I have read the help text but no picture comes into my head.
Here's what I want to do; how can assembly layout sketches help me?
Open a new assembly.
Insert a sketch block onto a plane.
Insert rectilinear solid bodies onto the plane.
Mate edges of the bodies to sketch elements of the block.
Though somewhat tangential to your question, I'd like to chip in that in my experience the Layout functionality, while great in theory is very unstable when you actually start to use it for any kind of real work.
It's a shame - but I can only recommend: avoid!
Perhaps the first problem was that I had not checked MB>View>Sketches, so the blocks and sketches disappeared when I closed Layout or Edit. This made it hard to mate to them.
What I completed just now is:-
MB>New>Assembly>Layout button
CM>Layout tab>Insert block>browse button
Select block>Mate insertion point to Origin>RC on block element
Block Property Manager>Add Fix relation>now fully defined
CM>Assembly tab>Insert component>Browse button
Select part>Drop in graphic area>Float in FT>Mate straight edge coincident to line element of block.
If there are more problems to be found, then I will find them.
I like Blocks because they condense very complex sketches into a single module or "black box", just as sub assemblies do. This helps to emphasise design intent.
It also avoids the possibility of losing hard won work in the event of the assembly crashing into a heap.
I've been fighting with assembly layout sketches and blocks for over a month now. I was trying to make a model where I could change a few global variables and have the whole model rebuild itself. Specifically, I was modeling a gate that switches product between two conveyor lines. I wanted to be able to reuse the model with different constraints on the overall length of the gate, and the distance between the two conveyor belts, among others. Sadly, I've spent most of my time fighting Solidworks instead of modeling, not a good use of my time.
My conclusion on the use of blocks and assembly layouts has been that they are each giant kludges that don't really work by themselves and really don't work when combined with anything else. I'm quite disappointed by it, as the concept is great for in-context/top-down modeling, but their failure to work destroys what would otherwise be a hugely powerful design method. I think from now on my attempts to do in-context modeling will be restricted to using sketches only.
I have to agree with the others, just avoid using them entirely. Hopefully Solidworks will get its sh#t together one day and get it all straightened out, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. Best of luck to you.
Perhaps an erudite lurker can explain how a "Layout sketch block" in an assembly differs from a sketch drawn on the fly in an assembly.
For instance are Layout blocks more available for mating than sketches on the fly?
(I assume Jerry reported mating a solid block to both a Layout sketch block and a sketch on the fly.)
Are they somehow equivalent to Reference Geometry?
Because sketch blocks have fixed geometry (they are after all externally defined), perhaps they are not useful for parametric design?
I am hoping that a casual answer to the correct question will become a lightbulb moment for the rest of us.
John,
I don't think you need the "special" layout sketches. It seems like a normal sketch in your assembly would do the trick. I don't use blocks or layout sketches, but I just tried both and was able to mate a test block with a block in either a layout sketch or a normal sketch. What problem are you having?
Jerry S.