Panel Assembly Instructions using SOLIDWORKS Electrical & Composer

One of the biggest benefits that using SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic and SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D brings us is the ability to get a single cohesive view of my electro-mechanical assembly. As a design team, we can showcase our designs from a 2D schematic perspective as well as a fully modeled and routed 3D assembly. Doing this is great and ensures that there are no questions and no discrepancies between what we designed and what gets produced. SOLIDWORKS Composer allows us to take this one step further and easily create assets for panel assembly instructions.

From Electrical Schematic to Routed SOLIDWORKS Assembly

Combining SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic and SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D gives us the best of both worlds. The electrical team can focus on the 2D schematic, leveraging the parts and symbols library to lay out and define their circuits. From there, Electrical 3D can be used to place the electrical components into the mechanical assembly and maintain a link back to the schematic. A team can get a true one-to-one representation of the electro-mechanical system by fully routing any cables and wires leveraging the easy-to-use, built-in commands. At this point, the SOLIDWORKS assembly that contains mechanical AND electrical information can be pushed downstream to any other applications in use within the SOLIDWORKS Ecosystem and pull important information with it. For our use case, the assembly can be moved into SOLIDWORKS Composer to create compelling and life-like assembly instructions.

SOLIDWORKS Composer Actors

A Great View from Up Here

Pulling the electro-mechanical assembly into SOLIDWORKS Composer is pretty much straightforward: it can either be exported from SOLIDWORKS as an SMG file type or directly converted at the Composer level. Regardless, we have a scene that contains the SOLIDWORKS assembly with each subassembly or component represented as an actor (depending on import settings). From this point, additional views are created to represent assembly steps or key stages in the process. I like to start with the finished product and work my stages backward from there. At each step, the actors can be moved freely from the normal SOLIDWORKS mates as well as hidden or shown to represent the components being added during assembly.

Labels, Callouts, and BOMs, Oh My!

Where SOLIDWORKS Composer really gains an advantage over traditional disconnected methods for creating technical publications, is the ability to leverage information directly from the SOLIDWORKS Components and their properties. The usefulness of this increases tenfold when bringing in SOLIDWORKS Electrical and its incredible manufacturer parts library. For example, if a user puts a circuit breaker into their mechanical assembly that references a specific manufacturer part for the 2D schematic, all of the part data comes through to the custom properties. This means that when going further into Composer, the labels being created can access all of those properties to automatically pull out information such as Manufacturer, Part Number, or even Internal Identifiers; all of this being done without someone having to manually type the information into the label. Additionally, any time the information needed is changed it is just a matter of switching the property from a drop-down menu.

Label Pulling SOLIDWORKS Properties

Another application for the best-in-class tools embedded inside of SOLIDWORKS Composer is the ability to create on-the-fly Bills of Materials. For things like terminal blocks, an end user may just want to know the total number of terminals they would need to take out of stock to put it together. We all know that SOLIDWORKS Electrical has built-in tools to report that information but it doesn’t always flow downstream to the people who need it. SOLIDWORKS Composer has a BOM workshop that would allow the technical publication team to create customized BOMs for any application and in any view. These custom BOMs can be arranged and reorganized independently of what is going on inside of SOLIDWORKS. Just like the labels, the BOM columns can pull information directly from the SOLIDWORKS Assembly (and ultimately our 2D Schematic). Using SOLIDWORKS Composer can give your team flexibility to create incredibly compelling documentation by not being tethered to the tools directly within SOLIDWORKS.

Bill of Materials for Terminal Block

Want to learn more about leveraging SOLIDWORKS Composer to create technical documentation packages while better leveraging your existing CAD Data? Be sure to check out our recent webinar!

Videos Capture What Static Images Can’t

With views created and customized, high-quality images can be exported and included in assembly instruction documentation for the world to see. However, words and static images can only go so far. Sometimes putting together a video showcasing each step of assembly gives a much clearer picture of exactly how everything goes together. A lot of people will wait until there is a physical assembly built on the shop floor and document each step with a video camera. There are two major problems with that: 1. Waiting for real-life assembly takes time and puts the content team behind the 8-ball 2. If a revision happens to a part or assembly, the video is immediately out of date. Fortunately, SOLIDWORKS Composer has a purpose-built animation tool to help out.

Within the animation timeline, each individual actor can be key-framed and adjusted to make fully custom and tailored animations to show each nut, bolt, and wire being assembled. The more streamlined way would be to utilize the existing views that represent each assembly step. The views can be simply dragged onto the timeline, spaced out appropriately, and SOLIDWORKS Composer will smoothly transition to each when the time comes. When it comes down to creating assembly instructions of any kind, there is no better tool for the job than SOLIDWORKS Composer.

How to Successfully Integrate SOLIDWORKS Electrical and SOLIDWORKS Composer

The biggest question asked when using SOLIDWORKS Composer is: “When do we start?”. The answer to that is a simple “As early as possible” thanks to Composer having the ability to update existing projects with new product changes. As soon as there is enough information in the assembly to start working on steps, the Composer team can get cracking on the views for the instructions. Any changes that happen throughout a typical design process can be reflected and updated rather than having to start from scratch.

The bigger challenge our clients face is solidifying an efficient workflow amongst team members and ensuring all settings between SOLIDWORKS Electrical, SOLIDWORKS Composer, and any other product are properly configured. Fortunately, the TriMech Group Team has plenty of experience with the whole SOLIDWORKS Ecosystem and has been able to find viable workflows for almost any situation. As you and your team start to look for solutions for a more concurrent engineering design process, feel free to Contact Us to be put in touch with our Certified Technical Experts.