SolidWorks 2008 brought the addition of new tools for selecting components that will make your life easier. Throughout the upcoming weeks we will be covering them all but today we will be covering the new selection tools Volume Select, Select Suppressed, Select Hidden, Select Mated To and Select Internal Components. These new tools are easily accessible in the Select Flyout Button in either the Standard Toolbar at the top of your screen or in the Shortcut Bar (see the post Improve Productivity – Use Shortcut Bars for more information on Shortcut Bars.)

Volume Select

The first tool, Volume Select, may seem a little cumbersome and I will admit that will not be used daily but it does have it’s advantages. I tend to use the Volume Select tool when I have many small components in close proximity that I need to select. Selecting all of those components individually on screen or in the FeatureManager can take some time and be a pain but with Volume Select I can select all or most one command.

The first step in using the Volume Select tool creating a rectangle that will make up the X & Y of the selecting volume. When you create the rectangle by dragging from left to right, only components that are entirely inside of the volume will be selected. By dragging the rectangle from right to left, components that are within or crossed by the volume will be selected. By default, the rectangle you create is on a plane that is normal to your viewing plane passing through the origin of the assembly. This is fine in most cases but sometimes viewing angle of the assembly cause the rectangle to be too deep from the components which means you have to make the volume deeper to catch all the desired components.

To make sure that the rectangle you create will be closer to the components you desire, you can preselect items such as a vertex, an edge, a non-planar face, a planar face or a reference plane. Selecting a vertex ensures that the rectangle plane will pass through the vertex. Selecting an edge or a non-planar face makes the rectangle plane intersect the edge or the non-planar face as close as possible to the assembly origin. Lastly, selecting a planar face or reference plane creates the rectangle on that plane and changes your view to be normal to the selected plane.

In this example, we did not preselect any entities and the rectangle we created will only select components the are entirely inside of the created volume. Once the rectangle is created, release the mouse button and the view changes to show the volume we created in an isometric view. Drag handles are displayed on the volume which allows us to expand the volume to capture all the desired components. The color of the drag handle corresponds with the draggable direction based on the colors of your triad. Red is draggable along the X, green is draggable along the Y and blue is draggable along the Z.

As you resize the volume, components will be dynamically selected and will change color in the graphics area and in the FeatureManager. Once all the desire components are selected you can either press Esc on your keyboard or start any command that can be initiated after selecting multiple commands.

Select Suppressed

The next four selection tools are considerably easier with less steps but they are still awesome tools to use. First is the Select Suppressed tool which is pretty self explanatory, all components that are suppressed in your assembly will be selected. In our example we only have one component that is suppressed but when there are multiple components that are suppressed is when this tool shines.  In the Select Flyout button we click on Select Suppressed.

Instantly all the suppressed components in our assembly will be selected.

Once we have all of the suppressed components in our assembly select we can do any number of things to the components. To name a few, we can delete all of the suppressed components, we can create a new folder for the suppressed components or we can just resolve the components.

Select Hidden

The Select Hidden tool works just the same as the Select Suppressed tool, all hidden components will be selected and highlighted in the FeatureManager.

On clicking the Select Hidden tool, all the hidden components in the assembly will be instantly selected in the FeatureManager. You can then deselect components that you do not wish to include in the current selection by holding the CTRL key on your keyboard and clicking the selected component in the FeatureManager.

As with the Select Suppressed tool, you can then complete any number of task with the selected components. Here we will just show the hidden components in our assembly.

Select Mated To

The Select Mated To tool creates a selection set all of the components mated to the selected component minus the selected component. For example if you have a plate that has 100 screws mated to it, only the screws will be selected when you select the plate with the Select Mated To tool. If you want to add the component to the selection set, you must hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and select the component.

Clicking on the Select Mated To tool we select the component in the assembly and the two components that are mated will be selected.

Select Internal Components

The last but certainly not least is the Select Internal Components tool which selects the components that normally require the outside components to be hidden or transparent.

In this example, on clicking the Select Internal Component tool the shaft that is internal to the assembly will be selected. Normally you would have to manually select the component in the FeatureManager or hide the external components to get to the shaft.

We can then Isolate the part in order to work on the internal shaft of the assemly.

This concludes the five selection tools in assemblies for this post. In the coming weeks we will be covering other selection methods including: Selecting Hidden Components, Selecting Sub-Assemblies and Selecting Based on Search Criteria.

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