eDrawings Viewer will also let you play the animations from SOLIDWORKS, just not simulation animations from the SOLIDWORKS Plastics add-on. The same goes for allowing them to export an STL file out as a 3D model to a 3D printer or CNC program. The second factor that can still prevent a user from being able to measure an eDrawings file is that the user who publishes the eDrawings file has the ability to lock the measure tool protecting their design data. If you want your recipient to measure, make sure to check enable measure in the Save As dialog box. Thankfully the changes to the free eDrawings Viewer in 2019 eliminated all this confusion. This enabled a user with the free eDrawings Viewer access to the eDrawings Professional tools, including the measure tool.
However if a user with a license of eDrawings Professional opened the same file, then the measure tool would be available.īut, when an eDrawings file was published in SOLIDWORKS Professional or Premium (or if a user had a standalone license of eDrawings Professional), then a tag would be attached to the file which would remove the limitations from the free eDrawings Viewer for this file only. So until the 2019 release, an eDrawings file published in SOLIDWORKS Standard, when opened by a user with the free eDrawings Viewer would not have access to the measure tool. Callouts display results, including the type of measurement, the value, and. SOLIDWORKS Professional and SOLIDWORKS Premium come bundled with a license of eDrawings Professional, while the SOLIDWORKS Standard product comes with the free version of eDrawings. The Measure tool measures exact dimensions in part, assembly, and drawing documents. While this is the situation now, in the past the availability of the Measure tool was something that could seem confusing at first.
If that is the case, you can install the latest release of the free eDrawings and you should get access to the measure tool (unless publisher of the file has disabled the option as described below). To view a native SolidWorks document, select the option 'Save eDrawings data in a SolidWorks document' under the Tools/Options dialog box. If you are using a version from before 2019, then only the Professional version of eDrawings would have access to the measure tool. eDrawings can be used to view, measure, markup, and print different file formats, including eDrawings parts, assemblies, and drawings native SolidWorks parts, assemblies, and drawings and DWG and DXF files. You can do this by going to Help > About eDrawings. So if you are unable to activate the Measure tool, check to see if that the release is 2018 or older. Starting with eDrawings 2019, the measure tool is available in the free version of eDrawings Viewer. The first thing to check if you cannot use the Measure tool in eDrawings is, what release are you using? EDrawings Measure Active Which Release and which Version of eDrawings are you using?