Extrude Cuts of Multiple parts in an assembly

[THREEVE]

First off I am very new to solidworks so bear with me, so what i am trying to do is create a building that is going to be blown apart in FLACS model. Crucial to this is that each individual block be part of the model. So i Started by building a single brick and making an assembly out of a group of these bricks, stacked properly. I have already created a solid wall with bricks stacked ontop of each other. Now what i want to do is go through and cut out holes in the walls for windows and doors. My question is what is the correct way to do this? I have been using extrude cut to remove the parts of the wall nessasry to fit a door frame and such in. However at later stages when im trying to move all the already cut walls together in a new assembly to create the building, all hell breaks loose and some windows and doors stay but others disapear and then i get errors about certain sections not rebuilding correctly, or mates that i used to connect the walls have strange errors. Is there a better way to do this? Or am i just being foolish trying to do this in solidworks?

 

[drawoh]

THREEVE,

...i Started by building a single brick and making an assembly out of a group of these bricks, stacked properly. I have already created a solid wall with bricks stacked ontop of each other.

My sister is an architect. She hates people like you.

I do quarter section views by drawing an assembly-level sketch and doing an extruded cut. I do not rip everything apart afterwards, although I do use the SolidWorks Explode.

Are you creating a picture, or are you doing some kind of engineering analysis? If you are creating a picture, sketch and extrude-cut probably will work for you. If you are doing some kind of analysis, SolidWorks probably is the wrong software.

JHG

 

[THREEVE]

Understandable, I hate myself right now. But im an intern and when my boss asked if i could do it, of course i said I could figure it out.

No its not for a picture, we actually already have a very detailed picture drawing. This is a much more simplified version that we are using for a vapor cloud explosion analysis. Knowing that is there any other program that anyone would recommend for this?

 

[handleman]

So... in the end you will export this model to IGES or Parasolid and open it in some other program?

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[THREEVE]

I beleive so, yes

 

[handleman]

In that case it sounds like you need to make liberal use of patterns and subassemblies. The mates etc. are really immaterial because they all go away once you export to parasolid/IGES. The final parasolid/IGES will be just a bunch of separate bodies.

See the attached file

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)