We have all had them, extraordinarily large assemblies that brings your computer to it’s virtual knees every time you open them. Sometimes you just want to work on a small area and opening an assembly is painfully slow. In 2008, SolidWorks introduced a new tool to help you in these situations: Quick view / Selective open. The Selective open tool opens your assembly with only minimal model information being loaded into memory, allowing you to select which components in the assembly you wish to open. When accepted, only the selected components will be shown but all your mates will be retained; allowing you to work on your assembly without killing you poor little computer.

Opening an Assembly

For the following example, I will be not be using a large assembly to illustrate how to use the Selective open command for no other reason then I do not currently have a large assembly available that is not proprietary. This will not affect anything so we will be continuing on with the demonstration.

To open an assembly in the Selective open mode, select Quick View / Selective open in the Open dialog. This option is only available when an assembly is selected in the window. If a part is selected then you may choose to open the part in Quick View which opens it without any feature data in the FeatureManager. You can not modify the part only view.

When opening the assembly you will notice a couple of things, first may be that your assembly opened up faster then usual. This is because your assembly has been opened as a simplified representation without any feature data loaded. Look in the FeatureManager you will notice that there is no feature information available, only the components.

Next you may notice the Selective Open dialog box. In the Selective Open dialog box you have two options that I will be describing here.

Selected Components

The Selected components option of the Selective Open dialog box is probably the option you will be using the most. For this option you select all the components you wish to be opened using one of the following methods:

• Using one of the previously discussed selection methods in Component Selection Tools in Assemblies and More Selection Tools. Each selection method described in these post can be used to select components that you to have loaded.

• Individually select components in the graphics area or FeatureManager while holding the CTRL key.

All Components Displayed

If you read my previous posts on Display States in  The Appearance of Things - Display States and
showing hidden components in More Selection Methods you may find this option easier. Basically, all displayed components will be loaded into memory rather then selecting components individually. If you are using Display States in your assembly, which you should, you will find using the All components displayed option much quicker and easier.

Opening Selected Components

Once you have selected which components or Display State you wish to open in your assembly, click the Open Selected or Open button in the Selective Open dialog.

On clicking Open or Open Selected you will be prompted with the following alert box:

If you used an existing display state and you made no changes, then a new display state will not be created. If you opted to show or hide additional components, no changes will be made to your current display state instead a new one will be created. If the newly created display state is to be used at a later time I would recommend renaming it.

Now that your assembly is opened you can move the visible components as if all the components were loaded this is because the effects of the component mates are retained.

Components not Loaded

In the FeatureManager you can see that the components not displayed also do not have any feature information loaded into memory. This is what makes the selective open tool so great, no more will your computer be overtaxed on opening assemblies.

Showing Hidden Components

When you need to show a component, you can use either the Select Hidden command as described in Component Selection Tools in Assemblies, the Show Hidden Components command described in More Selection Methods or just select the component in the FeatureManager and select Show Components in the context menu.

This will not only show the selected component(s) but also load the feature Information as well. I hope you will find the tool not only easy to use but a terrific time save when dealing with large asemblies.

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