- This video covers how to add screws from a step file
if you don't have the SolidWorks toolbox installed,
and so it will go over some of the same details
as that previous toolbox video.
If you do have the SolidWorks toolbox,
then I would recommend using that to add the screws
just because it gives you a lot more flexibility
to adjust them later on.
So as we mentioned, it's not strictly necessary
to add the screws to the model, but it's just a good way
to see how everything fits together
and to check that there aren't any problems.
So if you don't have the toolbox,
we can still use a step model of the screw
and this is exactly the same size as the toolbox screws,
and it's identical in terms of the geometry,
so it will carry out exactly the same function.
Firstly, download the file to your project folder,
and it's called 02_08_m3x16screw.STEP.
Then we just need to open this step file similar
to how we open the PCB step at the start of the course.
So go to File
open and find the folder where you downloaded the step file,
and it should appear in there.
Remember, if it doesn't appear,
you might have to change this,
so it says all files at the bottom here.
Then select the screw and press open,
and we should get a progress bar as it imports.
If you get any pop ups like this, you can just press No.
So now we just need to save this as a SolidWorks file.
So you can just press Ctrl + S,
and let's just save it in the project folder.
You can keep the default name the same,
so just press save,
and now this is saved as a SolidWorks part.
So now we can go to our assembly.
So if you have it open, you can press Ctrl + tab.
If you don't have it open,
you can just open it in SolidWorks.
To insert that screw, all we need to do is go
to the assembly tab and click on Insert components,
and now you can see the screw is there.
So let's left click and move that into the graphics area,
and if we rotate our model around,
we can use these buttons to rotate the screw,
so it's in roughly the correct orientation,
something like that,
and then let's just place that I left clicking.
So now we're going to add mates manually to move
the screw into position.
So zoom in on one of the corners,
and then just left click
to select one of the circular faces of the script,
then hold down Ctrl and then left click
to select a circular face of the hole,
and then release control from the menu that pops up,
we want to add a concentric mate, which is this one.
If your screw disappears at this point,
it might just be down inside your model somewhere,
so you can always press tab to hide the parts
and then move the screw if you need to,
and then you can reshow the parts by clicking on it
in the parts tree and pressing show components.
So now we need to add a second mate.
So let's left click to select this flat face of the hole,
then rotate around, hold down Control
and then select the underside of the screw head
and then release control and this time we want
to add a coincident mate.
So the left click to add that.
So now if we zoom out, we can see we've got that screw
in the correct place.
Now we just need to add three more,
and the next three are a little bit easier,
because we can basically just copy this first one.
So right click on it in the parts tree
and select copy with mates.
So the first thing we need to do is select
the components to copy that you can see we've already got it
in this box here should be the script.
So you can just click the next arrow.
So these are the mates we want to copy.
So let's look at this one first, the coincident mate.
The coincident will be the same for all of them
because they're all at the same height,
so we can actually just click repeat,
so that means the mate will be the same
for all components that we copy,
then make sure you're in this box,
make sure this box is blue and now we just need
to select a circular face on another hole.
So let's zoom in on this one, and just left click
to select the face, and you can see the part is placed,
but it's not actually fully placed yet.
If you look at the mouse icon,
we can actually right click at this point
to place it or you can click the green tick up here
in the left or the right.
So then let's do the same for the next one.
You can see the coincident is repeated again,
so we just need to choose another concentric.
So let's select this circular face,
and then just right click to place
and then we can do the same for the fourth one.
So the left click to select the circular face,
and then right click to place
when you've got all four can just press this red cross
to stop placing new parts.
So now you can see in the part tree,
we have these four screws.
If we spin our model around
if we make the top and bottom parts semi transparent
now we can see the screws come in from the bottom.
They go through the bottom half,
and then they go through the PCB
and they screw into the top half.
So if I show those parts again,
you can just press Ctrl + S to save our assembly.