The top of the file says:

;; Format:
;;
;; #,
;; *,
;; A,LINE xStart,yStart,xEnd,yEnd
;; A,CIRCLE xCenter,yCenter,radius
;; A,ARC xCenter,yCenter,radius,startAngle,endAngle
;; A,FARC xCenter,yCenter,radius,startAngle,endAngle
;; A,TEXT xLowerLeft,yLowerLeft,
;; A,POLY x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3
;;
;; Units:
;;
;; All x, y, and radius values are in the symbols grid space (0.0 to 1.0),
;; where 0,0 is the lower left corner and 1,1 is the upper right corner.
;; The grid space is considered to be the height of a character squared.
;; All angle values are in degrees.
;;
;;

What its essentially saying is that you have an imaginary box to work in and you need to tell lines, arcs, circles and text where to start and where to end.

Lets take it apart to see how this is set up:

Finished Example:

#GTOL,Geometric Tolerancing
*ANGULAR,Angularity
A,LINE .0,.072,1.5,.938
A,LINE .0,.072,1.5,.072
*BETW,Between
A,POLY .0,.5,.8,.2,.8,.8
A,LINE .8,.5,2.2,.5
A,POLY 2.2,.2,2.2,.8,3.,.5

Step 1 is to make your own new catagory. Add a ''#'', and without a space add a shortened version name of what you catagory you are creating followed by a comma. Again no space then the whole catagory name you would like.

Example ''#Crit,Critical Notes'' (without the quotes).

Step 2, hit enter to go to the next line, and now its time to create the symbol itself. We need to give a name for SolidWorks to associate the symbol with and a name that the user pulls from the symbol pull down list. To do this type a ''*'' followed by possibly shortened name of the symbol, followed by a comma and then the name the user will see while creating the note.

Example ''*Crit1,Critical Note 1'' (without the quotes).

Step 3 is building the symbol with lines, arcs, circles, text and the other types listed above based on start end points.

Example:

A,LINE 0.,0.,2.0,0.
A,LINE 2.0,0.,3.2,.8
A,LINE 3.2,.8,2.0,1.6
A,LINE 2.0,1.6,0,1.6
A,LINE 0,1.6,0.,0.
A,TEXT 1.1,.8,CRIT

Creating the symbol lines and all can be frustrating at times, but if you copy and paste from a similar type symbol, it will be much easier. If you need to create a symbol from scratch then drawing the symbol in SolidWorks and getting data from the x,y positions based with the lower left position at 0,0 and the distances in metric.

A symbol can be placed in your drawing, part or assembly any of 3 different ways.

1.

Copy and Paste from another note.

2.

Use the button in the notes dialog box.

3.

Using the example is have layed out above by typing , including the ''''. (). All of it is case sensitive also.

*To make notes or mental notes on your most common symbols used edit a note in window and take note of to value in the ''''.

**An important piece of information to know on this is if you make more symbols and need to share drawing with others away from your computer or especially out of the office a copy of the gtol.sym file MUST BE PRESENT on the ''other machine'' that the drawing is opened on. If the gtol.sym is not on the other machine, there will be no errors but anywhere the symbol needs to show up just the'''' text will show on the drawing.

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What was produced with the above Example