Top down and the old layout design, whats the best approach?

I am a designer coming from board to Autocad back in '90, now into the
SW 3D world. One technique or method I am trying to get used to is
the "top down" (as they like to call it) method of design in SW. When
I worked in 2D, I started with a layout of a part of the machine,
something like a gearbox or such, and built a mechanism, new parts
being designed as required in the layout.
Now with SW, the "layout" which I am accustomed to starting a design
with, seems to be the assembly file. I am used to starting with
centerlines and a general envelope of how big something will be. Many
times my "layout" in 2D became my assembly drawing with a border.
Now....am I missing something. It looks like my traditional layout, IS
the assemlby file that I will be working in. I will be modifying parts
in the context of the assembly file.

To those seasoned designers in SW, I am asking if this is the
technique or method they use in machine design with SW. I am trying
to get myself into the SW world of machine design in the best way.
How do the veteran designers in SW do it?

 

You and bob z. started at the same time, except bob z. got to go to
solidworks in 2000 (luckily!).

The assembly file is your playground. Use it as you wish. Insert a
part and draw a sketch in that part. The sketch in that part will be
your layout - make it look like what you would draw on a board. Put
dimensions all over it. This will be what you want to work to. If
you want, you can even mate new parts to this layout sketch.
Honestly, mating the parts to this layout sketch rocks. Play with
that a little while and you will see the benefits. There are some
fancy names for this process but bob z. can't think of any right now.
This layout sketch should help you to feel comfortable in this new 3d
world.

bob z. tends to do a funny mix of topdown designing and whatever they
call the other way of designing. If you get too caught up in the top-
down design process, you could end up with an assembly that needs some
sub-assemblies and performance will suffer.

You will get some more replies from people way more knowledgable than
good ol' bob z. The ways to get this job done are numerous. Read
what people suggest and try all of them. You will get comfortable
with one or two ways. The key is to relax and not worry so much about
how your feature tree looks and let it flow!

Good luck and have fun.

bob z.

 

I would tend to agree with what both of you are describing. They like to
call it skeletal modeling. The layout sketch is the skeleton that you
hang the meat of your design onto. B.Z. took the concept a step further
and put the skeleton (layout) sketch into a part. The part is inserted in
the assembly. The benefit is that the skeleton can now have planes and
bodies and whatever else you may need plus you can put it into other
assemblies or subassemblies. The bebefit is that you can have your layout
in more places than the main assembly.

Top-down, bottom up, whatever. Middle-out of some kind is usually the
reality of the situation. Billyb is on the right track. If you read
enough SW documentation and books, you'll see the phrase "design intent".
The layout sketch contains the design intent. The rest of the assembly
and parts reference the layout sketches and other features in the
skeleton part, so that the design intent is captured as much as possible
in one place. Try to keep all your references flowing downhill from the
skeleton part. When references start going in more than one direction you
slow SW down very quickly.

Depending on what you are doing, the skeleton model may not be the best
way to go, though some variation is still recommended. The practical
reality of large enough assemblies is that top-down design is too
cumbersome for SW to handle. After a design grows to a certain size, it
will become necessary to break or lock references between parts in order
to save time. Unfortunately, experience will be the best teacher on this
issue. You will know when it is time.

If things slow down suddenly, then you have probably made a circular
reference. SW won't allow this directly, but it can still be done in more
subtle and hard to find ways. Usually, an in-context relation from one
part to a feature in a part that is determined by an assembly mate is the
simplest case. "Excessive" use of configurations will add complexity to
these situations.

I don't know of any way to learn to navigate these issues except to
suffer through some of the consequences.

Someone who needs love (or has extra to share) should collect a bunch of
this sort of information and start a SW FAQ wiki.

 

TOP down is a good approach to use in designing any type of system
(like a gearbox). However, in SW you really have to understand the
implications of the actions that you take in using the top down
approach. In ACAD you might make your layout and then copy a bit here
and a bit there as a basis for a detail. In SW there is no good way to
make your layout (which you later made the assembly) prior to
finishing the details. This can be an aggravation and can slow down
the design process. We struggle with this every day because we do
quote drawings and then have to start from scratch again in SW to
actually make the model. Nevertheless, it is possible to approximate
your layout methods in SW, though you won't be able to use them as the
final assembly drawing by adding a title block.

The implications of doing anything top down in SW is that you create
in context relations between the assembly and parts or between parts
through the assembly. This means that the components involved in any
in context relationship must be solved each and every time SW does a
rebuild and that the relationships between the files must be
maintained so that there are not circular references, etc. As in life
sometimes a strength can become a weakness. The strength is that if
the assembly changes so does the part. The weakness is the overhead
which requires a lot more thought and resources. The practical outcome
is that most people use in context to enable copying features from one
part into another and then they remove the in context relations.

There are other methods that don't require in context relations and
these involve envelope parts and skeletons. These are very simple
parts that carry key features of the layout and can be used both in
the assembly and in parts to transfer layout information. These
methods are faster and more robust.

Since you are well versed in ACAD let me propose a method that you
might find familiar and yet transferable to SW. Suppose that in
DWGeditor or in ACAD you created your layout as usual. As you need to
create details from the layout you bring those portions of the ACAD
drawing into SW via 2D to 3D having previously placed the detail
features on a layer to facilitate the importation. You can then use
that geometry directly as the basis for a part, or you can create
surfaces from it to use as a skeleton in both a part and as an
envelope in the assembly. Much more elaboration on just how to do this
is needed, but I won't take the time here.

Once you have all your parts, make the assembly, check fit and
interference and create your final drawing from the assembly. The most
obvious reason to do this is that SW will allow you to create section
views and auxilliary views as well as your axonometric projections
much more quickly.

One thing you will probably find in using SW over ACAD is that in SW
you will start finding things that you did in ACAD that just don't
make sense in 3D. That is one reason it is worth the effort. You will
also find that it takes you a bit more time on the design end to do it
3D, but that if you factor in the time saving from having parts that
actually fit the first time you will be ahead.

It is a shame that SW never considered making drawings able to
parametrically drive components like some other CAD packages but it is
more an aggravation than a roadblock.

TOP

PS before doing top down, read all the help on incontext, envelopes,
importing parts into parts and 2D to 3D conversion.

 

TOP,

Good points, as usual. It looks like we were composing at the same time.
But...

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you use "insert model items" to put
the model dimensions on the drawing, you can drive the model from the
drawing. Is this not what you are referring to? Myself, this has always
seemed to be a marketing novelty. I've never used it except as a curiosity.

 

Dale,

As I was typing the thought had occured to somehow get the layout
parts onto a drawing in which case this might be done. I haven't
worked it out so I didn't want to suggest something that I couldn't
answer the details on.

TOP

 

I'd agree with the most of the previous posts, because there are so many
different ways of doing it that all of them will be right under some
circumstances!

If the project is for designing bespoke machinery, or maybe even some
consumer device where pretty much every part is unique to that design, then
using in-context relations or a skeleton part should cause few problems and
might save a stack of time.

However, if the project uses many existing components plus some new ones,
then in-context relations can be a minefield to pick your way through -
especially if the model was created by someone else!
I often use "empty parts" (i.e. just the standard planes + any useful
reference geometry) to fill in the gaps in the structure (and show up in a
provisional BOM) and to constrain other parts to. I'll then add the
geometry to them at the appropriate time.
One golden rule is that the "quickest" method to get something that looks
reasonable in the short term, is almost always the slowest method in the
longer term.

From past experience, the area where it is hardest to decide the approach is
when making "sales drawings" where you might need to quickly produce a
shaded image/eDrawing/drawing that looks vaguely believable to the customer.
How I tackle it depends on :-
a) whether I think the enquiry is highly speculative from a potential
customer or alternatively a "racing certainty" from an existing customer
b) whether it is basically a re-working of a previous design or
alternatively involves a lot of conceptual work.

At one end of the scale is a speculative enquiry involving conceptual design
work. Here I would tend to model parts that combine several/many real-world
parts - this saves on the overhead of naming/saving multiple files, adding
many components to an assembly, creating loads of mates, and obviates the
need for in-context relations. Obviously if parts have to move relative to
one another then they have to be separate.
The downside is that if the enquiry becomes an order, you'll have to remodel
it all as separate components. However, if you use multibody parts and are
careful to use reference geometry where possible, then you might be able to
salvage much of the geometry.

At the other end of the scale, are enquiries from existing customers that
are re-works of existing designs. Here I would make a copy of the top-level
assy and drawing and then selectively "save as" on any components/drawings
that needed to be new items.

If there is no well-constructed assembly as a starting point, then I'll use
a "bottom up" approach to add existing components to sub-assys which I'll
then add to a top level assy. Getting the structure right from the start
can save hours of heartache later.
I'll also use a top-down method to create the new parts.

John H

 

Oh, ok. I read you now. Importing dimensions of a sketch that is absorbed
into a feature. Right. That can't be done without a workaround.

Gene DiMonte is an advocate of reusing model dims (even did a SWW
presentation on it, IIRC), and he told me about a workaround for layout
sketches in parts. Extrude the layout sketch to make a feature, then delete
the feature. Once the sketch has been absorbed by a (solid?) feature, it is
somehow marked so that "insert model items" can retrieve it. I don't know
if a similar workaround exists for assembly layout sketches, or layouts in
skeleton parts in assemblies, or layouts in envelope parts.

 

I just re-reread your post, again. Other CAD systems allow you to create
layouts in a drawing, and use THAT as the basis of a model?

 

Maybe I've misunderstood you, but I can insert sketch dimensions into a
drawing without the sketch having been used in a feature.

John H

 

Maybe I've misunderstood you, but I can insert sketch dimensions into a

Perhaps the situation has changed. The last time I tried it I was probably
using 2003. I distinctly remember not being able to import models dims for
a layout sketch into any view.