Page 265 - Mastering SolidWorks

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understanding Fillet tyPes 237

Figure 7.19
using the FilletXpert
selection technique
and the selection
toolbar

Performance
For rebuild speed efficiency, you should make fillets with a minimum number of features. For exam-
ple, if you have 100 edges to fillet, it is better for performance to do it with a single Fillet feature that
has 100 edges selected rather than 100 Fillet features that have one edge selected. this is the one
case where creating the feature and rebuilding the feature are both faster by choosing a particular
technique. (usually, if it is faster to create; it rebuilds more slowly.)

Best Practice
although creation and rebuild speed are in sync when you use the minimum number of features to
create the maximum number of fillets, this is not usually the case. (there had to be a downside.)
when a single feature has a large selection, any one of these edges that fails to fillet will cause the
entire feature to fail. as a result, a feature with 100 edges selected is 100 times more likely to fail
than a feature with a single edge. large selection sets are also far more difficult to troubleshoot
when they fail than small selection sets that fail.

Using Folders
When you have a large number of Fillet features, it can be tedious to navigate the
FeatureManager. Therefore, it is useful to place groups of fillets into folders. This makes it easy to
suppress or unsuppress all the fillets in the folder at once. Separate folders can be particularly
useful if the fillets have different uses, such as fillets that are used for PhotoWorks models and
fillets that are removed for FEA (Finite Element Analysis) or drawings. Folders also allow the
bulk-selection of such features if they were saved in selection sets.