is there a way to have a design table within solidworks, reference an excel file outside of solidworks? or be able to drive the design table outside of solidworks?
is there a way to have a design table within solidworks, reference an excel file outside of solidworks? or be able to drive the design table outside of solidworks?
is there a way to have a design table within solidworks, reference an excel file outside of solidworks? or be able to drive the design table outside of solidworks?
Yes and yes. In 9 years, I’ve never seen this discussed in detail or promoted in this forum so I might be the only one who will say that this method is an extremely powerful Solidworks tool. I've been using external links in Design Tables for a long time.
I let a single Excel file with multiple worksheets do all the complicated work for both parts and assemblies and when I'm happy, I use external links in part and assembly Design Tables to tell Solidworks how to graphically display what Excel has already figured out. For my most complex project with thousands of configurations, nested IF's in Excel have endless possibilities that Solidworks Design Tables can't handle. Again (from my previous comments in other threads), Excel doesn't fail or create corrupt files like Solidworks does with large/complex spreadsheets.
External links in Design Tables work well for simpler projects also.
Be aware that external links in DT cells is not the same as "Link To File" mentioned above.
do you know of any tutorials out there that could help me with this M.B.?
Click on the Mauricio link, check out his Content Page and there is a list of information, sure miss his posts...
Configuring a Top-down Assembly from outside SW - User Input without opening SolidWorks.
J. Buckallew wrote:
do you know of any tutorials out there that could help me with this M.B.?
I don't know of any tutorials so you need to search on your own for Excel training. Good technique for external linking has nothing to do with Solidworks so learn Excel and learn it well.
I posted examples of 3 slightly different externally linked formulas in this thread. These are what is used in part or assembly Design Table cells.
Linking design table to a file makes file saving slow - how I keep the link without saving?
You should start with those 3 examples on something simple. I recommend that you fully understand what all of those examples are doing and make them work properly in your training part and assembly files before moving on to productive work. When you master basic linking you'll be able to progress to advanced linking and more complicated applications quickly.
yes.
the most direct way is to start with an external excel file, but be careful - don't relocate the excel file latter...