top-down design in SW2008
top-down design in SW2008
(OP)
I am working on some fixture design and thought it would be a good candidate for a top-down approach, as the fixture is dependent on several external constraints, some of which are not fully defined at the moment. I have read through the help on layout sketches, but am not entirely clear on their use in practice.
Does anyone have a sample assembly or some "best practice" tips so I don't inadvertently make my life difficult a few months down the road?
Thanks,
Matt
Does anyone have a sample assembly or some "best practice" tips so I don't inadvertently make my life difficult a few months down the road?
Thanks,
Matt






RE: top-down design in SW2008
We have pretty much stopped using top down design. The Engineers here have a hard time with understanding it. So I use top down design to design my projects then delete before giving to Engineer for look – see.
I would suggest:
1. Keep it simple.
2. Do not locate edges. (Just to be safe)
3. Have the relationships only one (1) level deep.
4. Check your work into PDM every night.
Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2008 x64 SP3.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB, nVidia 3400
e-mail is Lotus Notes
RE: top-down design in SW2008
RE: top-down design in SW2008
CBL, I haven't. *Hangs head* I didn't realize that's what blocks were for. I'll do that now and see what I can learn.
RE: top-down design in SW2008
Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group
RE: top-down design in SW2008
1. Relate to sketches whenever possible.
2. Use incontext relationships sparingly, only when necessary.
3. Avoid using the "inplace" mate. First mate a part in using planes or non-changing geometry. Then generate the incontext relationships. The "inplace" mate is automatically created if you "insert new part" into an assembly.
4. Try to have all of your incontext parts driven by a single part as high up in the assembly tree as possible. Preferably the first part in. Avoid having a part near the top of the tree driven by a part below it in the tree. This is known as a circular reference and greatly increases rebuild times and often results in the green rebuild light never going away.
-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional
RE: top-down design in SW2008
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Regards,
Scott Baugh, CSWP![[pc2] pc2](https://www.tipmaster.com/images/pc2.gif)
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policieswww.scottjbaugh.com
RE: top-down design in SW2008
Your following comment is questionable.
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4. Try to have all of your incontext parts driven by a single part as high up in the assembly tree as possible. Preferably the first part in. Avoid having a part near the top of the tree driven by a part below it in the tree. This is known as a circular reference and greatly increases rebuild times and often results in the green rebuild light never going away.
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Part models in an assembly document are records in the assembly database. The sequence of the parts in the assembly does not have anything to do with assembly performance.
Alex
RE: top-down design in SW2008
Well yes and no. Performance will be affected if the assembly needs to loop through the tree multiple times to solve all the mates.
Here is a quote from Matt Lombard's SolidWorks Bible (pg. 491):
On Matt's site, he has some more rule of thumb regarding in-context assemblies:
http
-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Certified SolidWorks Professional