Assembling Wall Components for the Playground Subassembly Using Part Files and Mating Techniques

Isolate wall components from a master file, save individual parts, and insert them into your subassembly using precise mating techniques in SOLIDWORKS.

Learn how to gather all the parts that make up the walls of a playground and ensure they are in the right place and the corners rounded. Discover the techniques to adjust linear patterns and mirror features, and the steps to start a new part file and isolate the bodies that make up the walls.

Key Insights

  • The article provides guidance on assembling the sections of a playground's walls, with a focus on ensuring all pieces are correctly placed and corners are rounded.
  • Adjustments to linear patterns and mirror features can be made using the Feature Manager. This may be necessary if your subassembly does not match the one detailed in the article.
  • To isolate the bodies that make up the walls, a new part file should be started. The article outlines the process of creating these files, naming them, and making necessary edits.

This lesson is a preview from our SOLIDWORKS Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

In this video we are going to start gathering all the parts and pieces that make up the walls to our playground. Now where we left off, this was our roof sub-assembly. Your sub-assembly should look just like this with all the pieces in place and the corners rounded.

If yours doesn't look like this, chances are you have to make some adjustments either on the linear pattern or any of the mirrors that we have going on. And as you know to do that you just go right to the Feature Manager, right click, edit the feature, and if you need to review the techniques about how to adjust those types of linear patterns and mirror patterns or mirror features, please review the previous video where we explore those techniques in detail. I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

Let's make sure that our master file playground is open. Beautiful. Now let's go start a new part file.

Close out the sketch. Go to Insert, Part, Master File Playground. Beautiful.

And just click the green check mark. All right, now let's isolate just the bodies that make up our walls. We'll go to Delete Keyed Body and just grab this panel to start off.

Let's save this part as Wall001. Save your work. Do a Save As, Wall002, and then make your edits and just grab this piece next.

Save your work. Do a Save As, Wall003, make your edits,  grab this panel next. Save your work.

Do a Save As, Wall004, grab this panel next. Save your work. Run a Save As, Wall005.

There you are. Save your work. Do another Save As,  Wall006, make your edits, grab this outside panel.

Save your work. Do a Save As,  Wall007. Make your edits.

Grab the window piece itself. Save As. Or save your work and then do a Save As and then go to Wall008.

Make the edits. And the very last piece we need is this notched panel between the outside panel and the window piece itself. This guy right here.

Beautiful. Let's go ahead and close that out. All right.

We can close out our master file as well. Let's open up our deck and frame subassembly, SA004. And just like we did with the deck, we're going to load those wall pieces into this subassembly and use the existing parts and pieces to help us with our mates.

Let's do that now. Insert component, Wall001. Green check mark snaps into place.

Wall002. Green check mark snaps into place. I'm going to continue here.

Wall003. And as always, if it doesn't snap into the right place,  you will have to mate the top right and front plane of the new part with the top right and front plane of the subassembly. In other words, mate the origin of the part to the origin of the subassembly.

All right. We're on to Wall005. Watch that snap into place.

This one might be problematic. Let's see how it does. All right.

It found its spot. Wall006. Good.

I'm using the scroll wheel to pan all the way to the bottom to the W since these files are in alphabetical order. All right. Place that there.

And then finally,  Wall008. Let's see how it does. Did it snap into place? Yep, it did.

There it is. All right. Find your way to this condition of your subassembly and save your work.

If prompted to rebuild and save or save without rebuilding, go ahead and rebuild and save each time. That is best course of action in most cases. There we go.

And that's it for this video. In the next video,  we're going to execute all the patterns, mirrors, and any other features that complete the walls of this subassembly.

photo of William Tenney

William Tenney

William Tenney is a career Solidworks designer. He began his career in consumer products then shifted to retail display design, corporate interiors, and finally furniture. His time with Solidworks spans almost two decades where in that time he designed many pieces for mass production, was awarded co-inventor status on five patents, obtained the Professional Certification and Surfacing Certification for Solidworks, and also contributed to many pieces shown in such publications as Architectural Digest, Interior Design Magazine, Fashion Magazine, and 1st Dibs. Outside of his work life, he is a husband to a wonderful spouse and a father to two future creatives.

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