SOLIDWORKS Part Reviewer

Technical Support

SOLIDWORKS Part Reviewer

Have you ever looked at someone else’s SOLIDWORKS model and wondered – ‘How did they model that?’

Well, wonder no more, the SOLIDWORKS Part Reviewer tool is here to help.

For models that have been set up with appropriately named Features and Comments, the part reviewer tool will help to show each feature and comments on how the feature was created.

The Part Reviewer is like a ‘player’ for SOLIDWORKS parts that navigates its way through the FeatureManager Design Tree of SOLIDWORKS model in way similar to playing back a media file, video or DVD.

The tool is found either from the Main Menu>Tools>SOLIDWORKS Applications>Part Reviewer location,

or from the Command Manager>Evaluate Tab

Once activated, it appears as a new tab in the Task Pane

You use ‘playback’ controls to move from the End, to the Beginning of the Design Tree, and to move from feature to feature in a controlled manner. Optionally you can set to view the sketch information also.

The tool extracts the Feature name and shows this in the Top Field, and similarly it extracts comments from features in the model and shows them in the lower field.

Comments are typically visible in the Design Tree via the comments folder (if they have been added by the author).

If you are looking for inspiration or just want to know how others model, SOLIDWORKS provides Part Reviewer blogs and examples for you. You can download the examples from 3D Content Central which you can access directly from the Design Library in SOLIDWORKS, or from your SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal account:

Once at 3D Content Central you can search for Part Reviewer files, either using advanced searches:

OR Directly from the Search tool:

Once you have executed the search, a page will display the relevant topics:

There are different modelling levels of experience/difficulty that you can select from if you select the ‘Part Reviewer’ link.

Or if you select the model, you will be redirected to a page from that component from which you can preview and download the model.

Once you have downloaded the desired model, then you can open it SOLIDWORKS and check out how it was created in the Part Reviewer tool.

About the Author:

<Craig Stevens>, <Technical Support Engineer>

<CSWE, CSWS-D (Data Management)>

Based in <Adelaide, Australia>