Creating Expressions in Solidworks 2011

[AdamW]

Afternoon All,

I have recently moved from Unigraphics to Solidworks. I am trying to create expressions in Solidworks before doing any sketching/modelling.

In Unigraphics you can create expressions easily from the tool menu - see page 223 Practical Unigraphics NX3 Modeling ... - Stephen M. Samuel, Anuranjini Pragada, Gautam Baksi - Google Books

You can then call upon these expression when creating sketches & modelling. If you ever want to change a part, its simple to just change the expression as opposed to going through the whole model and changing things individually - especially if some dimensions are related to others.

The problem is I cannot see anywhere to do this in Solidworks. I have tried searching the net for all sorts of things and cannot find a solution. I guess it is probably not called expressions.

Would appreciate advice from anyone who may be able to help with this problem.

 

[egsindia]

Equation editor

Hello:

You can use Equation Editor inside SolidWorks by invoking Tools>Equations in SolidWorks 2011.

Relations between different features, calculations using expressions etc can be added here. In fact, the file can be an external text file that can be linked to the dimensions to make updates as the user requires.

Online SolidWorks 2011 help on Equation Editor is available here.

IIF is allowed as well for conditional evaluation.

If you need more exhaustive relation definitions, I suggest you use Microsoft Excel and link dimensions and variables to expressions there (since it is more exhaustive).

Best regards