Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts
Using Design Tables
In addition to describing some of the basic concepts involved with configurations, the first part of
this chapter presents reasons for using design tables. For example, while manual configuration
management can be haphazard, and is highly prone to mistakes, design tables lay everything out in
an Excel spreadsheet. Although many new users ask whether they can use a different replacement
spreadsheet program, you must use Excel for design tables.Note
The versions of Excel that are supported by SolidWorks for design tables are 2000, 2003, and 2007. Although
Excel 97 may still work, Microsoft no longer supports that product. n
Excel is a format that is easy to read and print out, and even non-SolidWorks users can understand
and work with it. Although there is some special syntax that you need to use with design tables, for
most uses, SolidWorks can create the syntax automatically for you; therefore, there is minimal
manual data entry. If you are careful to name dimensions, features, and configurations properly,
design tables should be easy to understand and manage. In Excel, you can also color cells, rows,
and columns in such a way that large amounts of tabulated data are easier to sort through. In addi-
tion, because design tables use Excel, they can also use all of Excel’s calculation capabilities.Best Practice
When using equations and design tables, it is considered best practice to name dimensions, sketches, features,
and other configured items. However, it is not recommended to mix design tables with SolidWorks equations.
Besides the fact that Excel equations are far more sophisticated than those of SolidWorks, driving dimensions
from too many locations can be confusing when you edit the part after you have forgotten the details of how
the part was built.
It is a great idea to document design intent using comments in the features or the Design Journal. You should
also add comments to design tables as needed. n
What Can Be Driven by a Design Table?
Just because something can be configured does not necessarily mean that it can also be driven by a
design table. Here is a small list of items that fit into this category:l Sketch plane configurationl (^) Suppressed sketch relations
l Suppressed dimensions (suppressed dimensions become driven dimensions)
However, the good news is that there are many items that can be driven by a design table. Table
10.1 lists these items, along with their associated syntax.