Part III: Working with Assemblies
l (^) It is a great way to structure your relations within an assembly.
l It is useful for motion analysis studies.
In practice, this feature needs some enhancements before it is ready for use on real assemblies.
While attempting to create a Layout tutorial for this chapter, I came across several limitations that
would make the tutorial unmanageable, and I think you will agree that using 2D sketches as
assembly layout sketches is still a better idea than trying to avoid the limitations of the formal
Layout feature. The limitations listed are presumably not bugs because Layout was introduced in
2009 and this testing was done on 2010 SP 0.0. Here are some of the limitations of Layout:
l (^) The 3D sketch used for Layout has all the limitations that come with 3D sketches.
l Sketch relations are listed in the Mates folder.
l (^) Gaining access to edit the Layout once it has been closed requires a method you don’t
expect from a sketch: you click the Layout button on the toolbar rather than right-click
and edit an icon in the FeatureManager.
l It requires that you use blocks to get all of the functionality.
l (^) A fully defined 3D sketch with blocks is very unstable.
l Part creation from blocks does not offer a time savings.
l (^) You cannot paste copied sketch entities from a 2D sketch into the Layout.
l You cannot use autodimension (or polygons or ellipses) in the Layout.
Although the formal Layout feature has serious advantages over regular layout sketches, at this
time the limitations outweigh them. The rest of my discussion on layouts addresses the generic lay-
out technique rather than the formal feature.
Tutorial: Working In-Context
Follow these steps to get a feel for the workflow of working with parts in the context of an assembly:
- Open the assembly from the CD-ROM named Chapter 16 Tutorial Table.
sldasm. - Set the colors that are to be used during in-context editing. Remember that two settings
control this — one at Tools ➪ Options ➪ Colors, and the other at Tools ➪ Options ➪
Display/Selection — as shown in Figure 16.16.