Geometry Lock Enhancement Request

At the recent Midwest Regional User Conference in early November 2007, a SolidWorks user approached me with an enhancement request for SolidWorks.  I later found out that Richard Doyle sent him to see me.

The enhancement request was for SolidWorks to incorporate a Geometry Lock that could be added to a SolidWorks model that would reduce rebuild times. 

• As used in a part model, anything before the “Lock” would not be rebuilt, but everything after the lock would rebuild as needed.
• I can also see this used in the mate list in the assembly, where everything before the “Lock” would not be rebuilt, or changed by SolidWorks, and everything after the “Lock” would be rebuilt as usual.
• The “Lock” should have a toggle to allow the user could temporarily “unlock” the geometry for a change or rebuild.

You can download a PDF explaining the purpose of the “Geometry Lock” as well as a tip on how to implement something similar via a derived part.

For the SolidWorks’ Enhancement Request process to work correctly, users must go to SolidWorks’ website and submit an Enhancement Request.  SolidWorks evaluates all of the requests they receive, and the ones that have the biggest impact to the users are the ones that most likely make it into a future release of the software.  SolidWorks employees are unable to circumvent this process.

Why did Richard send this user to see me?  I have been involved with the SolidWorks Milwaukee Area Resource Team (SMART), a SolidWorks user group.  The user group provides a great place for a user to identify their enhancement request, and ask other users to “get on board” and submit identical enhancement requests.  This helps to bring this request to the top of the list and show SolidWorks that this functionality is needed by many SolidWorks users.

To put in an enhancement request, go to SolidWorks' website, log in to the Customer Portal, go to Enhancement Requests, and enter the information.  To make things simple, you can use the bullets above to explain the request.

Thanks!

Comments

[Daniel Mattsson-Boze]

As the PDF says, insert part does everything you are asking for in the Lock. You can easily go to the inserted part and modify it as required. Is there a reason why this would not suffice?

Dan

[Lenny Kikstra (LennyWorks)]

There ia a work around (derived part) posted in the pdf that demonstrates the concept of the Geometry Lock. This the work around uses capabilities that already exist in SolidWorks.

The problem arrises when you use this capability on even just 10% of the models you have means that you have just increased the number of models you need to maintain by 10%.

With the work around, when you need to change the geometry, you have 2 places to look, and possibly 2 models that need to be updated. Is this really the best way to accomplish this?

The intent of the Geometry Lock is to keep everything in the same model, reduce rebuild times by "locking" geometry to reduce rebuild times, but still permit a change by unlocking the geometry.

Lenny

[Brian Hoerner]

Actually this has been in the SDRC/EDS/UG program IDEAS for a long while now, and I have posted this request a few times for an enhancement over the last two years.
Another value of this is that many times when you open a part from a software release that is say 3 versions back, and you select rebuild, the part very well may just crash, hang up, or simply loose geometry because of how much the architecture of the software has changed. So by simply locking the older version without rebuilding it, it would save lost data and obviously the time that goes with it "trying" to match surface shapes that are difficult to achieve in the first place.
I could go on with M2Cents, but you get the drift I think.
Brian