Hello SolidWorks team & my fellow SolidWorks users,

Currently I am working for a sanitary piping company and they have some standard components like Elbow, Tee, Cross, Reducer, Ferrule (pipe end conneting part). These are saved in their Design Library. Design is always done with respect to center line of pipes & the elbow or junction points.

Many times the distances are so short & tight, that they need to cut the standard components & weld them together. So even I do have to apply and wish to apply same in SolidWorks while designing.

Consider a scenario, where in a assembly of many components, 2 standard components, like an elbow and a reducer is to be welded together, but the space constraint expects any one or both to be cut a bit & welded together. To create the same in SolidWorks, I make a assembly file & bring many instances of an elbow & the reducer.

**Currently I am unsure if SolidWorks allows a part to be cut by another part, like Boolean operation in an assembly, but if not, then they should bring some solution to this**

Now if I cut / modify an elbow & save it, all the instances of that elbow would be affected.

So now I have to remove all Elbows, bring one, place it, edit it & ask for save it with "Save As", providing a different name or location, so that my original file in Design Library is not affected. Then again get the same elbow in the assembly from the Design Library, gain go through the same process for every elbow I would insert one by one.

** "Replace Components" option replaces all the instances in the assembly, even if I remove the option "All Instances". I am logging a seperate issue / bug for it **

Is there a solution to this, so that the work could be done faster ?

If not then SolidWorks should consider providing an option, so when a user drags a part from Design Library, a option pops up in Property manager, asking to maintain or break relation with the file in design library. If the user asks to break, than instantly he should be asked to save it as a seperate file.

I hope to get some solution to above, Thanks in advance

Regards

Poorvesh Mistry