SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible - Matt Lombard [135]
There is nothing to prevent you from putting parts and assemblies on the same drawing or even in the same sheet. Some users place an exploded view of the assembly on the first sheet, and then start detailing each part on the same sheet, using multiple sheets, so that the single drawing file documents several individual parts and the assembly. This is usually only the case for simple parts. An assembly made from several complex plastic parts could not be done this way, as a single complex plastic part will often require multiple sheets on its own.
Dimensioning assembly features
One of the more difficult questions you need to answer when dimensioning assembly features on an assembly drawing is what to use as your reference. Making cuts and measuring often takes place in some kind of fixture. Fixtures make excellent references in most situations. You might consider designing the fixture in some way that enables measurement from a fixed reference. This would require drawings that act as a qualification reference to include the fixturing reference in the drawing. This is best done as a higher-level assembly rather than adding the fixture using configurations of the product-level assembly.
Measuring to reference planes in the assembly is fine for the design, but there are no reference planes in your manufacturing floor unless they are physical faces of fixtures created for the purpose of measurement data. If your measurement spans multiple parts, then you should also keep in mind that both the individual parts and the assembly have tolerances you need to consider.
Assembly cuts are also often used to create 3D cutaway views. SolidWorks is not able to create a section view where the section cut is not perpendicular to the sheet of paper, so the workaround is to make a cut in the assembly (as a configuration) and to display the cut assembly using an isometric view.
Assigning the document driving the custom properties
When you have a drawing that has multiple parts or assemblies on it, you can control which document drives the custom properties used in the title block for that sheet. If you have multiple sheets, you can have different models driving the properties on different sheets.
To use this feature, right-click the sheet (but off of other items such as the format or views) to display the RMB menu shown in Figure 16.1. Make sure that the gray area on the RMB menu is labeled Sheet rather than View, and select Properties from the menu. The Sheet Properties dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 16.1.
Click the drop down-list in the lower-left corner, labeled Use custom property values from model shown in, and choose any view that is on the current sheet. This could be a single part or an assembly.
Remember also that when linking to a property, you can choose to link to properties of the current document (drawing), the model specified in the sheet properties, or the component to which the annotation is attached. You can find these settings in the Link to Property dialog box, shown in Figure 16.2, by clicking the Link to Property icon in the Note PropertyManager.
FIGURE 16.1
Assigning the driving document for a sheet
FIGURE 16.2
Linking a note to a custom property from one of various documents
Using Multi-Page Templates
Assembly drawings often become multi-page documents. To speed up your creation of these drawings, you should have multi-page templates available to use when you need them. Most of the aspects of single page and multi-page templates are the same, such as custom property setup and formats, but adding the page gives you some options that you need to be aware of.
On the DVD
The two-sheet template and second-page format used in this chapter are in the Assembly Drawings folder, with the filenames Bsize 2 sheet.drwdot (template) and b sheet 2.slddrt (format).
You can use a “page two format