So, I am teaching the students how to reuse pre-existing data in SolidWorks. The project is using a Truarc – E-Clip retaining ring. Cool stuff – Toolbox has the Truarc catalog to just drag and drop. Toolbox Pull-down has the groove generator with the intelligence to select the correct groove size/feature for the Truarc E-Clip by having the user just select the shaft surface. Awesome stuff right? That is until you realize that the dimensions, relations and tolerances have to be applied manually. All the information is there so why doesn’t SolidWorks just dump the info in.Here is the best part, up until that point the students think I am God handing out the solution that they could have used the semester previous. “Oh man! We could have used this on 4 project last semester” Then we DEFINE the groove. “Why would I want to use this tool?” That is the outstanding question of the year! Why have an incomplete tool. It ends up being 3 times the work to define the groove than if you just did the revolved cut. No matter if your company is model centric or still uses drawings the size/location dimensions and tolerances still need to be there. Please jump on this bandwagon and complete the enhancement request to finish this tool. In theory it is a huge time saver and could potentially help designers and engineers from making mistakes about o-ring and retaining part numbers, sizes, dimensions and tolerances. –Chris MacCormack
