Drawings Mode

What comes out

One file. A native <ModelName>.SLDDRW, written into the model’s own folder.

• Views chosen from the geometry: front, back, top, bottom, left, right and isometric model views, projected views, section views, detail views, auxiliary views, and the flat pattern on a sheet metal part.
• Dimensions imported from the ones marked for drawing in the model, solved into lanes rather than stacked on top of each other. Overall envelope dimensions are added outright.
• Hole callouts, center marks and centerlines.
• For an assembly, the BOM built from the assembly structure and ballooned to match its item numbers.
• Your title block, filled from the model’s custom properties, on a sheet size and scale chosen from the geometry.

If nothing in the part is marked for drawing, the sheet comes back with the views and the title block and almost no dimensions. Mark dimensions once in the part and every later drawing of it comes out complete.

Always ask blocks Drawings entirely

Drawing generation and drawing editing have no approval step. There is no plan pass to approve, so an approval preference that demands approval for every change has nothing to approve and refuses instead.

With Always ask set, the turn is refused and nothing is created: "Your permission setting requires you to approve every change, and drawing generation has no approval step yet". The refusal names the setting and tells you to change it and send again.

Ask for large tasks, the default, and Never ask both run Drawings normally. The setting is Approval preference in the task pane Settings, per machine. See Agent Mode approvals.

A drawing on screen routes every prompt here

If a drawing is the active SOLIDWORKS document, every prompt goes through Drawings Mode whatever the mode pill says.

• From Agent or Drawings the turn can edit the sheet.
• From Ask, Plan, Debug or Imagine the turn is review only, and the sheet is not touched.
• Without Drawings access it is refused: "Drawing review and editing require Drawings access."

What you can ask it for

• Generate one drawing for the open or attached part or assembly.
• Generate a batch: the assembly drawing plus a drawing for each of its parts.
• Generate from a folder: point it at a folder path, or name two or more .SLDPRT or .SLDASM files.
• Plan only, when you want to see the layout decisions before anything is created.
• Modify an existing drawing: move, remove or rescale views, edit notes, dimensions and the title block.
• Review, a read-only critique of an existing sheet. An explicit change request wins: "review it and fix the overlapping dimensions" is a modify.
• Learn your company standard from reference drawings. See drawing standards.
• Reconstruct the 3D model a drawing describes. The drawing is left untouched. See drawing to CAD.

Running it across an assembly

Ask for a drawing of an assembly without saying whether the parts are included and it asks once, with exactly this question: "Should I draw just the assembly, the assembly plus every part, or only specific parts?" Answer once and it does not ask again in that thread.

If any model in the batch already has a drawing, nothing is generated yet. The run stops before it creates anything and asks once: "3 of 12 models already have a drawing. Overwrite all of them, or generate only the ones that don’t have one yet?", with the buttons Overwrite and Keep existing.

Overwrite regenerates every one of them. Keep existing generates only the models with no drawing yet, and the summary marks the rest as already existing. Saying "overwrite" or "keep existing" in the request itself answers the question up front.

On a single regenerate the prompt reads "A drawing named Bracket.SLDDRW already exists. Overwrite it, or keep the existing one?", with the same two buttons.

Run a small assembly first so you can check the conventions before a large batch.

Undo inside a drawing

Drawing edits use native SOLIDWORKS undo, unlike Agent Mode. It reliably reverses a delete: a note or a display dimension you removed comes back.

A move is not reversed by undo. Move it back.

Configure standards first

Set up drawing standards before a batch. With no learned standard, drawings fall back to ASME defaults: third-angle projection on the CADABRA template.

Units and precision from Settings are not applied to a Drawings turn. The learned standard decides those.