SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

FIGURE 10.3

Selecting a configuration from the Open dialog box

Creating configurations

You can create configs manually, using the Configure Feature/Modify Configurations table or

through Excel-driven design tables. Design tables are extremely useful for situations where there

are more than a few configs, or more than a few items are being controlled. You should use design

tables because they keep things very organized within the spreadsheet grid.

For now, I am going to focus on creating and manipulating configs manually so that you can

become familiar with them without also worrying about Excel and design table syntax.

A new config .................................................................................................

To make a new config, you can right-click the top-level icon in the ConfigurationManager, which
displays a part symbol and the name of the part, and select Add Configuration. If you right-click
an existing configuration, SolidWorks will make a derived config, which I discuss later in this
chapter. Figure 10.4 shows the RMB menu and the Properties dialog box that you can use to set up
the new config.