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By Root 1040 0

— the assembly will benefit from some sort of organization or management techniques. This chapter introduces you to the tools and techniques that are available to help you manage performance issues as well as general-use issues, efficiency, browse-worthiness, and searchability.

Identifying the Elements of an Assembly

From Chapter 1, you know that an assembly can contain parts and mates, and real-world assemblies can become very complex. As the number of parts and design requirements for an assembly grows, you may need to add some of the following types of assembly elements:

• Assembly equations

• Assembly layout feature

• Assembly layout technique

• Assembly reference geometry (plane, axis, point, coordinate system)

• Parts

• Subassemblies

• Folders for parts

• Folders for mates

• Mates

• Assembly features (cuts that are made once the parts are assembled)

• Component patterns

• Mirror components

• In-context reference placeholders

• Smart Fasteners

• Smart Components

• Virtual components

• Envelopes

• Assembly configurations

• SpeedPaks

• Display states

• Assembly Design Table

• Assembly Bill of Materials (BOM)

• Hidden/Suppressed/Lightweight/SpeedPak performance techniques

• Sensors

• Hole Series

You may already be familiar with some of these elements from having worked with part documents. Shown in Figure 4.1, these elements are described in detail throughout this book.

Understanding standard reference geometry items

The three standard planes and the Origin in the assembly FeatureManager design tree should all be familiar to you, as should the other standard items, such as the Annotations, Design Binder, Sensors, and Lights and Cameras folders. These items offer the same standard functionality as their part document counterparts.

FIGURE 4.1

Elements of an assembly

Note

Remember that you can choose Tools⇒Options⇒FeatureManager page and permanently select or deselect various folders under the FeatureManager header. Also be aware that when some folders are set to Automatic, they do not automatically turn on when they should. In this case, you can manually set them to Show.

Working with assembly equations

Assembly equations work like part equations, but with some additional complications and considerations. For example, one of the additional features of assembly equations is the ability to drive the dimensions of one part from another part. The syntax is slightly different for assemblies, as shown in Figure 4.2. Overall, issues with equation order and using driven dimensions on the right side of the equation are the same between parts and assemblies. New in SolidWorks 2011 is the ability to save equations out as a file with a *.txt extension and share the equations between documents.

Cross-Reference

Equations are discussed in detail in Chapter 12.

FIGURE 4.2

An assembly equation driving one part from another

Solving external references

Notice the “->” symbol after the Equations folder in the assembly FeatureManager. This means that there is an external or in-context reference. An external reference means that aspect of the part is dependent upon something outside of the part. This has file management implications because you must maintain the names of the files so that they always recognize the other file involved in the external relation. In-context means that one part has a relation to another part in positions determined by an assembly. So in this case, the in-context external reference can only be solved if the original part, the referenced part, and the assembly where the relationship was created are all open at the same time.

Cross-Reference

In-context references are discussed in depth in Chapter 10.

When one part drives another part in this way, the assembly must also be open to drive the relationship. If just the two parts are open individually, then changing the driving part does not update the driven part; because the relationship was created in the context of the assembly, the assembly must also be open