Understanding and utilizing configurations

Oftentimes, when creating a product, we will create multiple versions of it, with each of the versions having a slight variation from the others. SOLIDWORKS provides special tools for such configurations. In this part, we will learn all about configurations and how to use them to create different variations of a certain product or object.

What are configurations?

Configurations are different variations of a particular product or object. These variations would have small differences when compared to each other. For example, the four drawings in the following figure show different configurations of the same object:

Figure 13.14 – Different configurations of the same object

Note that the four configurations do not have major differences from each other. Because of this similarity, it is an advantage for us to be able to create all of the different configurations in one SOLIDWORKS file rather than having a...