I have ideas every once in a while and for some reason I just expect Solidworks to do it. Then it does not and I think that would be a great feature. 10 seconds later I forget what it was. Here are 2 that I remembered.
1. Symmetry Mates similar to the relations in a sketch. If this could be setup with using planes and surfaces for symmetry it would be very useful for relating parts to one another without getting fancy about it.
2. Drive text in sketches with a design table. This would be especially useful when you have many different configurations with a particular part number for each length etched in the part. Currently, a feature for each P/N has to be created and then Suppressed or Resolved accordingly. If there were 60 configurations that would save 59 features.
If anyone has ideas about these let me know.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
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7 comments:
SolidWorks 2008 now has a symmetry mate. Looks like they finally incorporated one of your requests.
Symmetry mates finally!! I look forward to using them very soon.
For the different part # issue, couldn't you use something like $PRP:"PartNo" in the extrude text feature to link to the part properties and then control the value in the properties with the design table? Just a thought.
bradc,
I tried the file properties idea in SW2006 and it did not work. I am pretty sure SW2007 text in a sketch is the same. Can you get it to work in SW2008?
You still cannot drive sketch text via design tables or properties in SW 2008. Lets just hope they finally added this feature to SW 2009.
I have had a similar need with solidworks 2008 and text driven by design tables after talking to NTCADCAM and there support team they explained that at present it cannot do this because solidworks doesn't view text as text but as a series of lines like a sketch and therefore sketches cannot be controlled by design tables but it is a significant flaw which needs rectifying as I believe HP Inventor can do this.
Yes this what I was thinking otherwise it would be a trivial feature to add. From what I can tell SW 2009 does not have this feature either (from the what's new list). However, apparently it is possible to drive the text using API... Brute force method I suppose. It has been a while since I have played with Inventor, but it might be worth a look.
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