TROUBLE using Equations with Driven Dimension in Assembly to Generate Linear Pattern

Hi all,

I'm new here, and new to SolidWorks in general but we've been making a lot of progress in company recently.

Right now we've got an assembly which so far is made up of two sides of a box mated together with a gap (of 5000) inbetween them, and a centre panel (1200 wide) mated to one side.

What we want to do is use an equation ([Number of instances = INT(gap/panel]), which fills in the gap with however many centre panels will fit (no matter how large we drive the gap), which uses linear pattern + driven dimension.

When we dimension the gap in the assembly, it stays grey and we can't make it driven.

Does anybody know how this can be done?

It would probably be easier to do this inside a Multi-Body Part then export it as an assembly(1 button). I typically prefer driving this type of thing at the part level.

Here are a few videos for you. This first one is talking about driveworksXpress. The important thing is how marcus uses equations to drive the number of instances using iif.

http://www.mymlcservices.com/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=306&video_id=200

This second one i talk about linked dimensions for patterns at the sketch level.

http://www.mymlcservices.com/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=306&video_id=291

Part of your question talks about driven dimensions. A driven dimension is just one that exists. You can reference it in the equations dialog by selecting it when the equations manager is open. Also if you expand your Mates in the feature tree, you can select the distance(5000 in your case) and either link that value, use it in an equation or both. The two images show two boxes mates at 50mm apart. I double click the mate to display the value on screen, right click on it and select "Link Value". This allows me to give it a meaningful name that will display in the equation dialog. If you simply select this value(same thing, double click but then left click the dim) while Adding an equation it will display its name(D1@distanc1 for example). This name will also be displayed when you select the value on screen and can be manually typed in. I find that Linking the value and naming it makes complicated equations easier.