The cavity tool has been around almost from the beginning in SW. It is not that hard to use. Here is some practical information:
- The cavity tool is applied to a part being edited inside an assembly.
- Open an assembly.
- Drop in the part you wish to use as the cavity cutter. Mate it to known planes in an orientation that makes sense for you.
- From the insert menu, create a new part and using the planes that you mated the cutter to, extrude a box around the cutter.
- Save the newly created box part and then RMB on it and select edit part. You are now editing the box into which the cavity will be cut, in-context of the assembly.
- Insert a feature (from the Insert/Feature menu) called cavity into the box part. Select the cutter and click OK.
- If all is OK you should have the cutter's impression in the box you just made.
- Using a section view, open up the box and look at the impression you just cut.
There are more nuances to doing this. Once you have done it this way, you can branch out from there using scaling factors for shrink, using inserted components instead of creating a new box, etc. After cutting the cavity, use List External references to lock the cavity calculation down so that SW won'nt recalculate it every time. The part into which the cavity is being cut need not fully envelope the cutter.
You cannot import dimensions from a cavity. The scale factor used when cutting a cavity will not scale reference geometry from the cutter. Using the scale feature on the cutter will likewise not scale reference geometry or dimensions.
On a complex cutter, the cavity feature can be very computationally expensive and may have problems. Before starting and with the cutter open as a part, use Tools/Check with Tools/Performance/Verification on Rebuild to make sure your starting geometry is OK. If you have a general fault shown, stop and fix it before proceeding.
An alternative to creating a cavity in an assembly is to insert a part into another part and use a Combine feature to subtract the cutter.
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