Best way to email an assembly 1

[hringm]

What is the best way to email a SolidWorks assembly, so that you send the whole assembly, but the individual components and details are not accessible?

An engineer in the sister division of my company has requested the 3D models of my assemblies from one of my projects. I checked with my boss on if that was okay, since usually when sending SolidWorks stuff, we are just supposed to send the PDFs of the drawings. He said "You can send only a shell. The individual components and details should not be accessible."

I can't find how to do this. I remember from our SolidWorks training being shown something like this, but I can't find any notes about it. I tried saving the assembly as a STEP file and with that you can still open every part individually, so I don't think that's what he was wanting.

If anyone has an advice on how I should do it, I'd appreciate it.

 

[JMirisola]

It depends on what version of SolidWorks you're using. If you have 2011, look at 'De-feature'. If it's an older version, save it as a part with only, selecting the 'exterior faces' geometry option.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
Design Manager/Senior Designer
M9 Defense
My Blog

 

[hringm]

Thank you! I have 2010, and save as part with the "exterior faces" was exactly what I needed.