workflow to save & use opposite hand version of part

[Petertha]

I've made this dummy example to ask my workflow question. The grey part represents my left hand master part. I made an assembly from it & mirrored about right plane using 'opposite hand version option', which yields the pink part. Now, going forward, any change I make to grey part gets reflected in pink part. So far so good. But I need to introduce pink part into a completely different assembly, with its own mates etc. I cant seem to save derived pink as a standalone part. I thought there was a way to isolate, which broke links, but even that does not seem to be asking me for a new part name. So maybe related to the mirror function itself?

As a workaround I inserted the grey+pink sub-assembly into a new assembly, suppressed the grey part & seemed to successfully use any of the normal mating commands on pink. But that seems kind of clunky solution because grey part is always embedded there behind the scenes. Any suggestions?

[Tim Hoover]

I think SW saves it as a standalone automatically, with the mirror feature. You can check the properties of "Mirrorsym part" to check the file location...

[Petertha]

Looks like I missed this check box during the 3-step mirroring wizard. Nothing really happens until you save the 'mirror generator' assembly then it kicks out a part. But I was able to open the mirrored part standalone or apply it to another unrelated assembly or make unique drawings etc. So I guess problem solved.

[TTevolve]

This is one of those things where I use past experience as my guide. While solidworks does a great job of mirroring parts I have almost always have to make a change at some point to either the original or mirrored part. That makes me wish I had just spent the time to make the mirrored part from scratch to begin with. Based on my history I almost never use mirrored parts anymore, I usually make a left/right when I need to, especially with sheet metal parts.

[SPerman]

There is also the problem (in 2023SP5, at least) where features aren't transferred to the mirrored part, it is just a dumb body.

[DLZ_SWX_User]

There is also the problem (in 2023SP5, at least) where features aren't transferred to the mirrored part, it is just a dumb body.

There was a time when corner treatment & fillets did not transfer correctly to the mirrored part. My VAR told me that the fix was to recreate those features in the mirrored version.

[Petertha]

I'm on SW24 sp3 & so far so good. This was a simple example to flush out the workflow, the more complicated part is yet to come. But at a simple level if I make a change to the master part (grey) changes become faithfully updated in the mirrored part (pink) which get saved out to the standalone part. I've tried chamfers, altering geometry, hole wizard...

But there are some fussy nuances. It doesn't like you changing the name within the assembly part generator outside of it's kind of restrictive prefix/suffix 'Mirror' suggestion. This is what had me second guessing initially. But once the mirrored & part is saved out, amazingly you can do the SW rename within explorer & it will accept that. Or change the color or material at part level & the assembly reflects those changes next time its opened.

Another subtlety is if the master part has its own configurations, seems like you have to make your specific selections either at part level or within assembly prior to mirroring command. Because it kind of freezes those configuration features into the new part. It does not show the configurations in the mirrored part. So if you had a series of configurations to make corresponding parts, it kind of appears SW realizes that & makes a new mirrored part.

It's also not clear to me how to view the generation path just by examining the standalone mirrored part. It seems to suggest Generated Part is associated to Master Part, but nowhere can I see the named assembly which incubated them.

I'm also not sure how pack & go works. I thought I would make myself a folder dedicated to parts which are mirrored within their own little assembly part generators so it was neat & tidy. But what happens when you pack & go a final assembly that contains generated parts? Does it realize which files are associated to that generated part (generating assemblies) as part of the package? That's what messed me up before. If you break links to make a standalone part that is another twilight zone. OK I've rambled on long enough now LOL

[RichGergely]

Just seems the way to do it is configurations for the part and just think where to put features in the history if the data you need doesn't transfer when mirrored to a 2D drawing if you need them. Probably seems daunting if you don't do that kind of thing initially but it's pretty straight forward in reality.

[Jim Steinmeyer]

This is one of those things where I use past experience as my guide. While solidworks does a great job of mirroring parts I have almost always have to make a change at some point to either the original or mirrored part. That makes me wish I had just spent the time to make the mirrored part from scratch to begin with. Based on my history I almost never use mirrored parts anymore, I usually make a left/right when I need to, especially with sheet metal parts.

This has been my experience as well.
Part of it goes back to the Best Practices Thread that Matt made suggestion that you need to remember that not everyone who comes behind you will know or understand all of the neat fancy tricks you use and the model could be worthless to them if changes are needed.

[CarrieIves]

Naming features, grouping features into named folders, and adding comments to features can make a big difference to the next person to look at the model.