Templates That Aren’t Empty? I’ve Heard It All Now!

Do you have the need or desire to show components in your assembly templates? Well you can but it may not be as easy as you think. SolidWorks seems to be doing a really good at making sure that your assembly templates are completely empty other than some reference geometry.

To start off SolidWorks does not allow you to make a template that references another template already. For example you can not have an assembly template with a part in it the was created from a part template, some sort of a cross reference there I guess. So here is how you can work around this issue.

Step 1: Open Assembly and mate in components as you desire
Step 2: Save completed Assembly as an assembly file (.sldasm)
Step 3: Rename completed Assembly to the file extension for your Assembly templates (.asmdot)
Step 4: Move renamed Assembly into your Document Templates folder

Now you will be able to use this template like the others that you already have set up. However, there are a few drawbacks that I have seen. The first is that when you go to save that template it does not automatically switch to the .sldasm extension but instead you have to manually switch it, which can become a nuisance if you are used to the way that the other template react. The other is that it always puts you in the folder where the template is stored so you need to cycle through more files in order to save it off into the correct location.

Try it out for yourself to see if it fixes what ails you. Also, if you have other workarounds for this same issue please share, I would love to hear them.