Toy Garage Assembly: SOLIDWORKS Tutorial Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of 2 for this SOLIDWORKS tutorial to assemble a wooden Toy Garage. In this part of the tutorial I continue to demonstrate the use of all the different mate types including tangent, parallel, distance limit, path. You can download all the part files for the tutorial here.  As mentioned in part 1, the garage was modelled in SOLIDWORKS as a Part file and all the separate solid bodies were then exported as new parts for creating an assembly. If you haven’t already followed part 1 you can watch this here. In this part of the tutorial I continue to demonstrate the use of all the different mate types including tangent, parallel, distance limit, path, coincident and concentric mates. By the end of part 1, we have the ground floor parts all mated into place, and the first floor components inserted ready to continue on with this part.

So the two remaining moving parts of the toy are the car lift and the wheel sign. The wheel spinning was done using very simple mates, a coincident mate to slot the wheel on top of its connecter pole, then a concentric once that holds the wheel sign center to the pole from its circular cut extruded inner edge. The rotation is left unlocked allowing you to freely spin the part like below.

A more complicated part of this assembly is the lift. It is assembled with the lift floor, lift mechanism/handle and a rivet. The mates I used for the lift include the limit distance mate, concentric and path mate. You will find the path mate within the advanced mates tab, the path mate constrains a selected vertex on a part to a selected path. I used a sketch I created within the back panel of the lift which you can see below. For the component vertex, I used a point sketched onto the lift mechanism part. I kept the pitch, yaw, and roll of the component on free so that I could move the lift up and down freely onto each floor level. As mention in the tutorial, ensure the vertex is on the right side of the path sketch so that you can move it onto each floor. It can take some giggling around to ensure its on the right side, but the path allows you to go up, down and into each groove on the back lift panel which line up with each floor, it also locks into place so that the lift doesn’t just fall down.

With all parts in place, I add all the fixtures and fastenings into the assembly, including two different sized screws and double end stud screws. The toolbox isn’t used to drop in theses parts, they are instead just mated into position with a tangent and concentric locked mate. This is an optional part, but by adding these you can really see the fully construction process I go through when designing and modelling a toy. Where possible slotted parts are used to avoid excessive use of screws. At the end of the tutorial look out for the animated rendering which showcases all of the moving parts in play.