Tutorial - Lego (2)

This tutorial is a continuation of the previous tutorial here. If you haven't completed the first part, it is advisable to complete the first part before doing this part.

In this part, now we're going to assemble few pieces of the Lego together to make some shape. After the completion of this tutorial, you can build your own 3D Lego!

1. Click File => New, and select Assembly.

2. The default setting for SolidWorks would automatically run the "Insert Components" feature. You can see it on the left side bar. Click on the "Browse" button, and locate the Lego piece you made in Part 1 of this tutorial. If you haven't closed it yet, it should appear on the "Open Documents" window above the "Browse" button. 

3. Now you should see your Lego piece displayed on the display window. Left click to confirm the placement of the piece. Now to insert another piece, click the "Insert Components" button located at the "Assembly" ribbon.

4. Same thing as step 3, left click anywhere to confirm the placement of your second Lego piece. You should see something like shown below.

5. After having two pieces together, now its time to arrange the placement of the pieces. Click on the "Mate" button located at the "Assembly" ribbon. You should see the Mate tab on the left side of the screen.

6. On the Mate tab on the left, select "Coincident" from the Standard Mates, and select the side of the first Lego pieces (Shown blue in figure below).

7. Now select the same side of the second piece. A pop-up box should appear after selecting the two surfaces. Click on the green thick button on the pop-up box.

8. Do the same thing as above, click Coincident, but now select the bottom surface of the the piece.

9. Then select the bottom surface of the second piece. Click the green thick on the pop-up box.

10. Same again, apply Coincident Mate (or some people call Constrain) on the two surfaces of the piece shown below. Click OK (green thick button) after that. Now your Lego piece should be arranged nicely, adjacent to each other. By now you should understand how to apply a simple Coincident mate according to your design intent.

11. Repeat step 3 and 4 to insert another piece of Lego.

12. Click on the Mate button. Now on the left side tab, click on the Concentric mate, and select the two cylindrical surface as shown below. 

13. Now give Coincident mate on the side surface of the piece as shown below.

14. Finally, give Coincident constrain on the top surface of the previous piece and the bottom surface of the third piece. Click OK to finalize the Mate.

15. Now you have completed the first series of tutorial to build a simple Lego assembly. You can have an experiment yourself to build a more complex Lego assembly :)

SolidWorks - Assembly

An assembly is a combination of parts or another assemblies together. You can read the basic of assembly here.

Insert Components

As the name said, the "Insert Components" is used to place parts or other assemblies in the assembly. When you first start your assembly, SolidWorks would automatically execute this function to prompt you to insert a component. To place your desired component, simply click on the Browse button to locate the file you wish to insert inside.

You can see how the scree would look like when you start an assembly. Note that now you have "Assembly" ribbon on top. To access this function again in future, simply click on the "Insert Components" function on the Assembly ribbon or from the drop down menu, click Insert => Component => Existing Part/Assembly.

Mate

Mate is used to define the location and how each parts relate to each other. Mate can be accessed easily from the Assembly ribbon or from the drop down menu, click Insert => Mate.

In SolidWorks, the mate is divided into three categories, Standard Mate, Advanced Mate, and Mechanical Mate. For most application , Standard Mate would be sufficient to fully defined an assembly. Advanced Mate and Mechanical Mate is used more for doing simulation.

Moving Components

To move components (parts or assembly) in the assembly, you can simply left click on the component and drag it to where you want to move. To rotate the component, change it to right click and drag it along. 

For more precise movement, you can use the "Move Component" function that can be accessed from the Assembly ribbon or from drop down menu, click Tools => Component => Move for moving component; or Tools => Component => Rotate, for more precise rotation.

When you have mate between components, the relationship between the two components defined by the mate would still be maintained when you move the components. This capabilities is not available in all CAD system that makes SolidWorks one of the best software for quick design as it is very good at simulating how each components relate when it is moving relative to each other.