I designed a part in millimeters and meant to use inches. Is there a quick way to fix this?
Asked By Brandon L.
Have you ever started working on a design, only to realize that you’ve been creating and dimensioning the part using the wrong unit system? Now, if you’re a veteran SolidWorks user, this may seem like a silly mistake, but for a newer user, you might have spent a considerable amount of time creating features, and fully defining sketches, only to realize that you’ve created the part in millimeters, when you meant to use inches, or vice versa. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about it if you wanted to directly convert your units, but there are a few tips and tricks that you can use to salvage your work, which you’ll see in this SolidWorks video tutorial.
You can change a part from mm to inches quickly… simply insert a design table (autocreate). Then select ALL dimensions from the list of dimensions when prompted (assuming you dont already have configurations)… now in the table simply create an excel formula to append the letters “in” after each number… lets say your first dimensions are in cell B3 over to D3… in cell B4 create the following formula =B3&”in”… then copy this formula over to cell D4. Now highlight cells B4 through D4 & hit copy (ctrl+C)… select cell B3 & hit PASTE SPECIAL… choose to pase the VALUES only… this will overwrite the original values with the new values with the unit… close the design table & all dimensions will update the correct size!…
Now the only dimension you might have to look out for are angular dimesions as degrees are degrees irregardless of the unit system…
hope this helps!
A much better way to change the scale is to use Leonard Kikstra’s ModelRescaler macro (http://www.lennyworks.com/solidworks/SWXMacros/ModelRescaler.zip) from http://www.lennyworks.com/solidworks/default.asp?ID=20
It actually changes every dimension used to create the model, but does not create the unwanted extra “Scale” feature. This means the problem mentioned at the end of this video is obviated. All the features have the corrected dimensions attached to their sketches.
You might try this macro from Lennyworks.com
http://www.lennyworks.com/solidworks/SWXMacros/ModelRescaler.zip
This will scale all dimensions in the model by a scale factor. I haven’t run it in a while. But it did work in 2010 the last time I ran it.
Bob McGaughey, CSWP/CSWE
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.