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Standard parts for all projects ?

moss

New member
good day,

i've just started to use solidworks 2005 a couple of weeks before and there are tons of questions which i hope someone here is kind enough to help me out.

first of all, is it possible to have a standard part (eg. a cylinder) which i can fit to a number of projects? currently, i have a standard part (cylinder) saved with its part number as its filename. i use "insert->components->existing parts/assembly"

for example, i have a cylinder with 100mm stroke. it will work fine if i'm fitting it to a project, which need the cylinder to extend 50mm only. however, if i were to use the very same cylinder in another project which needs it to extend 80mm, the original part will have a condition of extending 80mm instead of 100mm. worse still, the first design that used the cylinder will now have a stroke of 80mm instead of 50mm.

i hope you guys can understand what i'm trying to tell and i would be grateful if someone can solve this problem for me.
 
You just need to make multiple configurations for that cylinder. Go to the configurations tab at the top of your tree at the left. Right click on the default config and select add new configuration.


You could name the configs 100mm, 25mm, etc etc.


Now you need to change whatever feature determines the cylinders stroke in each configuration.


When you are in the assembly mode, you can right click on each individual cylinder and select properties. Here you can say wich configuration you want to use (100mm, 50mm, 25mm...).
 
hi there,

thank you for the tip mate! it worked like a charm. tat was something tat i overlooked.

i hope i'm not sounding greedy but is there another way around this? it's rather different from wat i usually do with autocad (yes...it's 2D). can i just import the drawings and its dimensions without its properties?(like in autocad)

again, any form of advice/suggestions are welcomed. thank you for reading.
 

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