Do you find yourself scrolling up and down the feature tree hunting for that elusive feature that loves playing hide and seek with you? Does dragging the rollback bar to the desired feature in a long tree feel cumbersome?
Fig. 1 Long Feature Tree
Here are a few shortcuts that can save you quite a bit of time in the process:
1. Expand the whole Feature Tree – Select the top item in the feature tree (the model name) and press the * key on your numeric pad. Unfortunately, most laptops do not have a numeric pad. Also, be aware that in a large assembly such an operation will be quite time consuming since every sketch will be revealed in the feature tree.
2. Collapse the whole Feature Tree – Press Shift + C or Right Click on any item in the feature tree and select Collapse Items.
Fig. 2 Collapse Items
3. Fast Rollback to any feature in the tree – select a feature and click on the Rollback icon from the in-context toolbar. The rollback bar will move above the selected feature. When you have a long tree, this is a great time saver.
Fig. 3 Fast Rollback
4. Roll to End and Roll to Previous – Just Right Click on the Rollback Bar to have access to these two commands. Roll to End eliminates the need to drag the rollback bar down to the end of the tree, which is very handy for long feature trees.
Roll to End
5. Filter the Feature Tree - probably the most useful tool. Just start typing keywords in order to list only the items that contain them. You can filter by feature names, sketches, folders, type of features, component tags and more.
Fig. 5 Filter by feature type
Even more useful is filtering by the custom properties of components. For example, the components shown in fig. 6 have in common the Bendall value for the Vendor property.
Fig. 6 Filter by custom properties
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8 Comments (+add yours?)
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#5 is incorrect: you can’t filter by “type of feature”
yes, the http://help.solidworks.com/2012/English/solidworks/sldworks/filtering_the_featuremanager_design_tree.htm
is also wrong on the same thing and I’ve provided feedback on that to SW as well
Not sure I understand your comment. You can filter by feature names.
good tips, pity they are totally useless with our awful kluge of a PDM system.
Our ‘homemade’ pdm system assigns a randomly generated “secret code” number to each part as it is checked out. And, to make it even more fun, many parts were never given a description when they were created, or the description is in “Fingrish” (Finnish + English).
The only way to find out what something is, is to open it, look at the properties, grab the SLD code, past the SLD code into the main PDM data base program (called Aton) and hope for the best. All horribly slow, awkward and error prone.
Our PDM system is SO bad it makes me forget about the kluges in Solid Works itself.
Oh…”Select Other” – hasn’t worked for the 10 years I’ve been using Solid Works on all sorts of systems.
Always worked in Solid Edge.
Solid Edge = Audi A7
Solid Works = 1986 Camero
Thanks for your kind words Steven.
In regards to your PDM system, you have my compassion. That being said, the tips you mentioned can still be used to find other entities than the part names (features, mates, sketches, reference geometry). I hope that you have the ability to name at least those properly, in order to use them.
“Select Other” works as intended for me in SolidWorks 2012 SP3.0. If you have problems with this functionality, please reproduce the issue with an Rx report and send it to your SolidWorks VAR. They should be able to help you.
I cannot comment on your solidedge reference because I have never driven an Audi or a Camaro.
Alin,
you can’t filter by “TYPE of feature”
I mean what I said
For example: Make a new plane and name it something like “No Findey” and now use the filter to search for “plane”
Another example: make a circular boss-extrude and name it “Cylinder” and search for “extrude”
See? You can’t find items by TYPE of feature unless the TYPE is a part of the “name” of the feature… fine for those who leave the default SW names, but those that rename their features to something else either have to keep the default somewhat intact or not use the filter.
Thanks for the clarification, Paul.
You are correct. By the way, are you the one who submitted this Enhancement Request:
SPR 540818: Ability to filter feature manager tree by specifying feature type?
If yes, thank you. If not, vote for it. I just did.
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