The Appearance of Things - Display States

Posted on June 13th, 2008 in Assemblies, Configurations, Productivity, SolidWorks, ToolBars, User Interface by The SW Geek

After reading Part 1 and Part 2 of The Appearance of Things, I hope you have found it easier to change the appearance of your parts. Now I am going to show you how to tie it all together using Display States. Like Appearance Callouts and the Display Pane, Display States are nothing new but I do not see nearly enough people using them. I see way too many people using configurations to control the display of assemblies when Display States are way better. Creating configurations to hide and show components works fine but it can be slower then using Display States. Changing configurations reloads each component as if it were a new one, Display States doesn’t load components.

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Configuring Features and Dimensions

Posted on May 28th, 2008 in Assemblies, Configurations, Dimensions, SolidWorks, User Interface by The SW Geek

A couple of weeks ago I introduced the Configure Component command in assemblies. In case you missed it, the Configure Component command extends the ability to control the display of components in assemblies in one interface. In one window you can configure a component to be suppressed or unsuppressed in different assembly configurations or you can select which part configuration will be used in each assembly configuration. It is a great time saver that I hope you have found useful. Now I am back to introduce you to the Configure Feature and Configure Dimension commands.

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Configuring Components in Assemblies

Posted on May 14th, 2008 in Assemblies, Configurations, SolidWorks by admin

If you have spent anytime with assembly configurations in SW 2007, you would know how many steps it took to set up components for each configuration. Then if the component had configurations as well, it added even more steps. I don’t want to go on about some of the horror stories I have encountered but I will say that it is enough to cause most CAD administrators to shutter. With SW 2008 configuring components for assemblies got a heck of a lot easier.

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