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Newbie - Confusion with part and subassemblies references

Hi there

I'm working with SW 2005 for few weeks and I think that it's great piece of software. I have learned lot of things, but now I have encountered something that is killing me. In short, I'm creating cabinets for kitchen and I have problem in referencing subassemblies. Here is what I do:

I created cabinet assembly which consist of two parts: frame and legs. Then I create new assembly witch represents kitchen space. In kitchen assembly I inserted cabinet subassembly two times. Now I want to be able to change dimension (e.g. width) of only one cabinet in order to adjust it to available space. Problem is when I change dimension of one cabinet it's propagated to the second one.

I tried to resolve problem in way that I used "Save as" for initial cabinet assembly in order to create independent copy. File structure was like this:

Kithcen\Kitchen.sldasm

Kitchen\Cabinet_1\Cabinet_1.sldasm Kitchen\Cabinet_1\Frame.sldprt Kitchen\Cabinet_1\Leg.sldprt

Kitchen\Cabinet_2\Cabinet_2.sldasm Kitchen\Cabinet_2\Frame.sldprt Kitchen\Cabinet_2\Leg.sldprt

I also make sure that each cabinet assembly points to parts in it's own directory. When I opened each part separately, I could change their dimensions independently. Problem is when I insert Cabinet_1 and Cabinet_2 in kitchen assembly and change dimension of one cabinet: dimension of second one is changed also! It seems that both cabinet assemblies are referencing the same parts although their parts are separated in different directories.

What I'm I doing wrong ?

As workaround I found that for each new cabinet I also need to create new name for Frame and Leg part, regardless that they are in different directory. I don't like it because I have to do it manually (open old assembly, Save as, copy old parts to new directory, rename them, replace old parts in cabinet assembly with new ones.....). Isn't there better way to solve this (e.g. cloning of assembly with all it's references)?

How would you approach this scenario?

Best regards,

Ivan

Reply to
Ivan
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You need to get to grips with 'configurations' - within the help manual.

The 'Cabinet' has to have two have 2 configs and then the Frame and Legs have to have 2 configs .

Then Cabinet (config A )would have Frame (config 1) & leg ( config a1)

while Cabinet (Config B) would have Frame(config 2) and leg(config b2)

Kitchen then would have in it Cabinet (1) and Cabinet(2) which is the same assembly but in different configurations.

It all better explained in the Help Menus, but just proceed with caution as having multiple configurations and cross referanced parts can cuse headaches later. It just comes with experiance.

TTFN

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

You have discovered the hard way that SW doesn't see files as differnt just because they are in a different location. What you did wrong was simply not knowing that in advance.

Look up SolidWorks Explorer and learn to use it. It can copy an assembly and all the referenced parts with new names.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

Problem with configs is that I don't know in advance how many copys of cabinet assembly will be made. I will try SW Explorer, as mentioned bellow.

Thx. Ivan

Reply to
Ivan

When you need another version you right click on the asm icon in the Feature manager tree and . Then you have to do the same for any parts in the new configuration that are different or change any Mates you want etc.

However Dale's way is more robust if you have simple parts and don't need to change things in the future.

Anyway - as you are new to SW - there are many ways of acheiving the same result, and each person over time finds their preferance. Just keep you sense of humour as you will need it :-)

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

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