Tip of the Week November 14

Solid Edge Tip of the Week November 14, 2014

Solid Edge - Assembly Tips A great command inside the Assembly environment is the Capture Fit command.  This command can be used to capture the assembly relationship and faces used to position a part or subassembly already placed in an assembly. You can then place the part or subassembly again using fewer steps. The steps to use the Capture Fit command are as follows:  1) In the assembly window, select a part for which you want to capture relationships. 2) Choose Home tab -> Relate Group -> Capture Fit 3) In the Capture Fit dialog box, use the Add and Remove buttons to specify which relationships you want to capture and then click OK.  The Capture Fit command is perfect when used with hardware such as bolts or other commonly used parts. After having Solid Edge learn the assembly relationships, when you drop the part into the assembly, the faces of the placement part highlight and you are prompted to select the corresponding faces on the target part. This allows you to fully place a part in half the clicks as normal. Another tip when creating relationships between parts in an assembly is to hold "R" and click on a part to show its reference planes. This is a great tip that saves you from having to right click on a part and click on Show/Hide Component to turn the reference planes on and off. To use this shortcut you must select an element on the placement part, then you can hold down the "R" key and select the part you plan to align the placement part to. This will turn on the reference planes of that part. You can then create the relationship between the parts and when you finish the command, the reference planes will turn off again.   Ben Weisenberger Application Engineer Ally PLM Solutions, Inc. Want more tips? Sign up HERE to receive our Tip of the Week. Register for upcoming free Solid Edge webinars or learn more about Ally PLM Solutions.