Copy / Paste components from one assembly to another and retain positioning

[pirateincognito]

I have 10 years experience with CATIA V5 and Siemens NX and I can't seem to do this simple thing in SolidWorks 2020.

I would like to Copy / Paste components from one assembly to another and retain positioning

I have no idea what solidworks does to positioning data during copy / paste but it almost seems random.

I did some testing. I grabbed 4x bolts, they pasted in correct bolt pattern, but off in space. When I copied 4x bolts and the mating part they pasted into another orientation.

Then I took Assy_A and placed Assy_B inside Assy_A and moved it to the correct position that I wanted. I figured if I did copy / paste in the assembly context it would at least stay in the same position, nope they landed in some random location...

20min of Google search has not turned up anything useful

 

[ctopher]

Look into smart mates. Paste into another assy it doesn't know what to mate to. Setup the parts with smart mates. YouTube has some info how to do it.

ctopher, CSWP
SolidWorks '19
ctophers home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[pirateincognito]

What I ended up doing as a work around was:

1. Place AssyB inside of AssyA , align them properly.

I want to copy components from AssyA into AssyB and have them be in the exact same position.

2. In AssyA, copy/paste the desired components into the parent assembly (AssyA), or make duplicates by CTRL+LMB dragging them in the feature tree. There are now duplicates of these components on top of each other and in the exact same location.

3. Move the "duplicate" components from AssyA to AssyB by dragging them onto AssyB in the feature tree. They are now structured under AssyB without moving positions.

4. Save Assy _B. Close AssyA without saving.