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Configurations that have been added manually are displayed somewhat differently from configs that are being managed by the design table. Figure 11.29 shows the two configurations at the bottom of the tree with square symbols, while the design table configs have Excel symbols.

FIGURE 11.29

Manually created configs versus design table–created configs

After you manually add the config and suppress the feature, the next time you open the design table, the Add Rows and Columns dialog box appears. Many users are simply annoyed by this, but that may be because they do not understand what it does or why it appears. In the example shown in Figure 11.30, a new configuration has been manually added; it appears in the Configurations box as ManuallyAddedConfig, and in the Parameters box it looks like a feature named BodyChamfer has been either suppressed or unsuppressed manually. The appearance of this dialog box means that SolidWorks is asking you if you would like to include these items in the design table. If so, simply select the items you would like to add to the design table and click OK. If you do not want to include the items in the design table, then simply click OK or Cancel. If you click OK, you will not be offered these choices again; if you click Cancel, the next time you open the table, the dialog box with the same choices will reappear. If you never want to see this dialog box again, then make sure that all the options in the Options panel shown in Figure 11.24 are deselected.

FIGURE 11.30

The Add Rows and Columns dialog box

Editing the design table

As I mentioned earlier, when you open the design table inside the SolidWorks window, it can sometimes be difficult to work with. One way to handle this problem is to only edit the design table inside SolidWorks when you want to add new features to the column headers, and when adding new configurations or editing the field values, edit the table in a separate window. This option appears on the RMB menu as Edit Table in New Window. It gives you much more flexibility in resizing the Excel window, changing zoom scale, and other operations, but it does not enable you to double-click a dimension so that it is added automatically to the column header.

Caution

When working on design tables, it is a good idea to avoid conflicts with other sessions of Excel by closing any other Excel windows. The combination of operating Excel spreadsheets inside both SolidWorks and Excel has been known to cause crashes, or the “Server Busy” warning message. If you are diligent about having only one session of Excel active at a time when you are working on design tables (or Excel BOMs), there is less likelihood of a crash or conflict.

Using the Configuration Publisher

The Configuration Publisher enables you to create an interface that creates configurations on the fly based on rules that you establish. The interface that you create appears when you put the part into an assembly, enabling you to create a custom size and a new configuration to go with it. This is similar to putting a Toolbox part into an assembly, and getting a special interface to specify sizes and create new configurations if necessary. In order to create a Configuration Publisher for a part, the part must contain a Design Table with at least a single row. You can use an auto-created Design Table if you need to.

You access the Configuration Publisher by right-clicking the name of the part at the top line of the ConfigurationManager and selecting Configuration Publisher from the menu.

Figure 11.31 shows the Configuration Publisher interface. It is like the Property Tab Builder in that you use it to place interface controls on a PropertyManager that will pop up when the part is placed into an assembly.

FIGURE 11.31

The Configuration Publisher helps you build an interface to create configurations as you place a part into an assembly.

Aside from users putting parts into assemblies, the interface you create using