Engineering drawings are a very essential part of engineering. Engineering drawing or technical drawing is the collection of details which describes the dimensions or geometry of the part. The manufacturer uses technical drawings to read the dimensions, surface finish, tolerances etc. The drawings are generally created from the 3d cad models but are not compulsory. The design engineer can make the 2d drawing and later can give the dimension annotation to the sketch. But it will be time-consuming if you have to draw the 2d drawing of the 3d cad model.
To reduce the time and instead of designing the 2d drawings, the different views were drawn automatically in the software. Solidworks has such a feature in the drawing interface. The models are used and we can drag the different views available in the drawing to the drawing sheet. Then after we can give the dimension annotations.
While giving dimensions to the drawing we can choose the Standard units. Also, we can select the fractional or decimal representation of the dimensions in SolidWorks.
Displaying fraction dimensions
To display the fractional dimensions we have to change the Unit settings in SolidWorks. To change the unit setting,
Go to system settings > Document properties > Units
Under the Fractions column enter the value which is going to divide the decimal value to get a fraction value.
Note: that the value which has proper fraction will only be displayed in fraction. Rest all the values will be displayed as it was or in decimals.
Moreover, the Second method is to select the current document unit which is shown in the status bar. The status bar is at the bottom right corner of the SolidWorks window.
Click on Current document unit > Edit document unit > Document properties > unit.
Then after, just enter the fraction value.
The dimensions are now in a fractional unit.
