Assembly Visualization

Assembly Visualization is a powerful tool when looking into the design and performance of your assembly. In support, we will often use it to determine rebuild times of an assembly to see where design may be simplified to increase performance. It also can be used to find and sort physical properties, custom properties and part status within the assembly.

To access this tool go to Tools > Evaluate > Assembly Visualization, or hit the Assembly Visualization icon found on the Evaluate tab in an assembly.

This will take you to the Assembly Visualization tab in the feature manger tree. By default it will show the file name, quantity, and the SW-Mass. Clicking on any column will sort the selected property in ascending or descending order. If you right click on any column except File Name, it will allow you to add a new column. The column will not let you select the property you want and will be added in a set order. You can change this after the column has been made.

Columns for the properties will also have a right facing arrow on the right side of the column header. Selecting this will allow you to change the property of the header. 

There are additional properties under "More."

If you select "More...", a new window will pop up and allow you to select the property and change the column header name. There are many properties to grab from, most SOLIDWORKS defaults. As mentioned before, support often uses "SW-Rebuild Time."

This data can be used in a variety of ways. Personally, I do not like the sizing and accessibility of the columns, so I prefer to export the data to an Excel spreadsheet to better sort through everything. This also allows me to retain the information from the visualization and work on the individual components. Right click on any column and select "Save As." This will export all the columns into an Excel spreadsheet to the location of your choice. This Excel file is not linked to the model and will not update automatically.

If you have any further questions regarding this topic, please contact Hawk Ridge Systems technical support at 877.266.4469  (US) or 866.587.6803  (Canada) or email us at support@hawkridgesys.com