2D to 3D assembilies best how to?

Hi all,

I have a number of assembly drawings in 2D CAD comprising 10+ parts each,
what is the best way of turning these assemblies into SW assemblies of
discreet parts?

My thought, at the moment is to take a copy the 2D assy for each part, and
assemble the results but this seems long winded!

TIA,

Best,

JAG

 

I'm afraid there are no simple shortcuts for you. You will need to
individually create all of your parts and assemble them. Your 2D
assembly can be useful as a "layout" sketch, but that's about its only
use. You can do "top down" part creation in a SolidWorks assembly file
using selected elements as sketch basis for each part. Use the Convert
tool on the sketch toolbar, and if you want to make the part feature
sketches independent of the assembly (recommended) you should delete all
On Edge relations and constrain the elements yourself using geometry
relations and dimensions. Check out the 2D to 3D tools in SolidWorks as
those may be useful to you, depending on how complex is the geometry of
your parts. Otherwise, if you have lots of such work to be done your
company should probably consider farming it out to services that
specialize in 2D to 3D conversion. Some of those are located in India,
and are thus quite cost-effective.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton
Watermark Design, LLC
http:/www.h2omarkdesign.com