Active Document

The Check Active Document tool uses the design check standard that was created to check your open document.

Setting the File Location to search for .swstd files

Click Tools, Options, System Options, File Locations

Select Design Checker Files in the pull down menu

Add the path to the folder location that contains the .swstd files.

Running Check Active Document

Launch the Check Active Document from Tools, Design Checker, Check Active Documents.

A Design Checker tab opens in the Task Pane.

In the Design Checker task pane:
1. Click the + symbol to add a new standards file
2. Click the – symbol to remove a standard from the list
3. Check one of the boxes to select an existing standard to run on the active document
4. Click Select File to open a document to check.

Click the Check Document to check the active document and display the results based on the selected standard.

Depending on the passed and filed checks, the following messages are displayed:
1. A message that your document is per standard.
2. A list of failed checks organized by criticality level.

Correcting Filed Checks

To correct failed checks:

Expand the individual notes to show the Actual Value and Preferred Value(s)

Select Auto Correct All to fix everything automatically, or select one or more failed checks and click Correct Selected to fix the failed checks individually.

Click the Refresh button at the top of the window to revalidate the document.

Click the red X in the upper right corner to close the tab without saving the changes.

Validating Additional Documents

To validate additional documents:

Check the first active document and make corrections.

Switch to another open document.

Click Check Document to validate the second document using the same settings.

Switching between the active documents will allow you to view the various results.

The Design tool is a powerful tool that helps keep consistency in our files. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Please be sure to check back as our tech team continues to uncover and explain the additional functions inside of the SOLIDWORKS Design Checker.

We hope this series has given you an insight to how to access the tools in the SolidWorks Design Checker. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the Dedicated Support Team will continue posting new series of articles every month that go further into the details of many of the SolidWorks tools. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support and links to each article with their release date are listed below: