Hi,
I am trying to find a simple way to measure the contact area highlighted in red in the attached image.
SolidWorks is capable of highlighting the contacting geometry so there must be a way to interrogate that highlighted area and determine the area.
Not sure how SW figures that one out, however you could easily add a sketch and get your surface area from there ..
Hi John,
I know I could simply measure the area of the rectangle and remove the area of the circles but I really want a tool to use. I am doing a study of electrical contact using numerous assemblies and some of the geometry is very complex, finding a tool now will save me a lot of time and it should reduce errors.
I'm sure this can be done, the fact that the area can be highlighted shows that it is a defined area, but how to measure it?
Probably the easiest way would be to apply a split line on one of the plates to divide the surface so that you have a separate surface that represents the contacting surface.
After this you could then use the measure tool, click on the surface and it should show you the area of the selected surface.
See the image below on how to do it. You would have to edit one of the parts in context to create the split line in the correct place.
Stephen that's what I wanted to do but I couldn't think how to create the split line - now I see you have to do it within the part. Would I be able to create a split line based on the projected edge of the second part? I only ask because in this example it is easy to measure in X the distance the split line needs to be from the end but in other situations this may not be possible, so projecting the line would be my only option.
I think I answered my own question there.
I have almost the same as you only you seem to have a 'separate bodies' folder, what could I have missed?
Obviously some of the mates have failed due to this split line - presumably - creating 2 new surfaces, neither of which are referenced by the mates that were created when there was just 1 original surface.
To save getting all the mating issues, you could have edited the part, created a new configuration to create the split surface.
I have a separate bodies folder as I quickly created the assembly as a multibody part rather than an assembly.
In regards to projecting the edge of the second part all I did is create a new sketch and convert the entities.
Great work Stephen, thanks for your help.
While I would still like to see the functionality as an option within the interference detection tool, the method above does provide a convenient way of finding the contact surface area between components.
Probably the easiest way would be to apply a split line on one of the plates to divide the surface so that you have a separate surface that represents the contacting surface.
After this you could then use the measure tool, click on the surface and it should show you the area of the selected surface.