From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2018 Essential Training

Working with configurations - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2018 Essential Training

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Working with configurations

- [Instructor] Configurations allow you to have multiple versions of the same file. Over here, you can see, we've got this block with several different cuts cut through the part. If I head over here to the Feature Manager at the top, if I go two tabs over, you can see I'm at the Configuration Manager. OK, at Configuration Manager, let's go ahead and click on that icon at the top, right-click and say Add Configuration. I'm going to call this one Configuration number 2, click on OK, and there's my new configuration. I can easily switch between the Configurations by just double-clicking. You can see here, I'm on the Default Configuration, double-click again, and I'm back to Configuration number 2. But you notice, the model didn't change at all, that's because we actually haven't made any changes. Let's go ahead over here to the Feature Manager, I'm going to come up to this Cut-Extrude1, which is that triangular cut. Let's go ahead and Suppress that cut. Right, now let's go back over here to the Configuration Manager, you can see here, if I click on the Default, it has the cut, if I click on Configuration number 2, it doesn't have the cut. I can also add a new configuration, or in fact, you can add as many configurations as you'd like. Let's call this one number 3, click on OK, go back over to Feature Manager, let's go ahead and Suppress this circular cut here, right, now head back over to the Configuration Manager, you can see we have the Default one that has everything, Configuration number 2 just has the circle and the square, or the rectangle, and the Configuration number 3 just has that rectangular cut through the part. You can see we have a whole bunch of different options here, and we can turn on features and turn them off with the different configurations. Now, in this example, I've got three cuts through my part, but you could have extrudes, revolves, sweeps, lofts, you could have any number of features, and you can turn them on or turn them off with the Suppress or Unsuppress feature to easily have a whole bunch of different configurations of the same exact part. We can also come down here and add a Display State to change the color, you can link that together so that it might change from configuration to configuration. Or you can even change dimensions. Let me show you how to do that one. Go over here to the Default Configuration, we're going to start there. Now, in Configuration number 2, we want to make it a little bit bigger, so go back over here to the Feature Manager, and we're going to figure out what drives that shape. Under the Boss-Extrude1, you can see we've got a sketch right here, let's go ahead and edit that sketch. All right, so now this is 6 by 5. If I double-click on that 6 dimension, you can see over here on the right, I've got this thing that says All Configurations. If you click on that little drop-down, you can say, I want this to apply to This Configuration, All Configurations, or specify which configurations you want it to apply to. If I say I only want this to apply just to this configuration, I could say, maybe this can be 12, and then click on OK. Notice it gets bigger. Now if I exit out of that sketch, the part automatically changes. If I come back over here to the Configuration Manager, if I go back to the Default Configuration, it goes back to the way it was. If I come back to Configuration number 2, it's longer. If I go back to Configuration number 3, it's back to the way it was, because I'm only changing that dimension in that one configuration. Let's try it one more time. This time, let's go over here and let's make this one here a little bit deeper. In this case, let's go ahead and edit this feature. Instead of 6 inches deep, I'm going to say this is going to be 24 inches deep. I want to apply that only to This configuration, so you see the Configurations down here, not All configurations, but just This configuration right here. Or you could choose to specify which ones of these configurations you could apply it to. In this case, let's just go ahead and choose This configuration, click on OK, and there's my new part. All right, go back over here to Configuration Manager, click on Configuration number 2, and there it is. Click on Configuration number 3, and there it is, and click on the Default, and we're back to the way we were. You can do a whole bunch of really cool things using the Configuration Manager. In fact, you can turn things on, you can turn them off, you can change the color, and you can change the dimensions or sizes of individual cuts or features all within the Configuration Manager, and all fairly quickly, just by choosing which configurations you want those things to apply to.

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