Envelopes--Have you used them?

They don't have to be mainly assembly tools.

Make a skeleton part with surfaces and planes representing where you want your geometry to be (like you would with a solid in a standard envelope).

Now take that part and insert it into a part before you start modeling.

Now use the imported surfaces to guide the creation of the part.

Then when in the assembly pull in the skeleton part and mate the skeletons in the previous parts to that.

This was presented at SWW for building cabins in boats. They built a master layout from surfaces that represented the boat hull and the fore aft location of the cabin walls. Then each cabin could be modeled based on this master layout including trimming the cabin wallls to the hull without needing in context relations or having to work in the large assembly.

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re: components to envelopes...

I have combed through the API for a way to do this. Nothng yet.

snipped-for-privacy@juno.com wrote:

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That70sTick

I looked in the API help for a way to bring in an envelope. SW uses a the same method they use for bringing in a part which tells me that whatever an envelope is beyond a part it gains from being in the assembly. There has got to be a process that converts a part to an envelope inside the assembly. As you know an envelope also appears in the config tree as well as in the feature tree.

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I generally use them as a skeleton type part and with a great deal of success. SolidWorks should put some effort in to advertising this methodology (as they should the insert-part methods described by others here)

One major problem with this methodology is handing models over to people who don't understand it (and won't take the time to learn). By the time they get handed back they're broken - contexts deleted, ignored etc.

Chris

T> I need a quick head count of people who have used envelopes.

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Twit

I don't think SW is to blame on not advertising this. They have. When this discussion started years ago and SW found out that envelopes could be used many things in addition to selection in assemblies this even got into one of SW newsletters. And I believe they had at least three presentations at the last SWW that touched on this. My TTM during that time was even pushing it in some meetings and demos.

But you are right about what happens when somebody works on one of these models without understanding. This is true of anything. One of the things that users come to understand after Essentials training is a bit about how to analyze a SW model. This is an essential trait in any SW user worth his/her salt.

The blame if there is any has to rest primarily on VARS because they are the ones in touch with users and most able to demonstrate applications of this and any other functionality to real world problems. Case in point, I was in a meeting all week with an ex-AE from a VAR. He had no idea of what envelopes could do and made the statement that he had never seen anyone use them. And he worked for a VAR in a major metropolitan area.

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