Page 368 - Mastering SolidWorks

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342 CHAPTER 11 Working With Part Configurations

Figure 11.6
enabling configuration
descriptions

Best Practice
although you can change the preferred settings at any time, a best practice is to make a template
early on when you are using solidWorks to model parts. solidWorks remembers the BoM options
and advanced options that you set for the Default configuration and uses them in document tem-
plates. this is true for both part and assembly templates.

Using Advanced Options
Three advanced configuration options are found in the bottom panel of the Configuration
Properties PropertyManager and are shown in Figure 11.5:
Suppress New Features And Mates The Suppress option suppresses any new features that
are added to other configurations of this part while this option is active. It also suppresses any
assembly mates that are added to another active configuration in an assembly. Relying on
these options, regardless of the setting, can create problems if you are not using design tables.
Manually controlling options in large numbers of configurations can be very error-prone.
I personally wish the features and mates options were separated because I like the Suppress
Features option to be on, while I would prefer the Suppress Mates option to be off.

Use Configuration Specific Color Colors are actually driven by display states. Display
states in turn can be linked to configurations. If you are driving colors in configured models,
you should get into the habit of using display states and just linking them to configurations.
Add Rebuild On Save Mark When the Add Rebuild On Save Mark option is enabled, the
next time your model rebuilds, this configuration will be rebuilt whether it is active or not.
Generally, we think of rebuilds as being a good thing, because they keep all the relationships
and the geometry up-to-date. But the one problem with rebuilds is that they can take a lot of
time. This is especially true if you have a lot of configurations that need to be rebuilt. Be