Add the PCB to the assembly - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

- [Instructor] In the previous video we created a PCB, printed circuit board to put into our controller assembly. And we talked about how you'd probably get a model like this from an electronics designer working on your team. We're now going to add this model to the controller assembly and see how it fits. So firstly make sure you've got the PCB model open in SolidWorks. And then also open the controller assembly model. You'll need to use the main assembly from chapter four. Unzip chapter four and open the assembly file which is 04_04_addtheribstothefronthalf.sldasf. You'll also need the PCB part that we created in the previous video. So that's 05_01_createthepcbmodel.sldprt This should just have the controller top and bottom in. To add the PCB, let's go to insert components, which is on the assembly tab. And you should see the PCB there. If not, you might have to click browse and find that file on your computer. Select the PCB and this time we don't want it fixed in place. So don't click this green tick. Instead just move your mouse into the graphics area and you should see the PCB part follows your mouse. And anywhere we left click will place this part. So let's just left click to place it roughly there. And now it's in the model, but we can still move it around. So we'll fix it in place using mates. To do this expand the PCB part in the part string and then select the right plane, hold down Control and also select the right plane in the assembly at the top here. And then release Control and let's add a coincident mate. We can do the same with the front plane. So select the front plane in the PCB part and then also select the front plane in the controller assembly and then add a coincidence mate. So now the PCB is fixed left, right, but can still move up and down. And if your PCB has disappeared, probably just inside your controller like this. And if so, you can just click on one of the controller parts and then select change transparency. And you should be able to see it in there. So now we have to make a decision. We can either put the PCB inside the bottom part, so it's slightly overlapping the ribs like so or we can put it inside the top part like this. In this case I'm going to put it inside the top part, so it's finally made it in position. I'm going to hide this top part just by hovering over it and pressing the tab key. And then I'm going to select that bottom face of the PCB and also the top face of this controller half and add a coincident mate. So now the PCB is fixed in place and I'm just going to reshow that top part. Now that we've got the PCB in place we can have a closer look and see if we can see any issues. Maybe just pause the video at this stage and have a look at your model and see if you can see any problems. So hopefully you can see a few things that are quite obvious and there's maybe a few more things that aren't quite so obvious. The first thing that I noticed is, PCB slightly too long. If you look at these corners it's quite hard to see, but there's a clash there. We can make this more obvious by doing an interference check. This is on the evaluate tab. Select interference detection and then press calculate. And SolidWorks will work for a moment and then it will show you all of the parts in your model that overlap or clash with each other. So all of these red areas are where we have an issue. These ribs aren't too much of a problem because we know we're going to cut those anyway. We can see the PCB's too long here and here. We can see these buttons clash with the middle rib. And then if we look from the top we can actually see these buttons don't line up with the circle. And then these holes don't line up. And if you're very eagle eyed, you might have also noticed the holes in the PCB are M4 size but the holes in the controller power M5 size. So I just wanted to demonstrate that sometimes what you get from an electronics person or other members of your team might not be the best design from your point of view. So now we've got two options. We can either change our design to suit this board or we can ask the electronics designer to change their design to suit our design. And there's actually a third option. You can both make changes and meet in the middle. And often you'll make a compromise like this when you're working in teams. But let's imagine in this case we've got a very accommodating electronics person. We've gone back to them with a list of changes said please could you change this, this, this? And they've said, yep, no problem, we can make those changes. Let's open the PCB part and update it with those changes. Select the part either in the parts tree or in the graphics area and press open parts. And now we'll make those changes. So firstly, it was too long. So double click on the main PCB part and then double click on this 200. And let's change that down to 190. Then the outer buttons were too far in. So I'm going to edit that sketch. I'm going to change this 70 to 75 and press okay. And then the inner buttons were too far down. So I'm going to edit that sketch again. Just going to go to a top view. I'm going to delete this horizontal relation and move them up a little bit. And I'm going to make them 10 millimeters above the origin. You might need to delete this 25 and re-add it. So I'm going to make them 10 millimeters above the origin and then re-add that 25, so we've got the correct space in there. Then press okay. And those buttons are moved up. Then finally, let's adjust the holes. Edit the hole wizard feature in the feature tree and let's change the size to M5. And then on the positions tab let's change this 50 down to 44. Press okay. And now all of those changes are made. So we can go back to our assembly and we can see now everything looks pretty good. So we don't have that clash at the sides. If you look from the top these buttons line up, these holes line up, and now these switches are clear of that sensor rib. If I do an interference detection check again we should now see that we don't have any clashes on the outer side. All we've got is those ribs and that's what we expected anyway. So in the next video, we'll trim those ribs down. But for now you can just close this and save your assembly.