Tick Talk on EsoxRepublic.com

Coordinate Systems in SolidWorks have been a disappointment from the beginning. Like a freshman congressman, they have little purpose but to wait around, be present and hope for greater possibilities as they gain seniority. Unlike said congressman, coordinate systems are just not gaining any power.

SW Help’s own description of coordinate systems’ limited utility is embarassingly anemic:

You can define a coordinate system for a part or assembly. Use this coordinate system with the Measure and Mass Properties tools, and for exporting SolidWorks documents to IGES, STL, ACIS, STEP, Parasolid, VRML, and VDA.

That’s missing a whole universe of potential usefulness, especially compared to what UG, Pro/E, and even AutoCAD(!) can do with their coordinate systems (”CSYS”).

Back in my Pro/E days, I would create a user-defined CSYS to use as the main anchor for locating part geometry. That way, I could move and rotate an entire part w.r.t. the universal CSYS simply by redefining one feature. This was very useful when making models for customers that required “in-place” designs (”in-place” = line up origins of parts to locate in master assembly).

That’s what I miss the most. But, there’s plenty more. Here’s a partial wish list of what SW can’t do w/ coordinate systems that other programs can:

• Define and update view orientations
• Mates: SW CSYS’s are truly impotent, for they can not mate.
• Define datum planes and axes. (Add to this that SW has no control over which side of a datum plane is the front.)
• Sketch relations: Can not constrain sketch entities parallel/perpendicular/coincident to CSYS axes or origin. This would be especially handy in 3D sketches.
• Move or copy geometry: it would be wonderful to be able to use a CSYS transform to define how geometry is moved or copied.

Painful Workarounds

Meanwhile, I have resorted to second-rate workarounds to get me by. Sometimes a 2D or 3D sketch can stand in for a CSYS. At least then I can make sketch references and create planes. Still, very inelegant. No workaround in sight for view orientation. A macro could do this, but I haven’t written one yet.

Speaking as the “High Priest of the Temple of Unused Potential”, I beg you, SolidWorks, please do something with this!