Derived configurations

Or you could just ask here.

well........the problem is that i don't understand exactly what the difference is between a derived configuration to a normal one besides that the documentation says clearly that all changes to parent configuration will propagate to child configuration. but what does this mean? if i make a change to parent config it propagates to child config and vice versa! but my logic says that only a parent config can change his child config and that the opposite can't happen. so if try to change a feature which were defined in the parent config, within the child config, solidworks should stop me and prevent that kind of change.

To make thing short..........i'm just confused! i dont understad what is exactly hapening and why thi happens and somthing else.

Thanks, Gil

Individual parameters in the derived configurations can have the link to the parent configuration severed. If a parameter is set to "this configuration" it will not update or be updated the parent configuration. If the parameter is set to "link to parent configuration" then changes will be propagated.

This is handy for when you have two closely related configurations with minor differences. For example, I have a simplified assembly config with fasteners suppressed. I have an inspection configuration which is dirived fro mteh simplified configuration. In addition to al lthe fasteners being suppressed, other components are suppressed to further simplify the drawing views for inspection. So, when new fasteners are added, I only suppress them in one config, and the dirived config gets the changes also.

Dale, i'm sorry, but i feel realy stupid asking this: i've tried to use derived configs myself, and when i change a dimension in a child config's feature, then the change propagates to its parent! i thought it supposed to happen only when the change comes from the other direction (from the parent config to the child config - one way path of update!) . i'm surely missing here something fundemental or else i don't know what......

When you change the dimension, make sure it is set to "this configuration" (or "specify configuration"). I don't alway get it right myself. I don't use it often enough.

Dale, I must say that my attempted use of Derived Configs confused me when I tried it several times, got unexpected results and then just avoided Derived Configs, because I didn't have time to delve into the issue.

Bo

O.K. Bo, thanks for confirming this. so i it turns out that it's not just me banging my head against the wall :-)

I'm confused. I just tried a simple part file where I created a default config, and then a derived config under that. If I change a dimension while in the derived config and say to change that config only, then that's what it does. If I say to change all configs, then it does. If I go to the parent (default) config and make a change to that config, then it changes that one as well as the derived one.

Everything seems to working properly. Did I miss something? SW2007 SP3.0

WT