What is "Hide Solid Body" used for?

I get that "Hide Solid Body" hides the model, but why is this useful? Could
someone explain what it is intended to do?

 

There are times that you use a body for construction purposes, but it's not
to be a part of the final product. I have not done that in any of my
designs, but I've seen it done, so therefore I am absolutely not an expert
on it.

WT

 

IMHO, similar to hiding/unhide surfaces, it's probably one of my most
used features for managing bodies.

This brings up concerns/needs/wants for more visibility management, such
as, grouping/layering/representations... and no, I'm not talking about
configurations (which could be used along with the above).
I'm generally speaking of layout sketches or work areas or related
geometry visibility to enhance workflow.

...

 

Use it with multibudy parts -solid bodies that can be independant of
each other, note "merge result" check box when creating a feature.

It can be used for many things but a simple example is if you model a
bottle you can produce a second independant body in the same part that
represents the liquid in the bottle, the fill level of this liquid
being some distance below the top of the bottle.

You can then use mass properties to calculate the volume of the liquid
if you select that body or the volume of the bottle if you select the
other body.

If you then create a 2D drawing and you do not require the fill level
to show on the drawing you can Hide the solid body of the fill.

Hope this helps

Kev

 

....the way I have used it is in assemblies where I don't want to break up a
patterned set of parts but I want to render an image without some of the
parts being visible, it is also useful as the non visible parts are still
part of the assembly mass and positioning calculations.

JJ

 

I mate some assembly parts with part sketches.. avoids some problems
with edges being redefined/disappearing in sheet metal parts.

 

Besides hiding the model when working on surfaces I usually use it to
scare the hell out of my co-workers that don't know how to use
SolidWorks very well.

Ken

 

POOF!!! All their work is gone. LOL
When I was young I was a dishwasher and we would send the new guy into the
basement to get the Bacon Stretcher. Then if he was really gullible we
would send him for the Rice Peeler.

Corey

 

....and at the airplane repair shop where I worked, we sent the new guy
for a bucket of prop wash or a can of relative bearing grease.

 

.... and when I worked in carpentry we would ask for the board stretcher.

 

If I have a model with trim surfaces or construction surfaces, I use
"Delete body" as the last feature to clean them up. The surfaces are
recovered when the model is rolled back to before the "delete body"
feature.

The reason I do this and not "hide" the surfaces is so that the
surfaces do not spontaneously appear in future drawings, assemblies or
exports. Doubled-up surfaces can wreak havoc on exported files when
the customer tries to retranslate them.

 

We used to send the new apprentices to the stores for a left handed
screw driver, a long stand or a tin of elbow grease .

 

TO build really robust parts in cases where lots of features depend on
positions of previous features, best practice is to relate current sketches
to endpoints and lines of previous *sketches*, rather than vertices and
edges of the solid resulting from those sketches.
This can save a whole lot of time troubleshooting, say in situations where
changes to the model wipe out those vertices and edges, whose children
immediately dangle. (Michael Jackson style?)

But ..... it is a lot easier to pick those sketch entities if you turn on
global sketch visibility, RMB and show the relevant sketch, then Hide the
Solid Body ...... particularly in the usual case where a sketch entity
coincides with a resulting solid edge.

The trap is : when doing this, you will often be rolled back up the tree. If
you hide the solid when rolled back, it will forever thereafter disappear
when you roll back to that same place. Freaks you out at first. I try to
remember to unhide before I roll away to some elsewhere position in the
tree.

Remember also to hide all the sketches when the model is done, if you will
be producing drawings from it. It is not sufficient to globally turn off
sketch visibility in the part, you need to turn off the individual sketches.
(Easiest way is to Roll to end, then with global sketch visibility on, hide
solid body(s) (and surface bodies if any). Anything you can still see will
be sketches: right-click on a sketch line and go "Hide Sketch". The entire
sketch of which that line is a part will hide. Rinse and repeat until the
canvas is clean.

If you forget this step, what happens? Well once a drawing has been
generated from the part, if any future poor schmuck saves it as a different
filetype (such as dxf), all sketch entities will miraculously reappear like
zombies from the grave. The only way to get rid of the sketches in the dxf
file will be to individually select and delete every last entity.

(was it Bart Simpson who suggested that zombies prefer to be referred to as
"living impaired?")

 

I should have added (re zombie sketch entities infesting dxf files)

NOR can you fix it in the SldWks drawing any more easily. Once again, each
sketch line has to be individually hidden. The die is cast once the
offending part is used to produce a SldWks drawing.

 

Any U.S. Navy vet has probably sent someone to get a BT punch. BT's
are boiler technicians, usually very large men.

 

Don't forget the girls who took auto class in high school and you told
them they would need blinker fluid and muffler bearings.....

Funny thread

 

It's too bad they didn't use that stretcher on you.....

 

Blinker fluid and other Handy stuff at this site

http://www.kalecoauto.com/fluids.htm

 

That's pretty funny - I had never seen that site.

WT

 

elaborating on the joke, we used to send the new guy to find the blue board
stretcher--he had to make sure to get the blue one, because the red one
didn't work right....