Chapter 11: Editing and Evaluation
If two adjacent features are to swap places, it generally does not matter whether you move one fea-
ture up the design tree or you move the other one down. However, there are isolated situations
that are usually created by the nested, absorbed features discussed earlier, where one feature can-
not go in one direction, but the other feature can go in the opposite direction, achieving the exact
same result. If you run into a situation where you cannot reorder a feature in one direction even
though it appears you should be able to, try moving another feature the other direction.Note
While this behavior may appear to be a bug, it is more likely just a product of parent/child relationships hidden
by the way SolidWorks reorders consumed parent sketches and other types of features. If you were able to
stretch the FeatureManager out into a straight line from earliest to latest, the difficulties in reordering would
become apparent. n
Reordering Folders
There are times when, regardless of which features you choose to move and which direction you
choose to move them in, you are faced with the task of moving many features. This can be time-
consuming and tedious, not to mention have the potential to introduce errors. To simplify this
process, you can put all the features to be moved into a single folder, and then reorder the folder.
Keep in mind that the items in the folder need to be a continuous list (you cannot skip features),
and you can only reorder the folder if each individual feature within the folder can be reordered.Best Practice
Folders are frequently used for groups of features that go together and that may be suppressed or unsuppressed
in groups. You can also use folders in assemblies. Folders are frequently used to group cosmetic fillet features
that are often found at the end of design trees for plastic parts or for groups of hole features. n
To create a folder, right-click a feature, or a selected group of features, and select Add to New
Folder. Folders should be renamed with a name that helps identify their contents. You can reorder
folders in the same way as individual features. When you delete a folder, the contents are removed
from the folder and put back into the main tree; they are not deleted.You can add or remove features to or from the folders by dragging them in or out. If a folder is the
last item in the FeatureManager, the next feature that is created is not put into the folder; you must
place it in the folder manually. You cannot drag features out of a folder and place them immediately
after it, because they will just go back into the folder. If you want to pull a feature out of a folder
and place it after the folder, there must be another feature between the feature that you are moving
and the folder. However, you can pull a feature out of the folder and place it just before the folder.