Loading models and assemblies

loading in models and assemblies. Now, I've already got a model pulled up here on the screen, and you can see, I'm already in the Mastercam 2019. And we're ready to start machining this. The problem is if I save this file, I'm going to take all the Mastercam data and I'm going to save it directly with this part. Now if I'm using this same part in an assembly, to the part and it's clogging up the design process, it's making that file a lot bigger for when you're actually using it in your CAD Model. So instead of actually taking and creating a Mastercam file or some operations directly on this part itself, let's create an assembly with this part in it and if you create an assembly and you only have one part in it, that's totally fine. Because that will be your Manufacturing file, it's only going to be used for manufacturing. All the Mastercam data will be saved on that Manufacturing assembly file and not the individual part files. It's going to make things a whole lot easier, and also if you want to then add in more parts to the assembly, automatically Mastercam recognizes them and you can use them to create different operations for manufacturing. So definitely always start from an assembly, of course you can start with a part, but don't do it. I'm tryna give you guys a little bit of background that's going to make your life a whole lot easier. So let's go ahead and start an assembly from this. Now, before we do that though, I also want to show you one other really cool thing. Over here, on the right-hand side of SolidWorks, you click on the design library; got a bunch of different annotations, features, parts, routing, all these things you can save in this folder, but I've actually included some really nice tools and fixtures and parts. We're going to add the file location, I'm going to the Desktop I'm going to choose Exercise files, and down here I'mma say LinkedinLib. Click on OK, and it's going to add in this Linkedin Library, here it is, and inside of there are called fixtures and in there I've added in parallels and tables for machine tools and Haas Rotary Tables and Kurt vises and Chick vises. All kinds of things that I've downloaded from the respective websites of these companies, like Chick Workholding or Kurt Workholding, and I've put it in this library, so it makes it really easy to create an assembly. I can just drag and drop these things into my assembly. Right, so now that's loaded in, let's go ahead and create an assembly. So I'm going to say file, new, assembly. So I'm going to use the template here called LinkedinAssembly, if you haven't added in these templates, you can automatically add those in, they're also included with every size files. Click on OK, here's my assembly. Now, I don't want to start from the part that I already had, you can see it right over here, want to have open. I don't want to use that as my base, I want to start with the machine table. Click on the red X, close that out and let's go over here to our design library. Here's a Haas VF3 Table, bring that in, drop that thing right into your assembly. Hit Esc to close that out, let's go ahead and put that right at the origin. So I'm going to grab the origin of the table and the origin of my assembly. I'mma go ahead, over here to assembly and click on Mate, let's go ahead and just bring those two together, Coincident Mate. Oh, you know what? There's one other issue here, because I brought that in and I dropped it in there. Notice that little f in front of there, which means fixed. So right-click on that and come over here to Float, so I can move this thing around in my design, right? I need to have it floating then I can add that assembly mate, so I'mma click on the origin here, hold on Ctrl, choose the origin there and click on Mate. Those slide together, click on OK and now we're ready to start building our table. We're going to start bringing in some vises, we're going to bring in the parts themselves. Now you don't have to do this, but if you do spend a little bit more time in the beginning setting up the table, bringing in some vises, bringing in your parts, it'll make your manufacturing process that much easier as you go. and let's go ahead and bring in maybe a vise. Here's my vise, let's go ahead and mount that down to the table. So I'mma go over here to Mate, choose the top surface of the table and I'm going to spin my model around using the middle mouse button. Click over here, place that down on the table. Let's slide this over a little bit. And if you see that little sketch here, I don't like that sketch, let's go ahead and get rid of that. So click on that sketch and just say high. Back to Mate, let's go ahead and just choose the edge of that vise, the edge of the table and we'll give it a distance of like 10 inches. Alright, and then last thing we're going to do is just going to make that last edge of the vise and the edge of the table, put them together. That doesn't totally line up here, but for right now, we're okay with that. You might actually want to use a width mate here to put that right where it needs to be. Okay, let's go ahead and do it, hold on. Let's do this thing right, so instead of this coincident mate here, click on that. Delete it out and it's saying, "Do I want to Confirm Delete?", Yes, now let's go back to Mate. Let's use an advanced mate, here it is and go to little drop down, choose Width. And right up here, Width Selections. I'm going to choose this face right here and spin it around, click on that face right there. Tab selection the inside face of that slot and that one there, everything lines up. Now it looks good, now let's go ahead and put a block. So I'm going to go ahead and come up here and say Tile Horizontally. There's my block, I can just drag that in. Grab that there, the small, let's go ahead and expand that back out. Alright so here's my block, let's go ahead and put this in the assembly, so I'm going to say this back face of the vise and this face here, let's put those together. And let's go ahead and choose a distance here, let's put this right on the edge and then from this face down to the bottom of the part. We'll give it a distance, we'll flip the distance around. And let's say, let's grab that maybe bottom quarter inch of the part. Click OK, now of course we can grab and make this vise a little bit longer but for right now I just want to get started with this thing. So those are the basic fundamentals of bringing in an assembly. Creating it pretty much how you're going to make it on the real machine, now it gives you a lot of good visualization of what your job is going to look like, what things you might run into or crash into when you're running a real CNC machine, those things are really important. Now of course it does take a little bit more time to set it up in the beginning, by bringing in a table and bringing in a vise and everything else. But, again it's going to save you a huge amount of time as you go through the job and it also allows you to bring in multiple configurations of the part. So in this case here, I might be using the top of the part but if I click on the part itself, Ctrl + drag out a copy of it, I can then spin it around and put it on it's side. Do you want to mount that down to the table? Sure, let's go ahead and just, let's just bolt that thing down to the table, why not? We're going to omit how we're going to do that, for right now but let's just mate this down to the table and maybe my next operation might be some operation here on the side of the part. Well, no problem it's all in the same assembly so I can move this thing around as many different times as I'd like. I can do the top, the bottom, the sides, I can put them all in this one setup and then I can start programming all those operations pretty much at the same time, I mean, we'll do it sequentially, so I'll do the top first and then I'll go over and create a new operation and do the back or the side. So it's a really great way to organize your data So it's a really great way to organize your data and it really keeps your design and it really keeps your design and the method for setting everything up, very clean and the method for setting everything up, very clean cause you're not working with multiple files. cause you're not working with multiple files. So it's one assembly file So it's one assembly file with all your manufacturing data stored right in it. with all your manufacturing data stored right in it. It also allows you to save the tool list It also allows you to save the tool list and use that same tool list for all the different operations and use that same tool list for all the different operations inside of your job. inside of your job.