Page 50 - Mastering SolidWorks

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18 CHAPTER 1 IntroduCIng SolIdWorkS

Figure 1.13 shows a comparison of the FeatureManager design trees for the two different
feature orders. You can reorder features by dragging them up or down the tree. However,
relationships between features can prevent them from being reordered; for example, the fillets
are dependent on the second extruded feature and cannot be reordered before it. This is referred
to as a parent/child relationship.
Reordering and parent/child relationships are discussed in more detail in Chapter 12,
“Editing, Evaluating, and Troubleshooting.”

Figure 1.13
Comparing the
featuremanager
design trees for the
parts shown in
figure 1.11 and
figure 1.12,
respectively

The order of operations, or history, is important to the final state of the part. For example, if
you change the order so that the shell comes before the extruded cut, the geometry of the model
changes, removing the sleeve inside instead of the hole on top. You can try this for yourself by
opening the part indicated previously, dragging the Shell1 feature in the FeatureManager and
dropping it just above the Cut-Extrude1 feature.
NOTE You can drag only one item at a time in the featuremanager. If you try to drag more than one,
only the last selected item is dragged. therefore, you may drag the shell and then drag each of two
fillets, or you could just drag the cut feature down the tree. alternatively, you can put the shell and
fillets in a folder and drag the folder to a new location. reordering is limited by parent/child relation-
ships between dependent features.
You can read more about reordering folders in Chapter 12.
In some cases, reordering the features in the FeatureManager can have a result that does not
make any sense; for example, if the fillets are applied after the shell, they might break through to
the inside of the part. In these cases, SolidWorks gives an error that will help you fix the problem.
Features are really just like steps in building a part; the steps can add material, remove it, or
both. However, when you make a part on a mill or lathe, you are only removing material. Some
people choose to model following manufacturing methods, so they start from a piece of stock
and apply features that remove material, as you would on a mill. This approach works best for
machining, but doesn’t work well for molding, casting, sheet metal, or progressive dies. The
FeatureManager is like an instruction sheet to build the part. When you reorder and revise the
list of features, you change the order of operations and thus the final result. Some people look at
the FeatureManager as a recipe for cooking.