Chapter 16: Working with Assembly Sketches and Layouts
Laying out an assembly with reference sketches is a more disciplined way of working that can help you avoid some of the complications of external references and in-context design work. It is up to you to decide whether the informal 2D layout sketches are preferable to the formal 3D sketch-based Layout feature. Both offer tools to control positions of parts and even features of parts within an assembly.
Traditional assembly-modeling methods where each part is located by mates from another part do not stand up well against changes in the parts themselves. The main goals of the layout methods are centralization of control and stability of changes. I invite you to explore some of these methods using the tools you have learned in this chapter.
- Master It Use an assembly Layout to create a four-bar link and assign parts to the blocks in the Layout sketch. To remind you, the workflow for Layout is like this:
- Open the assembly.
- Click...
