DDi Tech Center

Have you ever needed a symbol that was not in the annotation symbol library that you use all the time in your drawings notes?

One example is that you might want to call out a note on your comment section like “TEXT CONTAINED WITHIN THIS SYMBOL …. ARE DIMENSIONS TO BE INSPECTED”
“….” Is where you would like to have a oval or race track symbol that indicates the inspection symbol.

The slow way would be to create a block that contained the text and the hand drawn symbol that would have to be manually placed in line with the numbered notes.
Making sure that the txt lined up with the numbers.

SolidWorks however defines all of it’s symbols in a file called  “gtol.sym”

TIP: Before making any changes to the file make sure that you have a backup copy of it.

The file is normally located in:
C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english\

Right click over the file and open it with notepad.
Contained in the header of the are instuctions on the format of how the library and symbols are created.

;;  Format:
;;
;;  #<Name of library>,<Description of library>
;;  *<Name of symbol>,<Description of symbol>
;;  A,LINE xStart,yStart,xEnd,yEnd
;;  A,CIRCLE xCenter,yCenter,radius
;;  A,ARC xCenter,yCenter,radius,startAngle,endAngle
;;  A,FARC xCenter,yCenter,radius,startAngle,endAngle
;;  A,TEXT xLowerLeft,yLowerLeft,<letter(s)>
;;  A,POLY x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3
;;
;;  Units:
;;  All x, y, and radius values are in the symbols grid space (0.0 to 1.0),
;;  where 0,0 is the lower left corner and 1,1 is the upper right corner.
;;      The grid space is considered to be the height of a character squared.
;;  All angle values are in degrees.

So with this information you can create code like what is shown below to make the oval / race track
*IO,Inspection Oval
A,LINE .375,.125,1.75,.125
A,LINE .375,.875,1.75,.875
A,ARC .375,.5,0.375,90,270
A,ARC 1.75,.5,0.375,270,90

Make sure to place it below the group that you want it to be in.
For example to place it in the Modifying Symbols, place it like such:
;;
#MOD,Modifying Symbols
;;
*IO,Inspection Oval
A,LINE .375,.125,1.75,.125
A,LINE .375,.875,1.75,.875
A,ARC .375,.5,0.375,90,270
A,ARC 1.75,.5,0.375,270,90
;;

So now, after you restart SolidWorks you’ll have a Inspection Oval available to just insert where ever and when ever you need it.

TIP: If you need to have someone else work on your drawings then they will need the gtol.sym file from your system.

WARNING: MODIFYING THE gtol.sym IS NOT OFFICALLY SUPPORTED BY SOLIDWORKS OR DDi