CAD Forum

We use color to show where different surface finishes or textures are applied on injection molded parts. We have been creating a table, adding sketched boxes slightly inset, adding solid hatch, and changing the hatch color. The image below shows what this looks like on from one of our drawings. We place a shaded color view on the drawing near the table. We can export the STEP with color.

If we then need to copy this to a similar drawing, the table copies and the sketches will copy, sometimes we get the hatch to copy. The hatch doesn't come in the right color.

Today I made what appears to be a table (with sketch lines) and notes to make a similar appearing table. I created this in an empty view. I found that I can copy the whole view to a new drawing and the colors tag along.

Is it possible to save this drawing view to my library like a library feature? It looks like it is trying, but doesn't appear to save?
Would you make this into a block?
We may want to add or remove lines which is why I am reluctant to make it into a block.
Or, I could just have a drawing that we all know to go to and copy this view from.

What are your recommendations? We have only 5 MEs in our local group, but may be adding two more from another division of our company.

If you don't mind the color not being absolutely continuous, you could use this table. It just uses the character █ in a colored font.

Hello Carrie,

Does it have to be a block of color, or can you indicate the colors a different way?

Alternately, if you hate the space between the characters you can add a custom symbol to your gtol.sym file to create a solid block that can go anywhere you type text. The code for a solid block that's 10 characters wide is:

*BL,Solid Block
A,POLY 0,0,10,0,10,1
A,POLY 0,0,10,1,0,1

The main downside of this one is that symbols only live in the gtol.sym file. If someone opens the SW drawing file on a computer that doesn't have that symbol in the file, it will be replaced by <CUS-BL> (with "CUS" being replaced by whatever category you paste the block above into). Of course, replacing "10" above with any other number will change the width of the block.

Here's what that looks like in a note:

@josh Your ColorTBl.sldtbt is exactly what we need. The characters all run together on my screen and in our PDF and look like a solid block.

Thank you.

This is how we did it
TEXT - LINE SEGMENT (with thickness and color assigned) is how we did it.

AlexLachance wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 11:51 am This is how we did it

image.png (53.42 KiB) Viewed 1113 times

TEXT - LINE SEGMENT (with thickness and color assigned) is how we did it.

DennisD wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 12:02 pm

French is indeed a walking contradiction as a language though

Glenn Schroeder wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 8:31 am Hello Carrie,

Does it have to be a block of color, or can you indicate the colors a different way?


image.png

As someone who is red/green colorblind, the solid block is much easier for me to identify.

SPerman wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 3:12 pm As someone who is red/green colorblind, the solid block is much easier for me to identify.

It is the reason we went with text + solid block for colors. The "distinction" for colorblind people can be more noticeable that way too.