Replacing a part in a drawing in SOLIDWORKS

You may run into a situation when you have a part and a drawing but you want the drawing to use a different part. In this scenario, you don't have to create a whole new drawing or do a file save as. You can simply have the drawing point to a different file.

Here you see the drawing of a part called arm.

To change the part that is in the drawing, all you have to do is right click in a drawing view and select replace model.

Once you select Replace Model, you will have the property manager pop up where you can then browse to the file you want.

Browse the location and find the file that you want have in the drawing and select ok.

You can see that the part has been replaced with a new part that has a hole in it. This is a quick and easy way to display the part that you want. There are many ways to change file references, I suggest looking in the help directory inside of SOLIDWORKS and explore some of the other ways to update or change references.

Phil Whitaker
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.