The Description property is one of the most important property in SolidWorks as it is one of the few properties that you can access in a third party software. It is also the only one that you can show in the construction tree.

The Description should be only used for the designation of the components. What family they belong to, what they are, what they do, but should not be used to display specific information like part numbers or vendor names. It should be as generic as possible to ease the filtering of the information. As other properties, the Description should be written all upper case to have consistency in the BOMs and in the drawings. See the article about the Component Properties. If you are using miniPDM you can force the upper case in the add-in settings.

Windows Explorer

By default, the Description does not appear in Windows Explorer.

• Switch your Windows Explorer view to Details:

• Right click on the top of the columns and click More…:

• Scroll down until you see Description. You might have more than one. Try them until you find the one connected to SolidWorks:

• You can of course rearrange the columns to your liking and sort it.

SolidWorks

By default, the Description does not appear in SolidWorks’s construction tree.

• Right click on the top assembly and select Tree Display > Show Component Descriptions:

• The next step is to save this setting in your assembly and your part Templates so you don’t have to do that all the time!