Merged bodies....to do or not to

With the inclusions of mulit-bodies, we got the inclusion of merged results.
(if I am not mistaken) My question is, if I leave the merge bodies unchecked
on two touching bodies, are they kinda just floating there? I could just go
in later and combine them as one body, but I am not sure if I seeing where
it would be necessary to do that.

Roll em up and Roll em out

 

Arthur,

I see multi bodies as a construction tool, not a way to represent a "single"
component. The results of your design should represent the real world, one
component=single body. This is also very important when it comes to
manufacturing. It could be problematic with regards to mold design. Also,
some CAM systems don't handle multiple bodies in a single part well. This is
especially true if your using IGES for data exchange.

Regards

Mark

 

I think you can pattern and mirror bodies, in the mirror options diaglouge,
there is a pick list for bodies so you can select the bodeis you want to
pattern or mirror.

Lee

 

Until SW came out with multi-body support your only choice when building a
part was to work with an entirely merged part. With a few exceptions you
should always end up with a fully merged part when done modeling.

Multibodies allows the freedom for the user to sequence the creation of
fillets, Loft between bodies with tangency, do boolean operations, etc.

One exception where you might want to end up with a multi-bodied part is in
representing a purchased part that is actually an assembly but must be
represented as a single part number in a BOM.

 

Personally, I prefer only to use features such as merged bodies, multi
bodies and combine as a last resort.

As a freelance designer I occasionally inherit models that have been
created by "self taught" solidworks pilots, in many cases these are
fine, however, on a number of occasions merged bodies, multi bodies,
combine and cavity have all been used when other modelling techniques
would have produced less flaky models.


Kev