Creating Custom SOLIDWORKS Inspection Reports with the Footer Row Function

SOLIDWORKS Inspection reports may have various characteristic values included, which makes it difficult to specify how many rows you need specifically when creating your custom report templates. This may lead users to format an excessive number of rows to account for the possible number of characteristic values generated.

The issue with this approach is that you may have too many empty rows in your inspection report, which may take away its professionalism. Luckily, SOLIDWORKS Inspection’s Template Editor has a footer row function that you can apply to your custom inspection report templates.

What is the Footer Row Function?

The footer row function in the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template Editor is easy to apply and makes formatting rows simple for custom inspection report templates. By applying the function, the number of rows will increase depending on how many characteristic values are generated in SOLIDWORKS Inspection.

Applying the Footer Row Function

If you are looking into applying the footer row function to your custom inspection report templates, the following steps will walk you through it. As always, back up your existing templates in case you need to revert back to normal.

Open the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template Editor

First, open your custom inspection report template in the Template Editor. You can access the Template Editor in SOLIDWORKS Inspection Standalone by navigating to File > Template Editor. This will open Microsoft Excel to continue editing a template.

Open an Existing SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template

If your custom inspection report template is not located in the default template location for SOLIDWORKS Inspection, you can navigate to the correct location and open your file. If you experience issues with finding your custom inspection report template for editing in the Template Editor, please ensure it has been saved as an Excel Template initially

Opening a SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template in Excel

Add a Custom Name to the Footer Row

With your custom inspection report template open in the Template Editor, click on the row header for the last row you have formatted. In the screenshot example provided below, I have formatted rows until row 26.

Selecting the footer row in the inspection report

On the Formulas tab in Excel, open the Define Name tool to launch a dialog box where you can input information. For the name, insert “IXFooterRowXXX” with the XXX referring to the footer row function in the case of multiple sheets. Since this is a single-sheet report, it will be “IXFooterRow001”.

Adding the footer row’s name in Excel

You should now see IXFooterRow001 when selecting the row in Excel. This can help you confirm if the name was applied correctly.

Verifying that the name was placed correctly

Close the Template Editor

With the footer row name applied and showing correctly when selecting the last row, you can select Finished in the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template Editor to save the template.

Saving the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Template

Using the New Template for Inspection Reports

You can use the custom report template you created in SOLIDWORKS Inspection with the following steps:

1. Open the Home tab of SOLIDWORKS Inspection.
2. Select the Excel button.
3. Use the green plus to add a new template.
4. Navigate using Windows File Explorer to the new template and open it.

Adding templates to SOLIDWORKS Inspection

At this point, the newly created template with the footer row function will be populated in the list of available templates. Any newly created inspection reports will now account for the number of rows to include based on how many characteristic values are included.

Improving Your Quality Control Process

Automating your first article inspection reports can help reduce the amount of manual interaction and the number of mistakes made in your current process. Footer row functions are just the beginning of streamlining and improving the quality control for your team.

To learn more about adding SOLIDWORKS Inspection to your current workflow, click here.