SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible - Matt Lombard [60]
The use of these tools opens up best practice questions about fully defined parts in the assembly. Sometimes that gold standard is difficult to achieve. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the easiest way to deal with mates that are difficult to complete because parts keep moving around is to build the assembly without mates. This idea will not appeal to all users, but if parts do not have any relationships to one another, then moving one part cannot set off a chain reaction of parts moving around the screen.
In a perfect world, assembly mates are well controlled and easy to understand. But in reality, sometimes things happen that you cannot account for. If you build an assembly without mates (with the parts simply positioned in space using any technique that works), the parts are guaranteed not to move unless you accidentally move one.
Note
You can use the setting at Tools⇒Assemblies to turn off the click-and-drag method to move parts. This setting requires you to click a toolbar button to enable the cursor to move parts. If you have parts in your assembly that are simply placed with nothing holding their location, then simply clicking a part puts you in danger of moving that part.
If you have a 3D mouse device, one of the options available is for the 3D mouse to move parts in the assembly when one is selected. You cannot use the SolidWorks Undo command when you use this method to move a part.
On the other hand, if your design changes, and you want a set of parts to move together, they will not, and you will have to change their positions using the same technique that you used to get them to their current position.
As a final thought on an assembly of parts that have nothing holding them in place, you might consider fixing the parts in place. Parts are easy to fix or float, and it will give you peace of mind to have them locked down.
Using the Move Component options
The Move Component tool has several options for locating parts without using mates. These options are shown in Figure 7.1.
FIGURE 7.1
Selecting a positioning option with Move Component
The Move Component options are different than those for the Move/Copy Bodies feature. Move/Copy Bodies is found in the part environment and is intended to help move individual solid and surface bodies by using a triad with arrows, wings, and rings, as shown in Figure 7.2. While the functionality of moving bodies within a part is very similar to moving parts within an assembly, the tools you work with in the two situations are different. Another difference between Move/Copy Bodies and Move Component is that Move/Copy Bodies creates a feature in the tree, but Move Component does not.
FIGURE 7.2
Don't confuse the Move/Copy Body triad with any of the assembly-based Move Component options.
All of the following options are described for translating (sliding) the parts, but rotation is also available for the Free Drag, By Delta XYZ, and Along Entity methods.
Also, all of the drag-enabled methods (Free Drag, Along Assembly XYZ, and Along Entity) have some available options in the Options panel of the Move Component PropertyManager shown in Figure 7.1. These options are
• Standard Drag
• Collision Detection
• Physical Dynamics
The options in this panel are activated using a toggle, so you can only activate one of the three at a time. Collision Detection and Physical Dynamics are described later in this chapter. All of the following methods for moving components assume you are using the Standard Drag option.
Using Free Drag
The Free Drag option of Move Component enables you to simply move the part around the screen by dragging with the cursor. This is the same as the default function of the cursor when in an assembly. Click a part and drag. The