SolidWorks Assembly Tutorials for Beginners

Welcome to SolidWorks Assembly Tutorials for beginners and in this tutorial, you are going to learn SolidWorks assembly in very detailed manner. It is one of the important feature which helps to create your design into reality. You are making individual parts of machine or product. Assembly feature helps to combine to make product complete. As mechanical or product designer, should know how to use SolidWorks assembly features for making greater product designs. So, this free assembly tutorial will help you to learn about assembly, its user interface and various features and terms used.

To know basics of this CAD software, visit SolidWorks Tutorials for Beginners

Let us familiarize with SolidWorks Assembly user interface and its terms.

How to Create SolidWorks Assembly?

First of all, you should know how to create assembly file in SolidWorks. For that just follow the below mentioned steps.

Open SolidWorks by double clicking on the desktop icon and you will get interface like as shown below.

Click on the “New” or go to File menu and select “New” and will get dialogue box.

From that, select “Assembly” and click “OK” button.

solidworks new dialogue box for selecting assembly file

You will get SolidWorks Assembly user interface, where you can assemble various parts created from the parts files or you directly edit parts created in assembly interface.

In this way you can create SolidWorks Assembly file. Here you can use either top-down assembly or bottom-up assembly methods.

How to Save Assembly File?

You are already learn to create assembly file in SolidWorks. It is very important to know to save your work without losing any of the efforts. SolidWorks help to save your work as “.asm, .sldasm” file formats. Let us see how to save your assembly.

Go to the top tools menu and click on “Save” button as shown in below image.

From the appearing dialogue box, give your work file name and click on “Save” button. It will save your work as assembly format.

SolidWorks Assembly User Interface

Now, its time to get friendly with SolidWorks assembly user interface. Here, you can see each of the items seen in the assembly UI.

Graphics Area for SolidWorks Assembly

Graphics area is the most important part of the assembly UI, where you are making or inserting the various parts of your design and perform assembly operation. It is just like solidworks part feature 3D graphics interface, where you move, rotate or use all assembly tools.

Begin Assembly

This is the feature which kick starts the assembly process. It helps to insert components created in part file to assembly interface. If you are following the bottom-up assembly, you can directly insert the components of your products. You can also do top-down assembly from the begin assembly feature.

Feature Manager Design Tree

It manages the assembly design views, different mates used and lists all the functions performed in the particular assembly. You can see the each of your steps in ordered manner and edit any of the steps from here.

Heads-up Toolbar

This toolbar controls the different views of your work, zoom in/out, dynamic annotations, view orientations, display style, perspective or cartoon view settings.

Assembly Motion Study

This motion feature helps to give life to your assembly and simulate its working by applying all constraints within the mates. You can check the how your assembled product works before going to the production. Here, you can apply animation and basic motion to your work.

Colors

The colors is helps to distinguish the various parts of your assembly and give better looks also. You can have various combinations of colors and patterns available in SolidWorks color library.

These are the major parts of the SolidWorks assembly user interface.

Now, you should learn the other features of the assembly.

What is Mates?

Mates is the parametric relationship between two or more components used in SolidWorks assembly feature. It helps to add degrees of freedom to your components as per the design. Mates function helps to link the components to assembly file and helps to add particular constrains as per the working of the parts.

Is it necessary to Position the component in Assembly?

Yes, it is very important to position your components in assembly interface. You have to fix the any one of the component to perform the assembly function in the graphics area. You can perform move, rotate or fix features in this graphics area. It is very important to fix the component, otherwise it will float and you cannot perform mates function within the assembly UI.

solidworks assembly fix or float symbol in feature manger design tree

If you forgot to fix the component, SolidWorks will fix first inserted component by default. So, always insert the stationary part of your file into the SW assembly. By seeing the Features manager design tree, you can get idea about which component is fixed or float condition. The fixed component indicated as (f) before its name and (-) for the floating component.

What are the different types of assembly mates?

Here, you will get list of various mates used in SolidWorks. It helps to add geometric relationship between the parts created. It also provides the degrees of freedom for the parts allocated by you. Though this, you will get idea about each types and how to use solidworks assembly.

Standard mate

This is the basic mates option available in SolidWorks assembly top add standard geometric relationship to the components. It contains the simple relationship like coincident, parallel, perpendicular, concentric, tangent, distance, lock and angle. All of the features are very simple to apply to all the created components without any hesitation. It comes under the mate selections in property manager, under the standard mate section.

Advanced mate

The advanced mate is another option comes under the mate selection in property manager, which enables you to apply little more complex geometric relations between parts or components. It contains mating option such as symmetric (parts which shares symmetry between a plane), Width ( between two parallel or non-parallel faces), Path, Linear, linear coupler, and limit.

Mechanical Mate

The mechanical mate is specially for mechanical product designer helpful to apply degress of freedom to their parts directly. It also comes in mates selections, in property manager under the Mechanical mate section. It contains mate options such as Cam, gear, Hinge, Rack and pinion, Screw and Universal joint.

Smart mate

This is one of the flexible features of SolidWorks assembly, which helps to create geometric relationships automatically. It contains geometry based mates, peg-in-hole smart mates, pattern-based mates. These mates can apply while inserting and moving components to your assembly. It will automatically creates relationship between the parts.

Is Editing of Mates possible in SolidWorks Assembly?

Yes, you can do editing of the mates which are already applied. You can access it from the Feature manager design tress list. You can also view mates, delete and change the relationships too.

MateXpert

It is the SolidWorks assembly diagnostic function which helps to diagnose errors in mating relationships. It run error checks and identify the groups of mates which contains the real problems. All you need to just run the MateXpert. That’s it.

Finally

These are main features and functions of SolidWorks Assembly. You got a nice tour in assembly area of SolidWorks. I wish it may help you to get good skills in CAD design area. You should share this free SolidWorks tutorials for beginners blog to all friends and share your valuable Likes & comments too.

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