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Flexible Components

Tips and Tricks Tianshuo Sun 14 February 2020

Flexible Components

In SOLIDWORKS 2020, you can define a part component as flexible to drive the geometry of flexible components by the assembly geometry.

How to Add a Flexible Component

Here’s an example of adding a flexible component:

Open system_dir:\Users\Public\Documents\SOLIDWORKS\SOLIDWORKS 2020\samples\whatsnew\assemblies\flexible_components\Destination_Assembly.SLDASM.

Click Insert Components Flexible components (Assembly toolbar) and select system_dir:\Users\Public\Documents\SOLIDWORKS\SOLIDWORKS 2020\samples\whatsnew\assemblies\flexible_components\Spring.SLDPRT.

Insert Components 

Create a coincident mate between Collar<1> and the red face of Spring<1>.

Creating a coincident mate

Click View > Hide/Show > Axes Flexible components.

Create a concentric mate between the central axis of Spring<1> and the cylindrical shaft of Shaft<1>.

Create a concentric mate

In the Feature Manager design tree, right-click Spring<1> and click Make Part Flexible Flexible components in the context menu. In the graphics area, a preview of the unattached reference entity appears.

Feature Manager design treeMake Part Flexible

To reattach the reference entity, click a planar face on Shaft<1>.

clicking a planar face

Click OK.

In the graphics area, you now can move Collar<1> up and down, and see the spring become longer and shorter.

moving collar upmove collar down

Also, you can always make the flexible part rigid again by simply click on Make Part Rigid in the FeatureManager design tree.

Clicking Make Part Rigid

Tianshuo Sun

Application Engineer

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