SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 8: Patterning and Mirroring

Table Driven Pattern

A Table Driven Pattern drives a set of feature locations, most commonly holes, from a table. The
table may be imported from any source with two columns of data (X and Y) that are separated by a
space, tab, or comma. Extraneous data will cause the import to fail.

The X, Y Origin for the table is determined by a Coordinate System reference geometry feature.

The XY plane of the Coordinate System is the plane to which the XY data in the table refers.

You can access the Coordinate System command by choosing Insert ➪ Reference

Geometry ➪ Coordinate System from the menu. You can create the Coordinate System by

selecting a combination of a vertex for the Origin and edges to align the axes. Like the Sketch

Driven Pattern, this feature can use either the centroid or a selected point on the feature to act as

the reference point.

The fact that this feature is still in a floating dialog box points to its relatively low usage and

priority on the SolidWorks upgrade schedule. The interface for the feature is rather crude in

comparison to some of the more high-usage features. This interface is shown in Figure 8.20.

FIGURE 8.20

The Table Driven Pattern dialog box