'Drilling Down'?

In the presentation I saw of SW2008 the presenter had something open on the
task pane that allowed him to select features and even sketches from other
parts and drag them onto the current part...I guess I didn't take very good
notes because for the life of me I can't figure out how he was doing that.
I think he refered to it as 'drilling down'. How do I do this?

TIA
Wormsign

 

Worksign,

Check out page 1-10 in the SolidWorks 2008 "What's New" guide. What
you are referring to is called "Design Clipart".

Hope this helps.

John

 

First, you have to have Windows Desktop Search installed and have a complete
index built of all your SWX parts.

Then, in the Solidworks window, you search for something and the task pane
will display parts/files that contain that keyword. The keyword may exist
in the filename, file properties, or even a feature name (if you name your
features).

For example, you remember there being a specific feature you created back in
a part called "rotator." You would search for rotator, and the part would
list in the task pane. You could then select the part and use it. Or, you
could drill down into the part and look at all its features, thus being able
to copy a feature from one part into your current work part. Or, you could
continue to drill down and just copy a sketch of a feature.

The key is to have Windows Desktop Search installed and active on every
single client machine running SolidWorks that will create its own index of
every single file you have on the local workstation as well as the shared
network drives that are mapped. Nothing like having all your seats of SWX
indexing your network at the same time. That should be wonderous for
performance.

--Scott