SOLIDWORKS 2016 Copy & Paste Components with Mates

In SOLIDWORKS 2016 you can now copy and paste multiple components at the same time and any mates that exist between the components are copied as well. Copy and Paste is standard Windows functionality with SOLIDWORKS so this be done through the menus or with a simple CTRL-C, CTRL-V.

Top copy and paste components:

1. Select the components you want to copy, in the example below there are three mounting components attached to a steel member (shown in wireframe). From the breadcrumb display you can see a multitude of mates assigned to the internal component.
2. I’ll CTRL select the three mounting components and pick CTRL-C from the keyboard

Copy Components

3. Then paste with CTRL-V into the graphics area
4. Clicking on the copied internal component will show that mates have been included in the copy (note that there won’t be as many as the original set of components because two mates were used to mount it onto the member)

Paste Components

Previously components had to be copied individually and therefore mates had to be added manually.

NOTE: This copy and paste technique also works between different assembly documents so you can copy components from one assembly to another and retain their associated mates.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS 2016

To learn other what’s new tip and tricks like the SOLIDWORKS 2016 CommandManager Lock you should watch a recording of our recent launch event broadcast.