Required geometry

- [Instructor] Now that we've created our new custom flange we're going to work on adding it to our design library. First of all make sure it's saved onto your computer. If you want you can go ahead and start with the one from the Exercise Files chapter four folder called Test Flange and go ahead and directly open it from there. I'm going to do that and take a look at this part that we just created in the last video. So our first step to actually go about adding it is going to be using something called the Routing Component Wizard. To access that you're going to go up to Tools, Routing, Routing Tools, and then Routing Library Manager.

Go ahead and click that. And you'll see you have a lot of new options that have come up. Since we are going to be use the Routing Component Wizard you're going to go click on that, but feel free to explore some of the other options that are available in here. There's some other Database, Route Properties options, and things like that. So I'm going to click on Routing Component Wizard. And now I'm going to select whichever one of these I'm using, so for me I'm putting a Piping part in, since I'm making a flange.

However, you can also obviously pick between Electrical, Tubing, User Defined, Miscellaneous. So after clicking Piping I'm going to go to the next step. Now this Wizard is going to guide us through the entire process of adding stuff to our design library. If you're adding a different part other than a flange all these steps will be a little different, but just go through with the Component Wizard and it will guide you through the process. I would recommend playing around with some other parts after you complete with this one just to get a feel for the different steps you might have to go through.

So we're going to go with that we're adding an End Flange and select Next. And now you'll see that because we went in and already added our points, the CPoints and the RPoint, it is already recognizing that for us. So these are all green, meaning that everything is good to go. Green denotes geometry that is either required or optional that's present in the component and blue is geometry that is optional, but not yet there. So, for example, the RPoint for this one was actually optional.

If we hadn't added that this would be in blue telling you this is okay, but if you want you can go ahead in and add that now. But since this is all set, both those points are all good to go, I'm going to go ahead and click Next. Now you'll see that we've come to a couple optional geometry items. These are in blue, just like I mentioned before, because they're optional and not yet present. The two ones that we could add to our flange are the Axis of Rotation and the Vertical axis. For practice, let's go ahead in and add an Axis of Rotation.

I'm going to select Add here and I'm going to say I want to add a New axis. This is going to actually go into our part and we're going to do a little bit of editing. So it automatically brings up the ability to create an Axis. I didn't have to go in and start anything myself, which is really convenient. So I'm going to create an Axis straight through the center of this, since that's the Axis of Rotation of this flange. I'm going to select this outer face, since it'll create one right through those points. After picking that I'm going to click my green checkmark and now you'll see the Component Wizard comes right back up for me.

Now, just for practice, I'm going to say we're not going to add the Vertical one here. I just want you to see that it's okay to go through the process, so that you don't actually have to add everything in blue. I'm going to go ahead and click Next now. And now this is another Optional Mate Reference. So this is the Default end of our flange that we'll then mate to things. So I'm going to go ahead and click add for this. And you'll see, again, we go right back to our part, and I'm going to add this face of the part.

Again, you can pick whatever you would like, whatever is most appropriate for your flange that you've designed. So after clicking that I'm going to hit the checkmark again and again, our Routing Component Wizard comes right back up for us. You could add additional Mate References if you would like, again, not required. Now I'm going to go down to the bottom and select Next again. And now you'll see Missing required items, None, 'cause we've gone through all the needed steps, and then Part modeling is complete.

So there are a few more steps to go, but our actual model is done and defined to the program standards. So I'm going to go down to the bottom and select Next. And now you'll see you have some options to add Configuration properties. So as we've been talking about before, Configurations are very important in routing. The first things you'll want to do here are add some File properties. You don't have to add these, but this is great for your reference, especially if you're working in a company where you want to add things like part numbers, descriptions, things like that.

What you'll want to do is go into the type box and click on the drop down and select the Type of value that should be going into the box to the right of it. So for part number that would be Number. And then you can type in any random part number that you would like or whatever's been generated by your company ahead of time. So I'm going to do 3141. You can add a Description as well by clicking in the box and then clicking the drop down, adding Text. We're just going to call this a Test flange.

Then if you had any comments you could add it. I'm going to add our Material, Text, and just say Metal. Obviously you can add whatever you would like here. Manufacturer, if you have a vendor that you're getting it from, again, Text, and then the vendor's name. You can also then go in and add any other additional categories you want, you can delete any of these that are unnecessary, it's completely up to you. Now if you're going to be using Isogen Output to create some of your drawings or then work in Isogen with these models afterwards I definitely would recommend going ahead and adding this now, the Skey description.

So this is going to categorize specifically what type of flange you have created. So I'm going to go ahead and say Flange Male Part, but obviously, whatever you would like to test with feel free to add that here. And whatever you think you're going to be using in Isogen later on. And then the Component type is already locked in as Flange, since that's what we selected at the beginning. I'm going to go ahead and click Next now. Now here you can actually name your component, so if you wanted to call it something other than Test Flange you're welcome to do that.

And now you would define the Library folder location. And for me this is defined as my design library section. This is where we've actually been pulling our parts from over on the right side of our screen throughout all of our modeling. However, if you had a specific company related library you could also save them directly there. You can even save directly to your desktop, but then it won't be accessible in the same way that some of the other convenient parts have been. But I'm going to leave this as-is for now. I'm going to go ahead and click Finish.

Click Yes that I want to save. And save is now complete. And then you can say do you wish to add this component to your Piping & Tubing database? I'm going to say Yes. Again, making it more accessible through SOLIDWORKS. It just went in, imported the data into SOLIDWORKS, and now you're all set to go. You can see it brings you back to the beginning page in case you wanted to go through and do an additional one now, it's very easy to do that. Now this should give you a basic idea of how to add new parts to your library. Again, I'd recommend playing around with this, creating your own parts completely from scratch with some more complex geometry as well, and adding them to your own library.

This will let you experiment with all of the different prompts that the Routing Component Wizard has and can give you more experience of adding custom parts to your design library.