★★How to customize 2D drawing template in ZW3D

Issue:

Customizing templates and material management of parts in the 2D drawing is an important part of enterprise standardization.
How to customize the engineering drawing template in ZW3D and assign the variable relationship between the 3D model and the 2D drawing?

Solution:

For multi-object file:

1. Open the Configuration of ZW3D, switch to the Files tab and find the location of the Object Template File.
   
2. Find the object template file in folder and open it in ZW3D.
   
3. Open the part named PartTemplate(MM).
   
   
4. Click Attributes → Properties to open Properties.
   
   
   
5. Switch to the User tab and create a new attribute named Part Code, the Type is String. Click OK and Save the file.
   
6. Open the Templates_Title.Z3 file under the same folder with ZW3D.
   
7. Copy and paste a drawing template Title block and rename it. Double-click the drawing we created to open it.
   
8. Double-click Title Block in the Manager to enter the title block editing interface.
   
9. In the editing interface of the title block, we can see that the frame of the title block, the internal text and variables, we can edit them.
   
10. Click the Image command in the Sketch. Select the logo file, enter the start and end points to insert the logo image.
    
11. We can use Text command under the sketch to insert the company name. 
    We can also select fonts, adjust font height, font spacing, etc. in the Text Attributes.
    
12. Same as the step 11., create a Text of Part Code in the title block.
    
13. Click Sketch → Text to insert text for the variable. Place the text in the corresponding location and click the Text Editor button to open Text Editor.
    Click the Variable Browser button in Text Editor to open Variable Browser. Click Reference External Variable in Variable Browser.
    
14. Under the Variable Browser, click Folder button to browse the Templates_MM.Z3 file saved in Step. 5. 
    In Browsing this object, choose PartTemplate(MM) and choose the variable part_Part code. Click Import to import this variable.
    
15. The variable is shown in the Text. Click OK to complete.
    
16. Click Exit in Sketch to close Editor. And Save the file.
    
17. Open the Templates_MM.Z3 file again, select the template file the company may use and rename it. Double-click to open the drawing file we created.
    
18. Right-click Sheet Format and click Sheet Format Attributes to open Sheet Format Attributes dialog.
    
19. In Sheet Format Attributes, click User custom sheet format. 
    In Insert block → Title, find the Title we created in Step 16. Click OK to apply the settings.
    
20. To check the result, we can create a new multi-object file with PartTemplate(MM) as template.
    
21. Create a new block, then click Attributes → Properties to open Properties dialog box.
    
22. Switch to User tab and input 123456 in the Data/Expression of Part code property. Click OK to close the dialog.
    
23. Create a 2D drawing and select the template we saved in Step 19 as template.
    
24. In the 2D drawing we can find the Part code corresponds to the attribute we set in Step 22.
    The company name and company logo are attached in the title block.
    

For single-object file:

1. Same as the Step 1 of multi-object.
2. Find the object template file in folder and open it in ZW3D.
   
3. Same as the Step. 4-13 of multi-object.
4. Under the Variable Browser, click Folder button to browse PartTemplate(MM) file.
   Choose the variable part_Part code. Click Import to import this variable.
   
5. Same as the Step. 15-16 of multi-object.
6. Under the same folder, copy and paste a drawing file that the company may use and rename it.
   Open the copied file with ZW3D.
   
7. Same as the Step. 18-19 of multi-object.
8. To check the result, we can create a new single-object file with PartTemplate(MM) as template.
   
9. Same as the Step. 21-24 of multi-object.