Solidworks and Instruction Drawings

Im currently working on some instruction manuals (yay) Id like to create arrows to detail the likes of removing a panel. Now I know 3dVia composer does a great job but I cant really justify paying for it just to get a few arrows. Illustrator allows you to create them but if there was an easier method that would be great, something like 3dvia’s snap feature or even easily editable arrows to fit, maybe some sort of plugin Im not aware off.
Fingers crossed!

Are you trying to create the end sheet entirely in Solid works? Can you provide a image of what you would like the end result to be?

Kinda like this I guess, sorry for the late reply

You CAD package is precisely the software for creating these images. I work mostly in Inventor (sigh), but the same 2D features are available in Solidworks with explosion features and 2D sketches.

Would you expect arrows like what is available in MS Office (esp PowerPoint), or something more like 3DVia with some sort of 3D (or faked 3D) look/interaction with the parts?

Matthew Lorono

You can do an “explode sketch” in an exploded view in Solidworks:

http://help.solidworks.com/2012/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/t_Showing_Explode_Lines_in_Explode_Views.htm

If you want better arrows etc., I’d make them as seperate solidworks parts, and make an assembly configuration with them.

I would export the Solidworks drawing to PDF and import the vectorized file it in Illustrator.