Hi guys. Ive been using solidworks a good 3 years now, with atleast a decade in mesh/nurbs before that.

Anyways i feel i have met my match. The company i work at has be do their drafting and well, alot of it is bent wire displays. Some stuff i can handle, and others, not so much.

Heres the issue. I have to make each individual wire/rod and dimension it so that the guys on the floor can produce em by massive quantities. This being said, i approached these products like any other, ie, making a part, then using an assembly to piece em all together.

Game over, all i have to work with is round surfaces and the occasional "cap" or end of the wire. The built in solidworks mates sometimes work, but other times just come up with the craziest of soloutions. I just wish there was a way to DIMENSION an assembly like i can a part! or click a few wires and hit "equal" or "symetry". I run into all kinds of issues having to simply flip over a part just to get the mate to distance it properly.

But when all you have is round surfaces, those advanced mates dont work. Ive been playing with  reference sketches with varying luck

I've researched weldements, and boy that seems the way to go. Even found a video how to split each part into its own part for drawings. PERFECT.

Except it doesnt work on all round surfaces! It asks for a Top and right/left/bottom/front etc to create a relative drawing...clicking end caps works..but say i made a closed part? clicking on the circular surface does nothing.

What can i do guys? Im sure Solidworks can handle this, its seemingly simple!

This is Solidworks 2012 by the way.

Thanks in advance!