Inspection Reports

Created by, Gordon Pursel, Application Engineer

SOLIDWORKS Inspection can streamline the FAI ballooning and reporting process, but you can also further customize the Excel based FAI reports for both requirements and company standards. Although, there are out-of-the box and ready-to-go AS9102 and PPAP report templates installed. Today I wanted to provide an overview of the powerful Template Editor and baseline methods to create professional company standard report templates.

Getting Started with the Template Editor

To begin customizing SOLIDWORKS Inspection report templates, select the Template Editor from within the Inspection standalone application or within the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-In, then select an Excel template. To map information from the Inspection project to a report template simply select a cell then select a token from the template editor dialogue, then select insert. Continue this pattern for all subsequent cell mappings. When customization is complete, select “Finished” to save and close the Template Editor.

Template Editor Dialogue

In this example, the “characteristic number” token was inserted into the cell below "5. Char No." (see the next image). Since there will be more than one Char # in a project, the Template Editor Dialogue makes formatting easy with radial button options to specify whether values should be populated vertically or horizontally. With the Vertical Based Template option selected, this token will extract all Char # values from the inspection project into this column, starting from the cell containing the token. As another tip, only the first cell in a column is required, as a properly formatted footer will add or truncate rows.

SOLIDWORKS Inspection Report Template

When inserting tokens from within the standalone application or the SOLIDWORKS Add-In, the tokens will be different as illustrated below. This is important to note, as it means each application requires a distinct template and the templates should be managed in different folders to prevent confusion.

Standalone Application

iex:INSPECTIONXPERT/INSPECTION_SHEET/ATTRIBUTES/ATTRIBUTE/@Uid

SOLIDWORKS Add-In

iex:INSPECTIONXPERT/SAMPLE_SHEET/CAD/ATTRIBUTES/ATTRIBUTE[@selected='True']/@prefix>

Selecting the Right Token

When designing templates, it is important to select the right token and understand how the token is connected to the Inspection project. To review how the template and project are connected, let’s take a closer look at our example using the “character number” token.

When the report is published from the standalone application, the Bill of Characteristics “Char #” column will export to the “character number” token defined in the report template.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember these precise token transformations as the tokens are very well described in the “Understanding Tokens” section of the help documentation. With this helpful information and the Template Editor Dialogue, designing a report template to your specific requirements and company standards becomes a very simple and intuitive process.

Standalone Application: Bill of Characteristics

Likewise, when the report is published from the SOLIDWORKS Add-In, the Characteristic Tree “Char #” will export to the “character number” token defined in the report template.

Those are the basic customization instructions that will help you design professional SOLIDWORKS Inspection report templates that include critical Document, Project, Bill of Materials, Specification, Dimensional, and Measurement Characteristics.