SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible - Matt Lombard [160]
One of the advantages of using Insert Part is that you can insert the part at any point in the child part's feature history. Using configurations, you can also insert the parent part at any point along the parent's feature history. Using part history is one of the trickiest aspects of working with multiple models, whether you are working in the context of an assembly or using a master model technique.
FIGURE 19.3
The FeatureManager showing items inserted with an inserted part
For the inserted part, you can set configurations of the parent document in the External References dialog box, which is available through the RMB menu of the feature that is inserted into the child document FeatureManager. The External References dialog box is shown in Figure 19.4. If the overhead of bringing many bodies forward only to be deleted is an issue for you, then you can use parent part configurations to delete the bodies first; then, from the child using List External References, you can select which configuration to insert.
FIGURE 19.4
The External References dialog box
As the original inserted bodies are modified by additional features in the child document, the names change, and they are removed from the folder under the inserted part and only appear in the body folders under the top level.
File management is a real issue with all these master model functions; in fact, it may be the biggest problem that arises with them, although you could say the same thing about overall body management. It is safe to say that you should be careful and follow file management best practice recommendations when performing name changes for documents with external references, especially if they use any of these features.
If you would like to get a little practice with the Insert Part feature, follow this workflow:
1. Open a new part. Call this the child part.
2. Identify an existing part that you would like to make some references from. Call this the parent part. Examples of the kinds of references that you might want to make between parts in an in-context assembly include matching a size or location of a feature on the parent part. To make it most interesting for experimentation, the parent part should have multiple solid or surface bodies.
3. With the child part open, click Insert⇒Part.
4. In the PropertyManager that appears (shown in Figure 19.2), select the entities that you would like to bring forward from the parent to the child.
5. Experiment with making relations between new geometry and the inserted geometry. Use multi-body techniques to manage the visibility and access to the inserted bodies.
The Insert Part feature has received a lot of attention from SolidWorks developers. For this reason, Insert Part in more recent versions of SolidWorks is most resilient to changes and is the most flexible when allowing the user to make changes.
For example, if the name of the parent file changes, you can edit Insert Part to recover from that error. If the number of bodies in the parent part changes, you can edit the results in the child part to prevent more downstream errors.
Unfortunately, this feature is also inefficient for inserting parts with large numbers of bodies. You may want to choose one of the following techniques for using a single body from a part with a large number of bodies. Insert Into New Part would be a good function for this because it allows you to be more selective about which body is brought forward from the parent to the child.
Understanding the Insert Into New Part feature
Insert Into New Part qualifies as a Pull function because it does not create a feature in the FeatureManager of the parent file, even though it is actually initiated from the parent rather than from the child. This function does not have a drop-down menu location, nor does it have a toolbar button. You can only initiate it through the RMB menu from either the FeatureManager