Applying a mass to virtual component

Mass Properties in SolidWorks are extremely easy to extrapolate
and levering properties like weight in a drawing is equally as easy.  All you have to do is just call out the
SolidWorks property and this makes sure that it is parametric; should you make
a change to your model, the property automatically (auto-magically) updates and
all is good.  In the case of an empty
virtual component, this method gives properties of value zero since there is
nothing to weight or measure in any way in the part.  There are a number of reasons why you would
have a blank, virtual component in your assembly:  Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to edit
these properties for the virtual component so they don’t read zero?

Great news! There is a relatively simple way to do
this.  All you need to do is create a
global variable whose value is the assembly property plus whatever value you
want to assign the virtual component, then create a custom property, say weight
in our case to read that variable.  See
the video below to see this in action.

 

 

Brian Adika
Applications Engineer
Computer Aided Technology Inc.