Are you smarter than a SOLIDWORKS Smart Component?

Imagine we have an assembly with multiple, differently sized, pipes and we need to add bushings to the end of all of them. Now imagine this is something we are doing regularly, frustrating right? If this sounds like you, I hope you’ve been taking advantage of tools like SOLIDWORKS Smart Component and Auto Size to make your life easier.

The drawback is that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  You must decide between;

Option A

SOLIDWORKS Smart Component (coincidence and concentric) + manually changing the cap configuration (size)

Smart Component Option A

Option B

SOLIDWORKS Smart Component (concentric and Auto Size) + manually adding a coincidence mate

Smart Component Option B

What if I told you that in this case, we can have our cake and eat it too and we don’t have to worry about any manual additions.  In order to achieve this let’s choose Option B and Auto Size our component.  The only option while creating the Auto Size is to choose either a Cylindrical Face or Axis, this isn’t ideal but we’ll revisit this!

Smart Component Edge Option

Now if we edit the Smart Component feature you will notice that we no longer have that restriction.  We can now remove the face selection and choose the edge we wanted from the beginning.

Smart Component Feature

No more having to choose! Enjoy your cake!

Smart Component Auto Sized

Learn More

Want to learn more about SOLIDWORKS Smart Components? Take our SOLIDWORKS Assemblies training course live online and you will learn how to parametrically relate different components in the context of an assembly. Master the art of creating and managing all types of mates, save time designing complex mechanisms; create multiple variations of your design, perform quick selections of components, and become confident working fast with large assemblies.