If you design and sell products which are slightly different for each order then you could be saving a huge amount of time with this simple tool built in to SolidWorks. DriveWorksXpress is a free design automation tool found free in every seat of SolidWorks and should form a part of any SolidWorkers armoury.
With SolidWorks at your fingertips it’s possible to automate drawings, parts and assemblies with just a few simple steps.
The first thing to do is to open up your version of SolidWorks 2011 or newer and open the SolidWorks Tool bar and open DriveWorksXpress. Once DriveWorksXpress is open you can go ahead and create a new project, your project will be comprised of your SolidWorks model and the rules that you will create for it.
Now your database is open, you can begin to add your models and start capturing the assemblies and parts.
With your assembly or part captured, now you can learn how to capture and drive a specific dimension for automating.
It is also possible to automate features of your DriveWorks models as is shown in the video above.
Now you have captured the features, it might be worth capturing some custom properties which can beuseful for linking annotations to drawings this allows you to drive the text that will be added to your drawing borders or notes.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kT2F9JbE3x0%3Ffeature%3Doembed
Capturing a drawing allows you to create new drawings variants from your SolidWorks Drawing files. The video below shows you how to import a drawing and then create a rule linking this to new part or model variations.
Now we have captured and created rules for our model and drawings, it is time that we move on to creating the form that you will need to fill in to create new variations. With DriveWorksXpress this process is a simple one with our simple form designer.
Below is a playlist with all the videos you will need to create your form allowing you to capture the information to create a new variation.