Solidworks equivelent to "master sketch" in Inventor?

Something that is talked substantially with Inventor usergroups has been the concept of a "master sketch". What this means in Inventor is that sketches can be "referred to" if it is not "consumed", (ie. used to form an extured, revolve etc. solid) by another sketch. So, the technique is to design a "part" which is made up of a number of planes, (in 3D space) with as sketch for every part that will ultimately be in the assembly. One example of this was a fellow that designed rockets. He used the master sketch to position all of the components and their relative positions, (via. relationships between planes and sketches) within the entire rocket. Individual parts were made into solids, which basically "copied/ referred" to an individual sketches in the master sketch parts file. Since this process, (at least in Inventor) does not consume the master sketch it can be used over and over for each part. Then he made an assembly with all of the parts. But, since the individual part were referenced from the master sketch, the origins of each of the parts were relative to the base origin of the master sketch. This allowed each part to be constrained to 0,0,0 in the assembly which resulted in every part being accurately located. The end result of all of this was that when he changed the length or diameter of the rocket for a new configuration, When a new configuration is then made, the basic shape of each of the parts are updated and their positions in the assembly are also modified appropriately.

The Question: Is this possible in SW and if so, how, and what is the term that SW uses for this? The biggest problem that I have had moving from Inventor to SW has been that most of the descriptions the same functions have been changed, (I assume to avoid law suits for Autodesk). So I havn't figured out how to do this in SW.

Thanks,

EdT

Reply to
Ed
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It sounds like Solidworks works the same way as Inventor. You create a layout sketch in either an assembly, or in a dummy part added to an assembly. You can then use the sketch to constrain components to, or use it to create in-context relations by referencing elements of the sketch when creating features in other parts.

John H

Reply to
John H

Ed,

I addition to John's suggestions, you can design using this method with a multi-body part file as well.

While your "Master Sketch" is going to be consumed by the first solid feature, you can still select that sketch and use it to create more features. When I have used this method in the past, it usually worked best to "show" the "Master Sketch" while creating the solid bodies. That keeps you from having to go to the FeatureManager constantly.

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

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Reply to
Ricky Jordan

Ed,

Your question gave me a good idea for a blog post.

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The video linked in the post demonstrates using multi-bodies driven by a sketch. The rocket model isn't fancy by any means, but has enough features to demonstrate the point.

Enjoy!

Best Regards,

Ricky Jordan

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Reply to
Ricky Jordan

Thanks all,

Constraining to a sketch sounds like it is very similar to the Inventor approach but more straight forward. I have been hearing about the benefits of multi-body parts. Both of these have been on my list of things to look into. I will have to move these two features up on my list.

Thanks again,

EdT

Reply to
Ed

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