We manufacture a product that has a shaft through it. Every order is custom, but they all get a shaft, it just varies dimensionally from order to order. I enclosed a jpg of a typical shaft.

For our product design, I use a template assembly, which has all parts and drawings pre-made. I then have an excell/VBA macro that gathers all relevent sizing, which is then cut/pasted into my assembly templates design table. The design table drives sketches which in turn drive the sizes of each part. Works like a charm, except trying to dimension the shafts.

The problem I am having is with the shaft. I want the shaft to have all dimensions in it, so they are imported as model items. Unfortunatly as soon as I have fillets on my shaft, it removes all the features that could be dimensioned to. I have spent hours trying to get this to work and its so far evaded me.

The shaft itself is modeled by using a series of sketches on the right plane. Each circular sketch is extruded mid plane, to the appropriate length, creating each boss or journal. All of these sketchs and extrusion lengths are controlled from the assembly design table. Fillets are then added to each turndown.

DimXpert: If i use dimexpert, it adds dimensions to the boss features, which is fine. But for the lengths of each boss it doesnt find anything. if i roll back history to a spot prior to adding of the fillets, it can find the flat faces and create width dimensions. But as soon as i roll the history to the end, the fillets consume the faces and the dimensions break, becoming dangling and no longer update when the size changes. Fillet also has no option to 'not merge' which might have worked.

Reference Dimensions: This is how every other component in my template files works. But with the shaft, you cannot dimenion the feature of a boss journal if it doesnt have flat ends. So far the only way I can half get it working is to create a sketch that follows the outline, and then add ref dimensions to that sketch. Unfortunatly the dims have a similar problem of becoming dangling and no longer updating which makes a template system useless.

Filleted shafts being so common I cant believe solidworks seems to fail in this regard, or am I missing something? Any help is much appreciated

A Side note regarding dimxpert and shafts. Dimexpert does not allow me to add a boss size dimension manually that shows up in a view such as the one I enclosed. every time I pick the front annotation view, select size, and pick a boss, it switches to right plane and only dimensions it in that view. Using auto dimension scheme I can force some to go to front view, but spend more time massaging things the way I want them than its worth. So thumbs down to dimxpert in 2008 release.