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Using Advanced Selection

Level = Intermediate

SolidWorks® software provides two capabilities when you are working with assemblies. These capabilities provide flexibility when selecting assembly components. These functions are called Advanced Component Selection and Advance Show/Hide.

Advanced Component Selection allows for criteria to be defined and then assembly components are selected based on those selections. This function is available under the Tools menu. Some examples of how this function can be used are:

• Create a configuration that removes all interior assembly components (this would be done for performance reasons)
• Select all fasteners within the assembly (again, you could use this capability to create a configuration that could be used to turn on or off all the fasteners)

The following properties are defined by SolidWorks and can be used to define selection criteria:

• Part Mass - SW Special (numeric)
• Part Volume - SW Special (numeric)
• Part is interior detail - SW Special (Boolean)
• Configuration name - SW Special (string)
• Document name - SW Special (string)
• Select components by custom property. The example shown in Figure 1 shows selecting components with the custom property MakeOrBuy = Buy. Another example would be to look for components with a description or document name (SW Special property) that contains "Screw." This will select all the screws based on the assumption that either of these properties contains the string "Screw."
• Use multiple criteria to define the selection. The example shown in Figure 1 will select all components inside the assembly that are purchased.

Figure 1 – Advanced Component Selection

The conditions field is used to define the scope of the selection criteria. For string values, is (exactly) , is not , and contains are typically used. Numerical or SW Special attribute (i.e., mass, volume) values typically use the = , not = , > , < , >= , or <= values. For Boolean properties (true/false) is yes or is no is used to test the criteria.

Once you have defined the criteria, it can be saved to a file and re-used later. The Save and Load Criteria buttons will open a dialog box asking for the query name. This file has a .sqy file extension and has the following format:

"Part is interior detail -- SW Special" "is yes" ""

"MakeOrBuy" "=" "Buy"

Advance Show/Hide is similar to the Advanced Component Selection but is specifically used to help define configurations. For example, you make want to have a configuration that does not show any of the standard hardware within an assembly. Advanced Component Selection can be used to select the hardware based on a custom property.

Figure 2 – Advanced Show/Hide

The advantage of using this feature is that it will directly modify the state (show/hide) or the selected assembly components. The options under the criteria definition section is where the difference between the functions lies. The criteria used in the previous section can also be used within this function.

Conclusion

You can use both of these functions to select assembly components more intelligently and help in the creation of configurations that can be used to hide unnecessary details based on SolidWorks properties (i.e., weight, volume, etc.) or custom property values. This is another good example of why custom properties are important to all SolidWorks document types (i.e., parts, assemblies, and drawings).