Ordering Holes in a Hole Table

A customer rang me this morning wanting to know if there was a way of controlling the tag names in a 'Hole Table' and the holes to which they are applied. It is easy to move the holes up and down in the table to reorder them - but the tag names remain the same wherever they are in the table. Clearly it would be nice to move the holes to a specific order but have the tags also in a logical order. A few tests proved that this could not be done with the usual method of selecting the face of the plate or the edges in one go.

Fortunately, before I said "no can do" I checked the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base - always a good idea, and, incidentally, available to all Subscription Customers with access to the Customer Portal. This revealed, not only a solution but a video clip to show me exactly what to do. I though this was a useful tip so decided to blog it.

Here is an example of a drawing where the face of the plate has been selected. The holes are tagged from left to right and bottom to top.

If I want to control the hole order and the tag names, the trick is to create the hole table in the usual way but NOT select any faces or edges (i.e. create a blank hole table) and then exit the table. Then you edit the table and select the first hole you want to be tagged. In the example below I wanted to start with the hole on the bottom right and for it to be A1. You then exit the table and repeatedly edit it - one at a time in the order you want the holes.

This would take a while for a lot of holes but for a small number, this is a neat trick to get the exact hole table you need.

Here is a link to a video that shows the process in detail.

By Andy Fulcher

Technical Manager