Sectioning of Assemblies is an important feature in a CAD drafting application, which is required to show the internal parts of an assembly. Usually, in SOLIDWORKS drafting, the sectioning of some of the features and parts, such as Ribs and Fasteners, will be excluded as per the drawing conventions. In SOLIDWORKS Drafting, if the sectioning of any additional part is to be avoided, then such a part is to be declared as a “Fastener” in the part’s custom properties.
Then, SOLIDWORKS drafting will exclude such parts from sectioning and will not display the hatching.
Here is an example of an assembly of a U-joint (shown below), in which an internal component, such as a spider, must be excluded from sectioning.
At present, when the sectioning of the assembly is done, all the parts, including the component “Spider,” are also being sectioned and hatched as shown below.
Note that, in the above section on view generation, the option to exclude fasteners is enabled as shown below.
To avoid or exclude the sectioning of the spider component, the part is opened separately. A custom property with the name “IsFastener” is added as shown below and the text value is set to 1.
By doing so, we are letting SOLIDWORKS know that this component is a fastener, and the sectioning must be excluded. By sectioning the assembly again, we see that the spider component is now excluded from sectioning and its hatching is also not visible, as shown below.
In this way, we can easily exclude the components from not being sectioned in SOLIDWORKS Drafting even though the components are not actually Fasteners. The other features and parts generally excluded from sectioning are Shafts, nuts, rivets, keys, rods, pins and such other components. Sectioning of such components gives the false impression that the part is thicker than it really is.
ABOUT AUTHOR:
Pradeep G V is a Product Specialist in SOLIDWORKS and allied solutions at Conceptia Software Technologies, Bangalore. A key member of the technical support team for the past three years, Pradeep brings over a decade of experience spanning both academia and industry. His deep expertise and practical insights make him a valuable resource for customers and engineering professionals alike.
