Chapter 13: Editing, Evaluating, and Troubleshooting Assemblies
In This Chapter
Manipulating existing mates Making changes to filenames and locations Evaluating assembly changes
SolidWorks assemblies give users plenty of opportunities to enhance their editing and troubleshooting skills. In fact, without evaluation and troubleshooting skills, it might be impossible to get any real work done. Most design or modeling work is not just a linear task — it is often an iterative process. If you get everything right the first time, you haven't tried very hard.
With this in mind, this chapter goes through the essential tools you need to get real-world work done, and do it in a way that shows you understand what you are doing. Editing, evaluating, and troubleshooting skills are tools that will help you deal with the reality of working with SolidWorks assemblies. These tasks can be dauntingly tedious unless you have a working knowledge of the available tools.
Working with Mates
When you think of editing in assemblies, the main task that comes to mind is editing mates, and probably editing broken mates. While there are several other kinds of editing you can do in assemblies, such as changing subassembly structure, replacing components, and managing files, mates really are the biggest item you face when you are talking about editing assemblies.
Chapters 4 and 5 introduce you to the world of creating mates between parts and other items in assemblies. This chapter is more concerned with manipulating ...
