SolidWorks 2011 Parts Bible - Matt Lombard [255]
Another advantage to using a surface body is that it is not limited to a two-dimensional cut. The surface itself can be any type of surface, such as planar, extruded, revolved, lofted, or imported. Taking this a step further, the surface is not limited to being a single face, or a body resulting from a single feature; it could be made from several features that are put together as long as it is a single body and all the outer edges of the surface body are outside the solid body. If you examine the mouse part shown in Figure 19.1, you will notice that it has splits made from multi-feature surface bodies.
I mention splitting with surface bodies here because this is where I discuss the Split function, even though I haven't covered the surfacing functions yet. It may be useful to read parts of this book out of order; given how the topics interrelate, it is impossible to order them in such a way that some sections will not refer to a topic that has not yet been covered.
Cross-Reference
For more information about surface bodies, see Chapter 20.
Adding bodies using the Insert Part feature
The Insert Part button can be found on the Features toolbar, or you can access this feature by choosing Insert⇒Part from the menus.
Insert Part enables you to insert one part into another part. When inserting the part, you have the option to insert solid bodies, axes, planes, cosmetic threads, surface bodies, and several other types of entities, including sketches and features. The PropertyManager interface for the Insert Part feature is shown in Figure 19.19.
FIGURE 19.19
The Insert Part PropertyManager
This feature has two major functions: inserting a body as the starting point for a new part and inserting a body to be used as a tool to modify an existing part. Notice that the basket part shown in Figure 19.11 and Figure 19.12 also uses Insert Part to put together bodies to form a finished part.
When you use Insert Part, there is no Insert Part feature that becomes part of the tree. Instead, a part icon is shown with the name of the part being inserted as a feature.
Also notice in Figure 19.19 that the Launch move dialog option appears near the bottom and is selected by default. This option launches the Move dialog box after you insert the part. This Move feature is the same as the Move/Copy Bodies feature, with the same options (translate or rotate by distance or angles, or use assembly-like mates to position bodies). Insert Part is used in many situations, some of which are covered in Chapter 11.
Working with secondary operations
One commonly used technique has to do with secondary operations. For example, you may have designed a casting that needs several machining operations after it comes from the foundry. The foundry needs a drawing to produce the raw casting, and the machine shop needs a different drawing to tap holes, spot face areas, trim flash, and so on.
You can use configurations to do this by using Insert Part in another way. This has nothing to do with multiple body techniques, but this is the only place where Insert Part is covered in much detail. One of the advantages of using Insert Part is that you no longer carry around the overhead of all the features in the parent part. It is as if the inserted part were imported. The configurations method forces you to carry around much more feature overhead. Of course, the downside is that now there is an additional file to manage, but this can be an advantage because many companies assign different part numbers to parts before and after secondary operations.
Starting point
Looking back to the mouse shown in Figure 19.1, the main part has been split into several bodies. You can use Insert Part to insert the whole mouse into a new part where all the bodies except one are deleted, and then the remaining body serves as the starting point for a new part. Many additional features are needed