Hi all,

I'm struggling to find an answer for this, it might just be that I don't know how to ask my question correctly.

Anyway, I have a parent Assembly I call a Group (a combination of assemblies and parts). In this group I have two sub assemblies, A and B. A is the back panel of a box that has parts on it. B is the door. The location of B references the location of a part in A.

My question is: Is there a way to make sure that regardless of the configuration that A is in, B will always place itself relative to the location of the part when A is in it's "Default" configuration? I know that I can remove the dynamic external reference, but that really takes away a lot of the power of Solidworks. Also, there may be a case where we actually want to change the part we order to how it is in a difference configuration, or we may split the different configurations into different parts. See below for a dumbed down version of what I'm asking.

Config One (A in back)

What I want to have happen

What really happens

Our current design philosophy uses configurations more as a display state option, changing components that are suppressed or hidden, rather than to change the actual shape of the sheet metal. I could teach others how to use display states, but then every single one of our current models would be out dated, and there would still be legacy concerns. My concern is that someone may inadvertently change a distance mate in a sub-configuration and then when we send out the drawing for a related piece of sheet metal, we won't be able to figure out why they don't fit together. Currently I use a "default" configuration that has nothing suppressed, so I know nothing is over defined or misplaced, and when I print of the PDFs I first go through to all sub-assemblies and make sure everything is in it's "Default" configuration. However, this isn't fool proof.

Any help would be appreciated.