I am comfortable with creating Tp-Down assemblies (big or small) using a master sketch. But, down the road, I found the parts created from the master sketch carry all the sketches in the master sketch. That led me to manually hide (and make visible) out from a bunch of (so many) sketched, planes, etc. It is doable (kind of easy).
However, I believe building up on the layout in the assembly (which is a top-level master assembly (TLMA), but not necessarily the final assembly: I mean, the final erection assembly can to be created with the help of this TLMA) is better where all the components now have only the few (some times just a one compared to so many using a master sketch) required sketches of features.
It looks like good and also not good. As I am new in Solidworks, I would like to get some feed back from the good users of Solidworks. I want to make sure that anybody down the road could be able edit the model. Please reply.
I attached my model up to now.
Using CREATE LAYOUT
Using CREATE LAYOUT
Using CREATE LAYOUT
I don't have SW 2020 at home. But, I don't know anyone who uses that Layout functionality. If you are to use it I would only use it for small assemblies.
For Top Down modeling the only robust method that I've found that works for large assemblies is the Skeleton Sketch Method. The basic idea is that you insert a SSP (Skeleton Sketch Part) at the top of the feature tree for every assembly. Parts and subassemblies within the assembly are driven from the SSP. All of the subassemblies within the assembly have their own unique SSPs in them that are driven by the top level SSP. Inside those subassemblies and parts or subsubassemblies are driven by the subassembly SSP...And this can go as many levels down as required, but one huge rule is that the references are always pushed down and only 1 level to avoid circular references. So NEVER have a relation from a subassembly SSP to the assembly SSP. That's the gist of it. You can find all kinds of information about the SSP method by searching this forum for "SSP". If you are specifically concerned with large assemblies read through Skeleton Sketch Part Method for Large Assemblies.