Hi everyone,

I'm totally ne

w to SolidWorks and have just completed about two-thirds of the CSWA training. I'm coming from an AutoCAD (not to much experience either) background and I'm really impressed by the possibilities with Mates and Relations.

For a university project, I'm currently constructing a cable drum. I selected a bearing from the Toolbox, and many other parts in my assembly are mated or related to this bearing—some directly, others via "Convert Entities".

When I change the diameter of the bearing, I run into issues. I understand that SolidWorks won't automatically detect or maintain all those relations, but I had hoped that at least sketches referencing the inner or outer diameter would update accordingly. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Right now, my workaround is to redefine everything that becomes underdefined and reapply the necessary Mates, but that’s quite time-consuming. I'm wondering if there’s a smarter workflow to handle this situation—something that doesn’t require me to manually go through all my sketches and mates.

I also thought about creating a 3D sketch that includes all the relevant edges from the bearing. That way, I could reference only this 3D sketch in my other parts. Then, if I replace the bearing, I’d only need to update this one sketch.

Does anyone have experience with this or can suggest a better workflow?

Thanks in advance!

Felix