Hello All,
I'm a little bit new to solidworks and I'm working on my first big project. I'm building an assembly composed of laser-cut parts that have pegs and notches that rest into one another to provide mechanical connection between the individual pieces. All of the pieces will be cut from a single sheet of material, but I want to have flexibility in material choices and be able to pick from materials of different thicknesses. The problem is, as the material thickness changes, so too will the notch sizes. IE. the notch height = 1.01 x material thickness
Is there a way where I can specify a variable, "material thickness", in all of my parts, create an assembly, then at a later date change the material thickness and have that propagate into the other parts? I've seen talk of Solidworks PDM, but I'm not sure I have access to the Enterprise lever features with Student Edition.
Thanks!
In your assembly, Click Tools menu and select Equations.
Add an equation (Material Thickness) under Global Variables and set a value and click OK to close the equation.
Right click Annotations in the Feature tree of your assembly and select Show Feature Dimensions
Double click One of the Parts' feature in your assembly (like the notch).
the dimensions will be shown. Double click the dimension you want to change (the height of the notch) and Type
="Material Thickness" * 1.01
Don't forget the quotation marks.
and click OK
now if you change the value of your Material Thickness in your assembly Equation and rebuild manually
all your parts will be updated.