What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2011: DEFEATURE

I just built this great model, now you want me to do WHAT ?! Defeature it ??

Yep, that’s right, SOLIDWORKS has come out with a tool to get rid of all the small details in your part.

Why would you ever want to do this ?

Perhaps you are going to share this model with someone who needs to build “around” it, but you don’t want them to see all the intellectual data INSIDE of it… Perhaps you have downloaded an assembly (or part) off the internet and you want to quickly dumb it down…

The DEFEATURE tool, new in SOLIDWORKS 2011, will let you remove details from a part or assembly and save the results to a new file in which the details are replaced by dumb solids (with no feature history).

The tool is found under TOOLS—DEFEATURE (while you are in a Part or Assembly file).

There are steps to allow you to specify COMPONENTS to remove from the model (for assembly files only), specify any features you would like to keep (mounting holes, etc.) that may have been automatically removed in the first step, and even a step to allow you to specify if there is any movement/motion you would like to keep ! You also get to preview the “defeatured” model in a cool split screen window before you save it out as a new file.

One of the best things is that when you defeature an assembly, it will get saved as a multi-body PART file, so you don’t have all the references to worry about sending to someone or maintaining yourself. Also, any open areas in the model will be “filled in” with solid material !

Be sure to check out this new tool in SOLIDWORKS 2011 !!