SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part VI: Using Advanced Techniques

is created as a single part as a result of input from marketing, but when it comes time for manufac-

turing input, the part count and processes keep changing. Where the parts break from one another

keeps changing as well. When that kind of change is happening, having the parts created as indi-

vidual parts is a big liability because it is difficult to change. Changing which bodies are merged

together is much easier.

FIGURE 26.14

A towel rack, modeled as a single part and broken into individual parts in an assembly

It is worth mentioning two potential difficulties that you may run into with methods like this. The

first is that if you have people making drawings from parts that have been derived from bodies in a

single part, then they are forced into the Reference Dimension scheme of dimensioning parts because

the feature dimensions do not survive being moved from the multi-body part. This may or may not

be an issue, depending on how the people doing the drawings are accustomed to working.

The second potential issue is what you do in situations where there are multiple instances of a part

that has been modeled this way. Notice in the towel rack in Figure 26.14 that there are several fini-

als, spacers, rails, and other parts that are duplicated. This requires some manual assembly model-

ing. You can make the assembly directly from the multi-body part, but if you need to make

multiple instances of particular parts, you need to do this manually rather than automatically.