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Enable Measure In SolidWorks eDrawings

11 June 2012 4 Comments

eDrawings

I’ve had several inquiries over the past several days on how to enable measurement in a SolidWorks eDrawings file, so I thought I would put up a quick post on how to do it.

eDrawings Export Options There are actually two ways to output eDrawings from SolidWorks.  You can choose Publish to eDrawings from the File menu, or you can do File|Save As… and choose eDrawings (*.easm, *.eprt, or *.edrw).

If you choose the latter, after you change the save as type, hit the Options… button and make sure the option Okay to measure this eDrawings file is checked.  You can also choose to allow STL output for part and assembly files here if desired.

Enable Measure in eDrawings File|Save As... If you choose the former method to create an eDrawings file, there is an extra step that is needed (which is what was usually being missed).  When you choose Publish to eDrawings, the eDrawings file will be opened for you.

image If you notice, you are able to measure in this file.  But when it is saved and closed and then reopened, you will see in the status bar that measurement is disabled.

In order to enable measurement when using this method to create the eDrawings file, when the file first opens in eDrawings Professional you have to choose File|Save As… and make sure to check the Enable measure option and save.  This step has to be done before the eDrawings Professional session is closed; that option will not be available if you reopen the eDrawings file.

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  • Chris

    Good info here. Have you found a way to enable measurements for the eDrawings new app? I have yet to figure out a method for it to measure anything, though it looks like it is missing the tool entirely.

  • Hi Chris,

    Measurement (along with several other notable tools such as sectioning, markup, and commenting) is not currently available in the new iPad eDrawings app.

    Hopefully they will add it in a future update.

  • Allen

    The key word, which doesn’t show up until the last paragraph, is professional. Don’t expect to use the measurement tool, unless somewhere along line the professional version is BOUGHT.

  • Allen,

    I am assuming based on your comment that you have vanilla SolidWorks (or the now-defunct SolidWorks Office package). eDrawings Professional is included in SolidWorks Professional and Premium.

    I do apologize for not going into those details in the article, as I was writing it from the conversations I have had with my users here. Most users I know have the SolidWorks Professional and Premium packages, and I must admit that I tend to forget that you can buy vanilla SolidWorks.