Check Boxes – The Unsung Heroes

Check Boxes – The Unsung Heroes

Each year SOLIDWORKS introduces so much new functionality that it’s almost impossible to take in all of it. We try to present as much of it as possible in our Innovation Days. But some stuff gets lost on the cutting room floor, or gets bullied to the sidelines by its bigger, more impressive, siblings.

So this blog is for the unsung heroes, the little guys who don’t receive the plaudits, but in many ways are more useful & impressive. Here’s 5 check boxes that you need to use:

Flat Tree View (new in ’12)

If you’re looking to reorder the Feature Tree this gives transparency on the exact order and control over it.

This is very useful for anyone that needs to make modifications to parts that already have a load of features in. With a simple click to turn it on, you can see all the nested features and make sure that when you edit and add new features they go in the right place first time. It is also handy for troubleshooting through errors as you can easily work your way down through the tree in the chronological order the part was built.

Enable component renaming (new in ’16)

This is something you will hopefully have seen during one of Innovation Days, or online. However it’s not immediately clear that to make it work a System option needs to be activated first.

Fairly self-explanatory, ticking this enables you to rename individual components in your assembly feature manager tree. Once the files are saved, the names update in explorer also.

Arrow key navigation 

The Rollback bar interface can be a little vague at times. This option gives control over to the keyboard arrow keys. Click on the Rollback bar so it becomes highlighted and then control is handed over to the keys.

Indent – cut 

This feature replicates the powerful Weldment Trim for non-Weldment bodies. Similar to the Combine-Subtract tool except it doesn’t delete either body and a clearance can be introduced.

This is very useful for keeping your multibodies parametric when you have complex shapes going on, and will save you some extra features in comparison to using Copy bodies and combine.

Hide new components when inactive (new in ’15 & ’16)

Display states are a powerful and lightweight alternative to configurations. However they previously needed a bit of housekeeping to make sure only the correct components were showing in each one. The two improvements in ’15 & ’16 address this. They can be found off a right mouse button click on a Display State.

In ’15, you gained the ability to ‘Hide new components when inactive’. So when any new components were inserted into an assembly, when this was ticked, those new components would be automatically hidden in any inactive display states.

In 16′ more power was given by allowing users the option to apply this to specific display states.

About the Author:
Logan Pegler, Technical Support Engineer
CSWE
Based in Auckland, New Zealand