SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part IV: Creating and Using Libraries

FIGURE 17.10

Create holes that drill into different parts separately

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5 6

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Understanding Toolbox

Toolbox is a complex add-in that helps you add hardware to your SolidWorks assemblies. Much of
the functionality in it is intended to be automated, and to get the most from Toolbox, you need to
configure it deliberately. The advanced functionality might not be obvious to users and should
probably be set up by an administrator.

If you are an individual user who is using Toolbox on your own and not sharing data with others,

the default Toolbox settings should be fine. But if you are one among a large group of users, a ded-

icated implementation effort is needed.

This book primarily covers Toolbox for the end user perspective. If you are looking for information

from the administrative perspective, I recommend the SolidWorks Administration Bible (Wiley, 2009).

That book covers various schemes for implementing Toolbox.

Caution
Improper installation, maintenance, or management of Toolbox can cause the loss of all useful information
about fasteners and hardware in your assemblies. n

Toolbox creates fasteners and other hardware components on the fly or reuses existing parts when

possible. Technically, it is not a library, but a configurator. Libraries store existing components,

while configurators build them on the fly from information supplied by the user.

One advantage of configurators is that the parts start out very compact because there is only the

default size, and the sizes are efficiently stored in a database and created as needed.