component
In the past articles, we demonstrated the use of the new Intersect Tool for quickly filling an existing cavity with a solid body in order to calculate its volume. That works fine at the part level, but how can you achieve the same thing in an assembly? How can you “fill” the cavity or cavities created between all components of the assembly with material in order to calculate the volume of the “void”? Watch this video and learn how to combine Boolean operations at the assembly level with multibody workflows at the part level:
When changing a component’s display state in the main assembly does not produce any visible changes to the appearance of the model, you might need to clear the appearance override that is sometime created in the main assembly. This video shows both the problem and the solution:
The Mirror Component(s) tool in the Assembly environment was completely redesigned in the 2010 version of SolidWorks. At that time, the improvements were considered spectacular and the benefits huge in comparison to how the mirror command worked in the previous versions. Starting with SolidWorks 2010 mirrored components are uniquely located in the universe of the main assembly, based on the position of their parent and of the reference plane used for mirroring. The user has full control on deciding which components need opposite-hand versions and which ones need just re-locating in a symmetrical position in regards to the selected plane. There was only one thing that SolidWorks 2010, 2011 and 2012 did not do when mirroring sub-assemblies and that was carrying over any mates referring to…
Alin’s SW2013 Pick of the Day: Envelopes Simplify In-Context Design
Building new parts directly in the context of an assembly is a very powerful technique that has been available in SolidWorks for a long time. Watching such components update in sync as the user intended, just by modifying a few dimensions in the assembly, is magical. A properly built top-down assembly is a thing of beauty. That being said, most users are apprehensive when doing in-context design, just because such a top-down assembly can be a minefield, waiting for the wrong step of an inexperienced user. One of these very dangerous mines is the InPlace mate, which is used for locating parts created in the context of an assembly. The InPlace mate is a very useful tool but a very dangerous one. Some people believe that in…
Do you feel you waste too much time finding component specific mates in large assemblies? Do you spend more time clicking in the feature manager, fishing for those mates than actually working to finalize your project? If the answer to any of these two questions is “Yes”, than you need to watch this video. It will help you find those mates fast, very fast!