Standard views – why is the Front view the Bottom view, or the Top View?

Every die designer that starts to use SolidWorks runs into this issue. And there are several different methods that we see people use to try to get around it. I will never forget when I experienced it – how frustrating it was. As you start to draw a rectangular die block on the Front plane so that the Z axis is pointing at their nose as they are looking at the screen, just like it will be sitting on the CNC, you realize that this is actually the “top” in your mind. You are looking down at the top of the die. “Why is SolidWorks calling it the Front View?“ When you look at what you consider the “front” of this block and this die, SolidWorks is calling this the “Bottom View”.

People spend hours trying to figure out how to work around this issue when in fact, it is very simple to do. Click on the PDF below for a simple solution that works perfectly!

Standard Model Views PDF