SOLIDWORKS Assemblies

How to use appearance hierarchy in SOLIDWORKS

change appearance of components and parts

Appearances can be viewed by creation order, alphabetically, or by hierarchy in SOLIDWORKS. Hierarchy can be a very informative option, because you can see how each level appears. If you add something to the part, then add something to just one face, the face takes…

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Make SOLIDWORKS FeatureManager More Useful with Component Name and Description

SOLIDWORKS Featuremanager example: 3d blender drawing

If you work with Assemblies in SOLIDWORKS, and your company uses some form of product numbering system, then chances are, your SOLIDWORKS FeatureManager looks something like this: You probably see a part name – which is probably its product number – followed by a whole…

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Why you should use the SOLIDWORKS Defeature Tool

The Defeature Preview Window rotates and zooms with the SOLIDWORKS viewport, making it easy keep tabs on the simplification process

Creating a digital twin of your real-life assembly can provide a lot of benefits; including accurate bills of materials, machining instructions, true-to-life simulation results, or stunning renders out of SOLIDWORKS Visualize. However, all of this can result in performance slow downs, this is where SOLIDWORKS…

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Control the display of SOLIDWORKS Component and Top Level Annotations

Starting with SOLIDWORKS 2015, it is easier to control the display of SOLIDWORKS component annotations and top level annotations in an assembly file.  They now have separate display options in View > Hide/Show, which can help reduce the visual clutter in assembly models. These annotation display…

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SolidWorks Tutorial: Advanced Mate References [VIDEO]

Mate references can be set up in two parts to correspond to each other.  When created this way it is up to the user to add the appropriate part, but not to select a location for such a part. Follow the video below to see…

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Flexible Sub Assemblies: What a Drag! [VIDEO]

When I used to design automated machinery, I would use configurations to show my machine in various stages of the cycle. This worked great for providing drawing views of my assemblies, but didn’t work so great for detecting interferences between moving components along the path of motion. For instance, if I had a pick and place robot (picks a part up from point A, then moves to point B) that crashed somewhere in the middle of its path of motion, I wouldn’t know until it was too late (sorry about that, Chief). Thankfully, there’s a way to drag my parts and sub-assemblies through their full path of motion without the need to dissolve all my subassemblies. I can do the same thing at the station…

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SOLIDWORKS Top Level Assemblies Filter [VIDEO]

SOLIDWORKS is all about saving time and reducing or eliminating user’s frustration when performing frequent tasks. Little things like finding and opening the top level assemblies from a given folder used to be quite time consuming in SOLIDWORKS 2012 or previous releases. Fortunately, SOLIDWORKS 2013 introduces the ability to filter for top assemblies with a simple and elegant addition to the Open File dialog box. You can also mix the filters now. Maybe you wanted to see only the list of all parts and assemblies, but no drawings. As you will see in this short video, SOLIDWORKS 2013 allows you to do all of these.

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Mirroring in Assemblies

When mirroring a component or sub-assembly in an assembly you have to remember that SolidWorks mirrors relative to the center of mass of the component or sub-assembly.  If you are not aware of this you can get some unexpected results. I have created an unsymmetrical…

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The power of Display States in SolidWorks 2010

Johnny Eberle was asking in the SolidWorks Forum: I am trying to create a view of just one part of weldment with a few other parts, which are modeled in an assembly.  I can’t figure out how to isolate the few components that I need to show. Any ideas? Fortunately, new in SolidWorks 2010 are Display States at part level. One of the advantages of this new functionality is controlling the body visibility of any component at the assembly level. When you combine display states at the part level and at the assembly level, you have full control on drawing views, as is demonstrated by this video (no audio provided):

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