Here's something I do occasionally. One of my colleagues washaving trouble with one of his models just now and I was able tosort it using this technique. Not seen it described so in case ithelps anybody:
Problem: I've got a feature I need to re-order but I can't becauseit's a child of an earlier one. It may not be readily apparentexactly what is causing the parent/child relationship. If Isuppress the parent to attend to the child, the child is suppressedas well, so I can't change how it relates to the model. My detaildrawings are done, all showing the driving dimensions, nicely laidout, so deleting stuff may well cause a lot of work.
Solution adopted: I find the parent feature that's causing theproblem, edit its sketch and change one or more of the lines orarcs to construction lines. The feature then intentionally fallsover when I force it to rebuild, and the software does its best torebuild the model without it. I now edit the child sketch andremove any dangling constraints or dimensions. (These are nowhighlighted and can easily be identified). Add some new ones asnecessary and rebuild. (Or perhaps edit the feature to change thesketch plane or whatever). Because the original parent istemporarily non-existent, the child cannot now have the same parentand can be re-ordered before it. Now edit the old parent sketch,change the construction line back to full and rebuild. Minimum lossand upset of the detail drawings.
It's particularly useful if there's loads of configs and detaildrawings of same.SolidworksParts And Features
Problem: I've got a feature I need to re-order but I can't becauseit's a child of an earlier one. It may not be readily apparentexactly what is causing the parent/child relationship. If Isuppress the parent to attend to the child, the child is suppressedas well, so I can't change how it relates to the model. My detaildrawings are done, all showing the driving dimensions, nicely laidout, so deleting stuff may well cause a lot of work.
Solution adopted: I find the parent feature that's causing theproblem, edit its sketch and change one or more of the lines orarcs to construction lines. The feature then intentionally fallsover when I force it to rebuild, and the software does its best torebuild the model without it. I now edit the child sketch andremove any dangling constraints or dimensions. (These are nowhighlighted and can easily be identified). Add some new ones asnecessary and rebuild. (Or perhaps edit the feature to change thesketch plane or whatever). Because the original parent istemporarily non-existent, the child cannot now have the same parentand can be re-ordered before it. Now edit the old parent sketch,change the construction line back to full and rebuild. Minimum lossand upset of the detail drawings.
It's particularly useful if there's loads of configs and detaildrawings of same.SolidworksParts And Features
