SOLIDWORKS Assembly
Starting in SOLIDWORKS 2019 you don’t need to save your assemblies as parts in order to insert a bounding box for them. The assembly bounding box can be created directly in the assembly level using the same calculations that were used previously in the part level. Creating a bounding box directly from your assembly will…
Just like SOLIDWORKS we can create a BOM that calls out sub-assemblies in the bills of materials of Composer assemblies. The SOLIDWORKS Composer Assembly BOM will have unique IDs that do not match other views. Follow the steps below to create an Assembly Level BOM: STEP 1: Click Assembly Selection Mode at the top of…
One of the main evaluation tools in an assembly is Interference Detection. This command shows any possible interference between components so that we can modify the parts and prevent issues in manufacturing. Designing multibody parts is very similar to working with an assembly; and the solid bodies could also have interference, however, we don’t have…
Have you ever gotten a little trigger happy with suppressing components in your assembly? It can be tedious sometimes to make certain that all the components are turned back to a visible state once you’ve done what you needed to do. Either you used CTRL + SHIFT + TAB to show all hidden components, then have…
Is the Exploded view in your drawing appearing differently to your model view? It might not be referencing a SOLIDWORKS Named View. Ever had this happen? I have created an exploded assembly configuration with all the components spaced consistently apart, but in the drawing the exploded view doesn’t look that way. Unlike the model, the…
You start your day and open an assembly that you were working on and suddenly you freeze and panic because there is a blank SOLIDWORKS assembly?!!! For sure the first thing you do is try a Rebuild or Force-Rebuild but it doesn’t help. You try Zoom-to-Fit and it stays the same. You can see all the…
Mate a Component of a Rigid Sub-assembly to a Component of the Top-level assembly
A question came in recently about constraining a moving component of a SOLIDWORKS rigid sub-assembly to a component of the top-level assembly. The sub-assembly was fully constrained in the top-level assembly, so a mate between sub-assembly component and another component in the top-level assembly would not work. The sub-assembly was also not suitable as flexible,…
Using the SOLIDWORKS Save Bodies command without creating multiple copies
Have you previously used the SOLIDWORKS Save Bodies command on a weldment feature only to find that all of the identical parts were made into individual files? Why use the SOLIDWORKS Save Bodies command? The SOLIDWORKS Save Bodies command can be used on any multibody part which allows you to create an assembly at the…