Apply a Bounding Box to any Model using SOLIDWORKS 2018

Let’s take a look at a common scenario that crops up after a design is complete – the design of packaging!

Item to be packaged

While some designers may be savvy and experienced enough to embark on their own packaging design, others will need to speak to someone with some expertise in the packaging arena.  One of the first questions that will be asked from the packaging designer will most surely be “How large is the Item”.

While this question could throw us into a wide variety of discussion topics, I am going to focus us on the super-practical aspects of getting an immediate report upon a volume of a box that encloses my part.

In order to perform this operation in prior releases of SOLIDWORKS, one would have had to be working with a weldment or sheet metal component in order to make use of the “Bounding Box” functionality.  This tool has been brought into the mainstream in SOLIDWORKS 2018 as you can make it available from it’s location within the reference geometry toolbar.

Upon entering a few quick values, taking an automated approach or judging the enclosed area against a custom reference surface or plane. We can choose weather or not we would want hidden bodies or surfaces included in the bounding box envelope.

The resulting bounding box will leave a feature within the model’s feature tree, just below the origin of the part.

As you may have expected, our bounding box for this particular component, turned out to be something like this:

SOLIDWORKS Bounding Box applied

The unexpected bonus to the “Bounding Box” tool is the reported dimensions that are carried into the Configuration Specific Tab of the Custom Property Manager!

Configuration specific properties

With the values reported within the Custom Property Dialog, they should also be available for varied use throughout the rest of the designers work with the component.

Thank you for taking a look at our SOLIDWORKS 2018 content, check back often for additional updates and articles on new and existing SOLIDWORKS functionality.