How to Turn off Balloons in SOLIDWORKS Inspection

SOLIDWORKS Inspection is a powerful tool for automating the creation of inspection documentation and ballooned drawings for First Article Inspection (FAI) reports. If you are using the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in within SOLIDWORKS, you may be unsure how to turn off balloons in SOLIDWORKS Inspection after creating them.

This blog will guide you through turning balloons off in the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in and explain why this feature is useful.

Why Use SOLIDWORKS Inspection?

SOLIDWORKS Inspection helps manufacturers and quality teams to streamline the process of identifying critical dimensions, tolerances, and notes on engineering drawings. By automating ballooning and report generation, SOLIDWORKS Inspection reduces manual effort.

It improves the accuracy of inspection reports, making it an essential tool for industries that require compliance with standards such as ISO, AS9102, PPAP, and more. These inspection reports can be created in the separate SOLIDWORKS Inspection program or within SOLIDWORKS using the Inspection add-in.

Why Are Inspection Balloons Important?

Inspection balloons are numbered markers that correspond to dimensions and annotations on your drawing. These numbers link directly to your inspection report, ensuring traceability between the drawing and the measured results. Balloons are crucial for quality control because they facilitate the easy identification of dimensions that require verification during inspection.

However, there are times when you may want to hide these balloons. For example:

• When printing a clean version of the drawing for production.
• When sharing the drawing with a customer who does not need inspection details.
• When preparing documentation for internal review, without clutter.

Creating and Exporting Ballooned Drawings

After you create your inspection project and balloon your drawing in SOLIDWORKS Inspection, you will see numbered balloons next to each inspected dimension. At this point, you can export the ballooned drawing to a 2D PDF for inclusion in your inspection package. This is done by clicking Export to PDF on the SOLIDWORKS Inspection toolbar.

The exported PDF is typically paired with an inspection report in Excel or PDF format, which lists all the ballooned characteristics for measurement. This can also be exported from SOLIDWORKS Inspection, but it is not the focus of this article.

How to Turn off Balloons in SOLIDWORKS Inspection

When balloons are created, SOLIDWORKS Inspection automatically adds a new layer called Balloons to the drawing. This layer controls the visibility of balloon annotations.

A fully ballooned inspection drawing

These balloons will display whether you have the SOLIDWORKS add-in enabled or disabled. After you’ve created your inspection project and ballooned your drawing in SOLIDWORKS, you may end up with something like the above.

To turn off balloons in SOLIDWORKS Inspection, do the following:

1. Click the Drawing tab of the Command Manager.
2. Select the Layer Properties command.
   

   Accessing the drawing Layer Properties command

3. Click the eyeball to disable the Balloon layer.
   

   How to turn off the balloon layer in Layer Properties

How to Turn Balloons Back On

If you turn off balloons and reopen the drawing with the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in enabled, you’ll need to turn the Balloons layer back on to make them visible again. Simply go to Layer Properties again and click the eye icon for the Balloons layer.

If the drawing is opened without the Inspection add-in, the balloons can still appear as long as the balloon layer is turned on. However, the inspection data linked to those balloons will not be accessible without the add-in.

SOLIDWORKS Inspection for Better Quality Control

SOLIDWORKS Inspection is a powerful tool to create inspection documentation and ballooned drawings for First Article Inspection (FAI) reports. With it, your quality control process can improve and increase the accuracy of inspection reports, making it an essential tool for industries that require compliance with standards such as ISO, AS9102, PPAP, and more.

To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS Inspection can streamline your business, read our other articles here.