SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

FIGURE 10.22

A fully populated design table

Config Names Feature or Property Syntax from Table

The config names go in the first column and the feature or property names go in the second row.

The first row is reserved for the name of the table. All this is automatically set up by SolidWorks.

Note
Because you are actually working in Excel when working with design tables, you can use Excel formatting,
which is how the text in Figure 10.20 is rotated 90 degrees for the column headers. (To rotate text in a table,
right-click the cell, group of cells, or row; select Format Cells; and then select the Alignment tab.) n

In the new design table, the next step is to type in some configuration names. Because you are

working in Excel, all the fill functionality is available. In the example shown in Figure 10.23, I

have typed in the first three values of 001, 002, and 003, then window-selected the cells, and

dragged the fill handle on the selection window to fill the number pattern to populate a larger area.

To find more information about this technique, look for Fill or Automatically Number Rows in the

Excel Help files.

The next step is to fill in some feature and dimension names in the second row. The first thing that

you do is to suppress the HexDrive feature. To make this the first feature in the list, click in cell

B2, and then double-click the HexDrive feature in the FeatureManager. The name of the feature

and its current suppression state are added to the design table with all the necessary syntax and

correct spelling.