×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

What does this icon mean?

What does this icon mean?

What does this icon mean?

(OP)
I was given an assembly file that contains and unkown icon, it's the one right next to the assembly icon on the model tree.  Can someone please tell me what it means?

RE: What does this icon mean?

It's supposed to represent a four bar linkage. Layout is primarily useful and thus used for mechanism design. However I have found Layout to be suspiciously buggy, unfortunate too, because the idea behind Layout is good!

Certified SolidWorks Professional

RE: What does this icon mean?

(OP)
Thanks, that was very helpful.  And it actually represents all types of linkages, not just a four-bar.

RE: What does this icon mean?

(OP)
Actually this brings up another question.  I had indeed created a lever arm mechanism that lifts a platform along a pair of rails.  Sometimes it would work by selecting one of the components and dragging the mouse, other times it would lock up in place and not move at all, and other times I'd get mate errors.  Is this a bug?  It was built using concentric mates (plus one "Limit Angle" to keep it from going past the intended point).  Would a linkage make it smoother?

RE: What does this icon mean?

Hmm. Interesting question. Personally I would use a separate part with sketches inside i.e. a skeleton part. As your first part in the assembly, and then construct or mate your other components to that.

Layout is just unusable. Maybe I'm doing something wrong! but I've had it completely blow up on me with even very simple models and there's no way of fixing it but to start over!

Certified SolidWorks Professional

RE: What does this icon mean?

(OP)
What do you mean by skeleton part?  Isn't that what a layout is?  And by the way, I tried the layout method instead and it seems to give me just as much trouble as my original assembly that had only  concentric mates.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources