Chapter 21: Editing, Evaluating, and Troubleshooting Assemblies
IN THIS CHAPTER
Manipulating existing mates
Making changes to filenames and locations
Evaluating assembly changes
This chapter goes through the essential tools you need to get real-world work done—and do it in a way that shows you understand what you are doing. Editing, evaluating, and troubleshooting skills are tools that will help you deal with the reality of working with SolidWorks assemblies. These tasks can be dauntingly tedious unless you have a working knowledge of the available tools.
Working with Mates
When you think of editing in assemblies, the main task that comes to mind is editing mates—and probably editing broken mates. Although you can do several other kinds of editing in assemblies—such as changing subassembly structure, replacing components, and managing files—mates really are the biggest item you face when you are talking about editing assemblies.
Chapters 4 and 13 introduce you to the world of creating mates between parts and other items in assemblies. This chapter is more concerned with manipulating mates that already exist.
In assemblies, you can find mates in two different locations and display them in two different modes. The first place you find them is in the Mates folder at the bottom of the assembly FeatureManager, as shown in Figure 21.1.
FIGURE 21.1
All the mates in an assembly are shown in the Mates folder at the bottom of the assembly FeatureManager.
Listing mates in the Mates folder ...
