Part III: Working with Assemblies
- Reorder the other parts and assemblies so that the bigger assemblies appear higher
on the list, and the parts appear at the bottom. (Remember that the Alt+drag option
prevents a component from being placed into a subassembly.) - Drag the part called BB (for Bottom Bracket) into the Frame Assembly (drag
without using the Alt key). The assembly FeatureManager at this point is shown in
Figure 12.24.
FIGURE 12.24
The starting state and the state as of Step 4- Select both wheels and then select Add To New Folder from the RMB menu. Name
the new folder Wheels, and move it to the bottom of the tree. - Expand the Mates folder, select the first four mates, and put them in a new folder
(select Add To New Folder from the RMB menu). Name the new folder Centering
Mates.
Summary
Assemblies are more than simply parts and subassemblies put together with mate relationships;
several other types of features and placeholders can also exist in the assembly FeatureManager.
Organizing assembly components is fairly straightforward and can offer benefits for finding parts
as well as controlling suppression and display states globally.The assembly FeatureManager contains several options for the data to display for subassemblies,
parts, configurations, and features within. Remember that all the data that you include in your
SolidWorks documents can be accessed and reused later on, so it is worth the effort to name it
properly. Descriptions can be very important, both at the part level and also for features and
configs.