Component Replace

Did you know that you can replace components with DriveWorksXpress? No?



So if your assembly has components within it that can be replaced with components of different geometry you can get DriveWorksXpress to swap them in. This saves you the trouble of overloading your assembly with everything that could exist and building rules to delete the stuff that is not required.

Here's how: -

The first thing to be aware of is that SolidWorks references the internal ID of each component mated into an assembly.If you replace any component manually in SolidWorks you will get rebuild errors if the internal ID does not match. You need to eliminate this in DriveWorksxpress to avoid rebuild or mate errors.
The only succesful way I have found to ensure the internal ID's of replaceable components match is to take the original model and save it as a different name (ticking the save as copy box). Then open the copy and delete the parts and load in the new ones.
Once this is done the result of the File Name rule for the existing component must be the name of the model it is to be replaced with. The model must be located in the same place as the existing model also.
DriveWorks goes much further with this concept by allowing you to drive the replacement files.