- One of the best ways to get components
for your solid works assemblies
is to download them from the internet.
Now, the internet is filled
with CAD models that are ready to be used in your project.
In fact, most major suppliers
of components offer 3D CAD files that we can just grab
from their website and bring into ours.
If you're designing or using
any the shelf's standard component
make sure you're checking the web for it.
One great location to look for that is
at 3D content central, you can go in here and search
for whatever you happen to be looking for right there.
You can find all these companies who happen to
be providing these types of components.
Another great website is GrabCAD.
So if you head over to GrabCAD click on their little library
and users have uploaded these CAD files in a variety
of formats, most of them happen to be SolidWorks files
but there are other design packages
out there being used to create some of these files.
You can click on it, see exactly which version
of the software it was created in
and what type of files are available.
And you can download these things
and use them in your own designs
or for reference another great source is McMaster-Carr.
This is a great source for hardware.
Nuts and bolts and fasteners, and pretty much anything else.
They're just a wonderful, magical
hardware store of the internet.
And if you're looking for something, you can click on a
like a screw, a bolt, come over here,
choose the style you're looking for
choose a socketed cap screw, choose the material.
And then you have this dropdown list here.
You can choose the size so I can go ahead
and just click in this box here
and scroll down until I see the size I'm looking for.
I'm looking for this three, 3/8"-16 one inch long
and you can sort by that and you can see it's available
in both the black oxide or zinc plated alloy steel.
I can just go ahead and click on any one of these
and notice this little box that pops up,
so I can add them to my cart.
I can also come over here
to this little CAD icon and click on that.
So this is giving you all the information
about the component itself, and if you scroll down
you can see the actual CAD drawing of that part
and we can even download it directly into SolidWorks.
So right over here you can see
I've got a 3D SolidWorks format.
I have all these other options as well,
and I would recommend downloading
this 2D PDF document as well
and making a library of your components that way
if you're sending us off to purchasing
or you're going to just need to reference it later
you know exactly what you're using in your design.
So download the PDF first
and then come back and download the 3D SolidWorks file.
Click on save and right down here
you can see it downloaded my file.
Go ahead and open that up.
It's going to use the SolidWorks launcher, which is good.
And go ahead and just click okay.
if you get this little journal file thing that pops up.
So there is my new component I just downloaded.
You can see, pretty nice, and then I can just go ahead
and save this component out to my file system
and use it in my assemblies.
I also want to point out
while I'm here is SolidWorks has its own library.
If you click over here under the library
we have the design library
and inside the design library is a whole bunch
of components as well, forming tools and assemblies
and you can store your annotations
for drawings and individual parts.
You can look inside here
and see what is actually in the library.
You can create your own libraries.
In fact, if you're downloading
and using a lot of components from McMaster-Carr
you might make a McMaster library
and just save components into that library.
So you can use them over and over again.
Also, below the design library is the toolbox
which we've already looked at in a previous movie
which is a pre-loaded library of a bunch of components.
But below that, we also have access
to that 3D content central in here as well
as well as a bunch of SolidWorks content.
So if you click on any one of these things
we've got blocks and routing and weldments, and under here
we've got the supplier content as well
as library or the user library content.
So definitely take a look
at all these available resources for great content.
Don't design it, if it's available
from another supplier, because more than likely,
you're not going to put as much effort
into creating this perfect component as they are.
And you can get things done a lot faster.
If you do download things from the internet.