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Can you explode by assembly instead of every actor?

Question asked by Brandon Anderson on Jan 26, 2018
Latest reply on Feb 13, 2018 by Brandon Anderson

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So we just got composer. We just went through some very basic training in which every assembly was only like 10 parts. We make large machines with thousands of parts and so I'm trying to figure out how to scale up what we can do with composer, starting with the explodes.

What I'm seeing so far is that whenever you explode something it explodes every actor from the top to the bottom. That makes for an impressive, totally useless explosion of all of the parts. It's incredibly hard for me to believe that there is no way to lock assemblies together while doing an explode so that not everything is exploded. For example, if I'm making a parts book and I have a solidworks assembly of a weldment, I do not want the pieces of that weldment to explode. I'm not going to sell a customer a part of a weldment. So in order to make the explosion, I would have to one by one, translate each assembly because the explode command does not have a way to explode by level. Is that correct? Or am I missing something? (Please tell me that I am missing something!!!)

Thanks

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Kim Teems Jan 31, 2018 9:16 AM
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Try using intelligent views. You will have to SELECT each assembly and translate to the exploded view you want, then in Views Workshop choose the below settings. Next hit RESTORE NEUTRAL POSITION and again create a view. One will be your exploded view and one will be your collapse view.
A word of caution - select Assemblies in Assembly mode. Also - mixing assemblies and parts doesn't always work. You need to do one or the other - Or trick Composer by moving the assemblies so that it looks like your part has exploded by moving your assemblies away from them.
Hope this helps.
Here's good YouTube video to demonstrate How To Locate Geometry In SOLIDWORKS Composer With Intelligent Views - YouTube
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- Heiko Sohnholz @ Kim Teems on Jan 31, 2018 9:22 AM
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  Hello,
  weldments are often created as an multi-body-part in SWX. If so, please use the "merge file into on actor per part" when importing these SWX files into Composer. So the first problem is solved!
  The hint from Kim - assembly selection - is a good one. If there are no (or not the right) sub-assemblies, then create your own selections sets with the "create selection set" command.
  What i use very often, is "select instances" to explode identical actors at once (e.g. a row of screws).
  Cheers, Heiko
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Sindre Sorhus Jan 31, 2018 9:20 AM
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Hi Brandon,
just want to mention that when you import files into composer, make sure that you have the option "Merge file into one actor per part" enabled. This way when you have assembly with multibody parts, the parts are treated as single actors. Also this is recommended option in regards to update of the file later on.

Br,
Sindre
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Brandon Anderson Jan 31, 2018 1:44 PM
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weldments are often created as an multi-body-part in SWX.
We don't use multi body weldments on our business. I hesitated to use the word weldments, because I knew that would be latched onto. It is a solidworks assembly. But in the real world, it's a weldment.

You will have to SELECT each assembly and translate to the exploded view you want,
I knew that I can do this, but, these are extremely large assemblies, so I was looking for a way to make that faster. Dragging each assembly is not efficient enough.

One thing that I did find was the selection filter. When you click on the select button, you can select by level. If you have assembly mode selected you can pick you assembly and select on child level down. Everything that is a subassebly to that will stay together. That way you can hold things together by level. This will help a lot. The tool is a little clunky to figure out how it works, but after enough trial and error you can figure out what it's doing. (this assembly shown is one sub assembly of about 30 others that have this many parts in them.)
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John Wylie Feb 2, 2018 11:17 AM
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I will take a different approach to the answer.
If you are talking about using the Explode features on the Transform tab, it's not going to work for an assembly with a large amount of parts (as you know). That's why in training they always show small assemblies.
You have to either use the assembly tree to choose sub-assemblies (hopefully your engineers set up subs on the cad model), or you can set them up yourself using Selection Sets at the bottom of the Assembly tree. To use it, you select all the parts you want included, click on Selection sets, and give it a name. This is a virtual set and has no effect on the model. You can also select parts in the tree and right click to add them into the named section set. You can add parts to a set as needed (or remove).
Once you have a Selection set, create a new view and click on the Selection set (or just subs in the tree) to turn on/show those parts only.
I always manually explode but you can try the Explode feature to see how it works.
So the bottom line is I have found it works better for the type of work I do to manually explode. But then I do not have thousands of parts.
JW
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Nikki Egleton Feb 13, 2018 2:33 PM
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This tip will only be helpful if you already have an exploded view created in the SolidWorks modeling software, and you just want to duplicate it in Composer, or use it as a starting point to create modified exploded views.

If your drafters/engineers have already created an exploded view in SolidWorks for the configuration of the assembly you choose to open in Composer, it will automatically import that positioning over in the form of a view, labeled "Exploded view".
If you drag and drop that view into your view port, your parts/sub-assemblies will move to match the exploded view from SolidWorks. Then capture that view-port in a new view.
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- Brandon Anderson @ Nikki Egleton on Feb 13, 2018 3:02 PM
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  This tip will only be helpful if you already have an exploded view created in the SolidWorks modeling software,
  We don't usually, but that is still really good to know. Thanks for the tip!
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Can you explode by assembly instead of every actor?

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