Using Solid Edge's Drawing Review Mode

If you work on large assemblies, chances are that you will create drawings of those assemblies. Solid Edge provides some neat tools that help you compose drawings of large assemblies quickly. After your initial drawings are created, most people only need to access drawings to review, print, measure, and add annotations to them. Since Version 20, Solid Edge's drawing review mode allows you to almost instantly open 2D drawings of massive assemblies, drastically decreasing the time it takes to access your drawings from minutes to seconds and saves system resources..

Solid Edge's Drawing Review mode.

Drawing Review Mode
Drawing review mode lets you rapidly open a drawing regardless of how big or detailed the drawing is. In this inactive drawing review mode, dimensions and annotations can be quickly applied to orthographic drawing views, you can even extract balloons to call out part numbers. As you can see Drawing Review mode is quite versatile, however there are times when you need access to the underlying 3D model geometry (for example, to establish a true dimension in an isometric view). In this case, you can easily activate drawing views on the fly and continue to work as you would as if the drawing had been opened normally. Geometry is loaded into memory so you can derive true dimension sizes. To reclaim some resources you can just as easily 'inactivate' the view once you are finished working on it.
Whether you are part of a design review team, a shop floor worker who needs to quickly print a drawing, or a detailer who needs to annotate drawings as quickly as possible, you'll like Drawing Review mode and the time it saves you.
How to Use Component Grouping
Using Drawing Review mode is as easy as opening up a drawing file. On the Open File dialog box, use the right-mouse button options and drag-and-drop to choose the Inactive Drawing View for Review option and click on the Open button. Your drawing should open very quickly.

Solid Edge Drawing Review menu showing active and inactive options.

Notice that the drawing is watermarked onscreen as inactive (it doesn't print). You can now print, review, and add annotations to your drawing.

Drawing view with the inactive watermark.

Active and inactive drawing view switch under the Applications menu.

If you need to add true dimensions to isometric or pictorial views or you want to extract a bill of materials, simply select Activate Drawing Views under the Applications menu. You can just as easily inactivate them after you've finished. That's all there is to it. Drawing Review mode will prove a welcome addition to the massive assembly capabilities delivered with Solid Edge and will provide the ability to open drawings in record time.
See you next time On the Edge.