Hi all,
What is technical difference between Design tables vs Configurations.. and why it is..?
Please help me in this regard.
Thanks
Narender
Hi all,
What is technical difference between Design tables vs Configurations.. and why it is..?
Please help me in this regard.
Thanks
Narender
A design table is simply a tool for managing configurations.
If you are asking for the difference between using the Excel based Design Table for creating configurations ....
.... and the SW based Modify Configurations dialogue boxes (see 2014 SOLIDWORKS Help - Accessing the Modify Configurations Dialog Box )
I guess the biggest difference is that one uses Excel and will control all the variables in one spreadsheet, and the other is an internal 'database' controlling the variables individually.
Thank you for the replay Kelvin,
As stated above, one uses excel and the other doesn't. The great part about using excel is that you can edit it outside of solidworks. For instance, lets say you had a design that uses many different lengths of 2" pipe. I just make 2 configurations and then insert a design table, then open the excel sheet in another window and typ 500 lengths or whatever and they are automatically created. That is a VERY basic example. I use both depending on the complexity and moreso, the number of configurations. Hope this helps.
Thank you John,
I just think of a design table as a very quick and sometimes easy way of making and modifying configurations quickly for parts that have a lot of possible configurations. I recently have been working on one part, where we get in a stock length of it, and then cut it down to size, all of the lengths are in whole inches, so each configuration is a named for the length we get it in. The part has a LOT of cut features in it, mounting holes in one face, and slots down the sides. We don't need to ALWAYS see all of those slots on the sides so I have actually created a base config, which is simplified and only has say the first 10 - 20 slots shown. I then have a derived config for each config just for a high detail, which puts in ALL of the slots in to it. It takes a good 5 seconds or so for the part to rebuild, so we don't use they high detail often, more just to impress clients, it's fairly simply to switch to the high detail when needed.
So for a 78" long piece for both a high and low detail that's 156 different configurations, we typically don't do 1 -2 " pieces so no config needed there, and under 12" the rebuild time for all of the slots is pretty much the same as not having them, so there is no derived config for those showing high detail. Excel is also A LOT better at using formulas, so for determining how many instances to pattern the slots, which is based off of how long it is, I needed a fairly complex formula due to the fact that the slots have a pitch of 20mm yet we cut it to the inch, in a slot, so it's never exactly on the inch we cut it. It was a real pain to figure out the formula for that, and for the total length for the same reason.
Trying to do all of that IN Solidworks with custom properties, equations, global variables, or just going through all ~150 configs would have been a night mare.
Nice thing is now that I have it all straightened out, for the different sizes of this part, it's height and width change, I only have to go into the design table, change 2 cells and everything else updates, including the descriptions because I've used excel to create the description pulling in the values from certain cells.
If you are asking for the difference between using the Excel based Design Table for creating configurations ....
.... and the SW based Modify Configurations dialogue boxes (see 2014 SOLIDWORKS Help - Accessing the Modify Configurations Dialog Box )
I guess the biggest difference is that one uses Excel and will control all the variables in one spreadsheet, and the other is an internal 'database' controlling the variables individually.