Wiley SolidWorks 2009 Bible Part 8 ppt

535 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox 17 n Add or Update Favorites. You can use this button to either add a new favorite to the database or change the name or other settings for an existing favorite. n Delete Favorite. Removes a favorite from the database. n Save Favorite. Saves a favorite to an external file with the extension *.sldhwfvt, which can be loaded by other users and added to their databases. n Load Favorite. Loads a saved favorite file. Storing custom holes You can use Hole Wizard Favorites to store custom holes. Create the hole with its custom sizes, and then add the favorite and give it a recognizable name. The custom hole will now be available to anyone who connects to the same database file. Administering Hole Wizard Favorites The database file is typically found in the Data subdirectory of the SolidWorks installation directory, but an option in Tools ➪ Options ➪ File Locations ➪ Hole Wizard Favorites Database theoretically enables you to move the file to somewhere else. Further, the *.sldhwfvt files do not have an entry in the File Locations list, but seem to always default to the lang\english subdirectory of the SolidWorks installation directory. Neither this location nor the Data directory makes sharing among multiple users very convenient, but both file types can be copied to other installations. You may want to read through Chapter 18 to learn about setting up libraries for all file types. BEST PRACTICE BEST PRACTICE It is a best practice to create a folder for library type files that you want to save and use with a future version of SolidWorks. You can specify the locations for these files through Tools ➪ Options ➪ File Locations. I recommend a location such as D:\Library. This moves the file off of the same drive as the operating system, in case you need to reformat, and it keeps it out of the Program Files area to prevent it from being lost or overwritten when SolidWorks is installed, uninstalled, upgraded, or changed in other ways. Even for files that need to remain in the SolidWorks installation directory (such as macros), it is best to also have these backed up in a library location. Favorites quirks Hole Wizard Favorites seem to have a couple of quirks that are possibly “sub-optimal,” as they say. First, you can only see the favorites for a specific type of hole when that type of hole is activated in the interface. For example, if you have a number of favorites for countersunk holes, but you currently have the counterbored hole icon activated, you will not be able to see the countersunk favorites until you switch to the countersunk icon. If you have a lot of favorites, this may be beneficial, but if you have only a few favorites, or you do not use favorites frequently, it may be confusing, and can create some unnecessary steps to find all your favorites. 536 Creating and Using Libraries Part IV A second quirk occurs when you allow SolidWorks to name the favorites and you have fractional values such as 1 ⁄4 — which happens now and then in hole sizes — and then try to save the favorites. Each favorite is saved as a separate file, using the name that was automatically assigned to it by SolidWorks as the filename. Unfortunately, the character “/” is not allowed in a filename, and so it fails. Using the Hole Series The Hole Series enables you to make a series of in-context hole features in individual parts that are connected by a Hole Series assembly-level feature. It is intended for a stack of parts where, for example, the top part has a counterbored hole, the middle part has a clearance through hole, and the final part has a blind threaded hole. You can also do this by using an existing hole to align the rest of the series. Hole Series interface The Hole Series used to be part of the Hole Wizard, but has since been exported as a separate tool. It is now a five-step, wizard-based feature, ending with populating the new hole with a fastener using Smart Fasteners functionality. The Toolbox add-in is required to use Smart Fasteners. Figure 17.8 shows the interface for the various steps. Basic Hole Series steps When using the Hole Series feature, you must follow these basic steps: 1. Have an assembly open with two or more parts in it that need to be fastened together. 2. Initiate the Hole Series tool by selecting Insert ➪ Assembly Features ➪ Hole ➪ Hole Series. It is also available as a toolbar button, but it is not on the toolbar by default. The Hole Series also depends on pre-selection to decide whether it uses a 2D or 3D sketch for the placement sketch. You should always pre-select a flat face before creating a Hole Series feature. 3. If the Hole Series is to be started from an existing hole, then select it in the Hole Position panel. If not, then use sketch points, construction geometry, dimensions, and sketch relations to locate the hole centerpoints. 4. Use the tabs at the top of the PropertyManager to advance from one panel to the next. n The Start Hole Specification refers to the part where the series of holes starts. n The Middle Hole Specification is for all parts between the first part and the last part. n The End Hole Specification is the last part and is either a through clearance hole or a threaded hole. 537 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox 17 FIGURE 17.8 The Hole Series interface The finished feature leaves an in-context feature in each part, with the Hole Series part in the assembly, as shown in Figure 17.9. 538 Creating and Using Libraries Part IV FIGURE 17.9 The finished Hole Series Understanding Toolbox I recommend that you read this section through, from beginning to end. If you read a paragraph out of context, then you may not understand the point that I am making. With Toolbox, it is vital that you know what you are doing, to ensure the quality of your production data regarding fasteners and hardware. CAUTION CAUTION Improper installation, maintenance, or management of Toolbox can cause the loss of all useful information about fasteners and hardware in your assemblies. Toolbox is an add-in that requires SolidWorks Office or higher, although you can also purchase it separately. In this book, I typically avoid talking about add-ins because the amount of material simply becomes overwhelming at a certain point; however, Toolbox is the cause of much conster- nation among users and CAD Administrators, and so it deserves some attention. 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. 539 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox 17 The advantage of a library is that it allows you to simply plug in the parts and they work. All Toolbox really needs to do for users is provide a library of parts. Anything more than that is only beneficial if it offers some improvement over a simple library of existing parts without introducing any risks or setbacks. How Toolbox works Because Toolbox is not a library, and is not passive the way a library is, there is a component of it that is active. To make an analogy, no one asks how a staircase works, because it does not work, it simply exists, and people use it. An escalator, however, is a different issue. With an escalator, there is a complex installation, and then to use it, you have to know how to get on and get off, and what to do if it stops working. The end results of using the staircase and using the escalator are the same (you start at the bottom and arrive at the top), but the complex automation is supposed to save you some effort. That is one way you can look at Toolbox. The end product is supposed to be the same as using a static library of parts, but there is some mechanism behind the scenes that has to be set up and maintained properly in order for it to work in the way you expect. Most SolidWorks books, tutori- als, or training materials are going to ask you to accept what happens inside Toolbox as a “black box” and to just assume that the end results are exactly what you need and intend. Here, I supply you with information about how it works, so you can decide how useful it will be for you. The database Toolbox has three major components: n Default parts of one size, with named dimensions and features n A database containing all size information for all parts and Hole Wizard holes n A software application with settings and an interface When Toolbox is installed, it starts as a set of SolidWorks parts with named features and dimen- sions, some suppressed features (depending on settings), some dlls (executable programs), and a database. The parts have a single Default configuration, which is typically one of the size extremi- ties, either the largest or smallest. The database starts out about 87MB, and includes all the size information for all the parts, as well as all the standards information. If you create a custom standard in Toolbox, it actually replicates a section of the database. By doing this, the database file can easily double in size. Later, you will see that a network installation of Toolbox requires the database to be on the network, and every time you create a new fastener, it has to open the database. As a result, simply placing a screw in an assembly can mean that even if your assembly is located on your local hard drive, you still have to open a very large database file across the network. The first rule about performance with SolidWorks is to work locally rather than across a network. By default, the database is located at C:\Solidworks Data\lang\English. You can open this file with Microsoft Access or Excel. 540 Creating and Using Libraries Part IV NOTE NOTE When specifying network paths, it is best to specify a universal naming convention, or UNC, path rather than a mapped address. A UNC address follows the format, \\Server\Shared Folder. The advantage of the UNC over the mapped drive is that mapped drives can vary from one computer to another, but the UNC is always the same. The Configurator application If you have just installed Toolbox the way that most, if not all, new users do, then you will accept all defaults and trust the software that you just purchased to not give you bad advice. In this situation, the database is installed locally and Toolbox is set to use configurations for sizes. When you put a Toolbox part into an assembly, you do not even notice anything other than the part going into the assembly, although it may hesitate while the large database is opened. If you check the part configurations, you may notice that there is a Default config and a new config that represents the size that you just created. Every new size that you create makes another new config- uration. Figure 17.10 shows a Toolbox part with the FeatureManager and ConfigurationManager open showing several configurations that Toolbox created in this particular fastener. FIGURE 17.10 A Toolbox part showing the FeatureManager and ConfigurationManager Next, you may receive an assembly from a client. Often, because Toolbox parts are located in an area where you would not necessarily look for parts, users send assemblies and parts, but do not send Toolbox parts. You may think that this is okay; after all, you have Toolbox on your system, and so it should pick up your toolbox parts. The truth is that when receiving an assembly from someone else, you are better off if one of the parties does not have Toolbox on their system. 541 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox 17 Huge Screws If both you and the client who sent the assembly have Toolbox, then you should be okay, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, your client’s assembly will pick up your Toolbox parts, but no, it will not work properly because you do not have all of the same configurations and sizes that your client has. In cases like this, you will experience what I have come to refer to as the Huge Screws syndrome. When SolidWorks finds the right file but cannot find the right configuration, it uses another configuration, usually the Default, which is generally the biggest size. This is where the Huge Screws name came from. Part of the really bad news is that if you save your assembly with the Huge Screws, SolidWorks has no way of knowing that the huge screws are not the correct screws, and you can only solve the problem manually by going through the assembly and reassigning sizes to the huge screws. You can work around this by opening an assembly that has not yet been saved with the Huge Screws, by using the Advanced option in the Open dialog box (you can find this in the Configurations list), and selecting the New configuration showing assembly structure only option. With this option, all components are suppressed. You can unsuppress any non-Toolbox parts and continue working. Ask your client to send you his Toolbox parts and then unsuppress those parts in the assembly, making sure that it finds the right parts, which is best done by having the correct parts already open before you open the assembly. These options are shown in Figure 17.11. FIGURE 17.11 Opening an assembly with all parts suppressed 542 Creating and Using Libraries Part IV If you replace your Toolbox parts with the Toolbox parts from the client, you may experience the same problem in reverse if you had configs that your client did not. In the end, it would be great to be able to merge the two parts to combine all of the available sizes into a single file. There is a way of doing that, which I will describe later, but it is a convoluted workaround. Files that have the same names and different content are at the top of the list of things you shouldn’t do in file management, and yet the SolidWorks Toolbox system frequently creates this very situation. A slight retraction To be fair, SolidWorks has fixed the Huge Screws problem in the 2007 version, by coming up with a clever method for figuring out which size is missing and building it on the fly when the assembly is opened. Additional information about the Toolbox parts is now stored in the assembly, which helps identify the missing parts. Unfortunately, the fix only works for assemblies that use the parts from the 2007 or later library and assemblies that have been built in SolidWorks 2007 or later. To sum up, if you have assemblies built in an older version of SolidWorks, and your Toolbox library becomes corrupted or lost, or you are sent an assembly that uses a different Toolbox library, even if you are working in a version later than SolidWorks 2007, you cannot benefit from this fix. This is disappointing in many respects because anyone who has existing Huge Screws problems will continue to have them until they rebuild the assembly or manually repair the configurations. It is doubly disappointing because the information needed to re-create the correct configuration has always been stored in the assembly — the filename and the configuration name are enough — but SolidWorks has missed an opportunity to really fix this problem. Before the Summary at the end of this chapter, I have some recommendations if you are still interested in using Toolbox. Toolbox organization Toolbox parts can be organized in a number of ways. The raw parts are organized as follows: n Standard and Units (for example, ANSI Inch or ANSI Metric; most standards do not include multiple units, they assume metric). n Hardware Type (such as bearings, bolts, and bushings). n Each type is organized differently, but bolts and screws are organized by drive or head type (for example, you have socket head screws, hex head, and thumb screws). n Filenames look like Socket Button Head Cap Screw_AI.SLDPRT, where the AI represents ANSI Inch. Figure 17.12 shows this organization in part. Also notice the warning message in the Design Library window. It is telling you that your Toolbox is not set up optimally for sharing between users. I describe how to handle this situation later in this chapter. 543 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox 17 FIGURE 17.12 Toolbox content organization Configurations or parts? By now you are probably unsure about the use of configurations in general. If so, that is not the impression I am trying to convey. Configurations in themselves are not the problem; the problem here is in the file management practice of having files with the same names but different content. Mixing that with the practice of trying to treat “configurator” software like a “library” exacerbates the problem. That said, you have two options regarding how you create different sizes. The default option is that sizes are created as configurations within a single part. The other option is that sizes are created as individual files. The best time to make this choice is before you install SolidWorks. Unfortunately, before you install SolidWorks, you probably do not have any idea that these issues exist. The reason for making this decision not just early, but immediately, is that if you start using the default setting (configurations), and make a few configurations for some parts, and then switch to using the Save Parts setting, the parts that are saved out will all have the pre-existing configurations and thus different sizes. [...]... for all users 5 48 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox Upgrading SolidWorks with Toolbox It is time to upgrade You have your SolidWorks 2010 disks, and SolidWorks 2009 is installed You can now go ahead and install SolidWorks 2010, but when it comes to the part in the installation shown in Figure 17.15, take notice again of what you are doing The installation may default to the SolidWorks 2009 Toolbox location... making the part. ” The implication here is that you do them one at a time, and that whoever creates the part uses the same syntax as everyone else Figure 17.14 shows the interface for adding a Toolbox part to an assembly You can access this interface by dragging a Toolbox part from the Design Library window into the assembly graphics window The materials assignment is usually intended to be done as part of... the Description You can access this interface and the Part Number fields through the Add Favorite button in the upper-left corner of the Favorites panel The way that SolidWorks expects you to work with materials and custom part numbers is simply not practical unless you have one person doing all of the work, and you do not have many parts to create SolidWorks does not provide any direct way to mass-populate... any assemblies from external sources that were created referencing Toolbox parts That sounds like an extreme measure, but it is necessary, as Toolbox’s weaknesses come from sharing Toolbox data 545 17 Part IV Creating and Using Libraries FIGURE 17.14 Adding a part number and description to a new Toolbox part Unfortunately, most SolidWorks users do not have the luxury of being able to dictate the environment... this with many individual parts would be very messy n The interface to select configurations from a list is easier to work with than the interface to select a part from a list n File management organization is somewhat easier for configured parts FIGURE 17.13 Toolbox settings for the Create Configurations or Create Parts options 544 Using Hole Wizard and Toolbox Separate parts are better for: n Keeping... Install the new version with Toolbox in a new location; for example, SolidWorks 2010 Data or a directory name that helps to distinguish this library from another 2 Copy the old SolidWorks 2009 data (containing the correct configurations) over the top of the new SolidWorks 2010 data 3 Browse to the Toolbox\data utilities subdirectory of the SolidWorks installation directory and run UpdateBrowserData.exe... overwrite this location, then you will not be able to use Toolbox with SolidWorks 2009 (because the library will be a future version) If you intend to use multiple versions, then you also need to maintain multiple Toolbox installations You should also consider what would happen if you make a mistake and completely overwrite the SolidWorks 2009 library that contains all of the configuration data that you... one size part with another n A guarantee that you will never have the Huge Screws problem Materials or custom part numbers in Toolbox Maybe your company uses screws of different materials or finishes in your products Toolbox, in its default arrangement, does not have an option to deal with this directly If you ask a tech support person whether materials and custom part numbers can be used in SolidWorks, ... choose not to put library parts in the vault because they are not revision-managed documents All the same, revision management is not the only reason to put items in the vault Looking at it from the Toolbox point of view, Toolbox cannot work with its parts in the vault, and if changes were allowed to the parts (sizes add configurations), then you would need to check in the part every time you added... way to bring Toolbox parts into an assembly is to drag-and-drop them Position the part that the fastener goes into so that you can see the edge of the hole where the screw head will go Then browse to the correct fastener, and drop the fastener onto the edge, as shown in Figure 17.26 FIGURE 17.26 Dropping a fastener onto a hole 557 17 Part IV Creating and Using Libraries Toolbox parts will even automatically . refers to the part where the series of holes starts. n The Middle Hole Specification is for all parts between the first part and the last part. n The End Hole Specification is the last part and. time to upgrade. You have your SolidWorks 2010 disks, and SolidWorks 2009 is installed. You can now go ahead and install SolidWorks 2010, but when it comes to the part in the installation shown. Toolbox 17 FIGURE 17 .8 The Hole Series interface The finished feature leaves an in-context feature in each part, with the Hole Series part in the assembly, as shown in Figure 17.9. 5 38 Creating and