Unlocking the Potential of Design Tables
SolidWorks Design Tables that push the envelope of what can be done in SolidWorks & PDM
SolidWorks design tables offer significant utility, but when combined with the full array of Excel's capabilities, they transform into powerful tools for ensuring data consistency and seamless data propagation.
Microsoft Excel stands out as a ubiquitous desktop application that adds substantial value across various workplace scenarios. Excel boasts a wide-ranging toolkit, encompassing simple cell formulas, conditional formatting rules, intricate inter-sheet data sets, VBA automation, and data linkage to SQL and other data sources. It excels in all these aspects.
In the realm of SolidWorks, Excel serves as the platform for defining variations using a design table. However, by harnessing some of the features mentioned earlier, a simple design table can evolve into an extraordinary asset. In this article, we'll explore several ways to leverage Excel within a design table.
First, let's shed light on some lesser-known aspects of SolidWorks design tables.
A SolidWorks design table includes default formatting that, while not removable, can be customized to suit your needs. Upon inserting a design table into a part or assembly file, you'll notice a crucial value in cell A1 (or row 1, column 1). In Excel, this cell carries the name 'Family,' and its purpose is to indicate where the table starts within the Excel sheet. Importantly, it doesn't have to be located at cell A1—it can be placed anywhere. Everything below and to the right of this named cell is treated by SolidWorks as the design table data.
Another consideration for SolidWorks is the active sheet when the table is closed, which SolidWorks identifies as the design table. However, it's worth noting that there is no restriction on the number of sheets within a design table.
Knowing these two critical pieces of information you can start to really build a powerful toolset within the Excel design table. Let’s look at a few examples. This is a design table that is used for defining common off the shelf parts (COTS).
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This design table boasts a plethora of features. Notably, the 'Family' cell has been relocated to Row 18, Column 1, effectively excluding all the cells above it from the design table. Among its remarkable attributes, it offers seamless links to a SQL database housing a curated list of standard abbreviations. These abbreviations can be easily retrieved and appended to the configuration description on-the-fly. Furthermore, the table incorporates various formulas in cells to expedite the generation of values in other cells.
At the top, the 'Description Definition' block plays a pivotal role in populating the '$PRP@DESCRIPTION' field as more information is added. Lastly, don't overlook the sheet tabs at the bottom—each of these sheets contributes to the data on the first sheet in a distinct way.
Starting with the sheets, our initial emphasis is on exploring data capture and integrity. The 'Input Data' sheet serves as the focal point where data is distilled and collected from various sources, such as a vendor's website, like McMaster-Carr©, for instance. Here, we are in the process of capturing data to define a Socket Head Cap Screw. The table data sourced from the website is pasted into this sheet, often with initial formatting quirks. However, this design table sheet is equipped with VBA macros that swiftly rectify formatting issues, as illustrated in the highlighted context menus.
Input Data sheet showing context menus to clean up poorly formatted data from website capture
Here we see the cleaned up Input Data sheet after running a few commands on it to clean the data.
With the data cleaned and massaged, we are ready to start linking it to the Output sheet so that the design table will capture everything to define the items. This took mere seconds to arrive at due to the VBA automation tools embedded in workbook.