Dissection - Quickly Reuse SOLIDWORKS Design Data

I love to find things that help me keep from having to do something over again. Calculators. Assembly instructions. Programmable lawn mowers.

A great SOLIDWORKS tool in this area is Dissection – SOLIDWORKS dissects files to make their components available for reuse. When SOLIDWORKS files are dissected:

• Parts are dissected into features (extrudes and cuts)
• Features are dissected into sketches
• Drawings are dissected into general tables and blocks
• DWG/DXF files are dissected into tables, blocks and views

To use this functionality, first use File and Model search to search the folders you have specified in: Tools > Options > System Options > File Locations > Show folders for: Search Paths. Your search results will show in the Search tab of the Task Pane.

If you search returns a part, for example, you are ready to drag and drop that part into an open assembly.

Go back to the Search tab and double-click on the part and you will be presented with a list of features that SOLIDWORKS dissected (extracted) from the part – you can drag and drop one of these features onto the existing geometry of an open part.

Go back to the Search tab and double-click on the dissected feature and you will be presented with the sketch that was used to build the feature – you can drag and drop this sketch onto a plane or face of an open part.

The source files are not changed when dissected and there is no associativity created if you were to drag a dissected feature onto a new part.

Design reuse made easy!

Follow this link to read more about it in the Help file: http://help.solidworks.com/2012/English/solidworks/sldworks/design_clipart.htm