how to locate part in large assembly

I have an assembly with some small parts - like a bolt in the feature tree.

Is there a way to easily locate the bolt in the design window...? it is so
small that I cant really see it when I select it in the tree (selected parts
change to green) but still I cant find it...

 

Barry

If you RMB (right click) on the item in the tree and choose "Zoom to
Selection" it will position that item so that it is centered and mostly
fills the window.
It may still not be visible if it is hidden behind other items. A couple of
tricks might help here:

If you FIRST turn on "View/Modify/Rotate about Screen Center", then when you
do the "Zoom to Selection", it will center the "z depth" for future
rotations, so the item you zoomed to stays in the middle of the screen, even
if you rotate a quarter turn about the x or y axis. If there are gaps in the
model, you should be able to spot the selected item if you rotate the
assembly so the gaps come between you and it.

If not, you could turn on one of the wireframe view modes and / or hide some
of the parts in the way. (The former tactic should help identify what's in
the way. When you hover the cursor over a part in the feature tree, a
"bounding box" for that part will show on screen)

If this is a recurring problem, you might want to have a look at "Assembly
Envelopes" in conjunction with "Advanced Show/Hide".This lets you hide and
show a whole bunch of parts all at once, based on their position with
respect to volumetric envelopes defined by you.

A final tactic (well actually there's lots more, but too much information
can be a bad thing) is to temporarily suppress one degree of freedom (like a
distance mate) in a known direction, then, looking roughly from that
direction with the bolt selected, drag it (start by clicking on an area of
screen with no parts) towards you so that it emerges out of the model.
Depending why you want to see it, (say you simply want to check the
orientation is correct) this can be a useful method.