Suppressing Folders in DriveWorks

Checkout this DriveWorks trick Great Aunt Eleanor taught me!

When possible, she likes to group features for particular part options together in one SOLIDWORKS folder. This can greatly reduce the amount of DriveWorks rules she needs to maintain because it is possible to suppress/delete a folder (and all the features inside) by capturing the folder and building a rule only for it.

A folder can be captured in exactly the same way as you would a feature, by single-clicking on the folder icon and adding it to the Dimensions and Features section of the DriveWorks Task Pane inside SolidWorks. Once captured, you will then be able to build a rule for the folder in the Model Rules section. Having the rule evaluate to be suppress/delete will suppress/delete the folder and all of the contents.

In the above example, if the user is wanting model “312”, one DriveWorks rule removes all the features not needed for this model.

Be careful though, if you have the feature folder and the features inside captured, it could be possible for your feature rules to conflict with the rule for the folder. Thus if you need to capture the features inside of the folder typically you would notcreate a rule for the feature folder.

This functionality is only available in DriveWorks Solo and Pro.