This is where your DriveWorks projects suddenly take off on a gigantic scale.
There are many areas where this makes a difference; I have picked 2 to demonstrate what this actually means and have split them into 2 parts.
Part 1 – Using component replace to drive components independently of the main model.
With DriveWorksXpress you have one User Form per model set. All components that are to be driven must exist in that model set. Any components that are not required in the resulting clone can be deleted, but the master model could potentially get messy.
DriveWorks allows you to extract components from an assembly and independently drive them – and then swap them back into the assembly.
Take the Trailer Body model below as an example, it has no rear doors.
This is because there are numerous options that can be configured for the doors.
The above models are just 2 of the rear door options. Parameters that can change include height, width, hinge quantity, lath quantity, locking mechanism type and size, etc. etc.
DriveWorks allows these components to be captured independently of the main Trailer Body model but specified as part of the same set of user forms. This has powerful implications for your project, including the following: -
- Model size is kept to a minimum
- Quicker generation time
- Rule set easier to maintain
How?
The main model includes a placeholder where the rear doors will be mounted. This can be one of the actual components that can be there or it could be a dummy model with a very small file size. An important note to make is that all files that can replace the dummy must have the same internal ID (As of SolidWorks 2008 mates will fail if the internal ID does not match). You can try how your components swap by trying it manually directly in SolidWorks.
Whichever component you use in the master assembly can have the components it can swap with added as alternative files from the DriveWorks model wizard.
All alternative models can have their driven parameters captured. They then have rules applied to these parameters in the same project set up for the main model. The rule for the File Name of each model is set to result in the required name when the component is required or to be deleted when not required.
The rule for the file name of the dummy component in the main model is set to be exactly the same name given to the required component that is to replace it. And that's it.
You can see a video of a different example to this by following this link - Multiple-Assemblies
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