Spring Dog: New to SOLIDWORKS Nashville 2020 is a unique component that acts “flexible” in an assembly and each instance of the component can take on a different shape.

Think of a flexible hose, cable, or spring that the same flexible part is used in multiple locations and different shapes throughout the assembly. You could create an entire litter of spring dogs all in one assembly, all with different relative positions between the multiple instances of Dog Head and Dog Tail. You could constrain each dog tail or head with any mates that partially remove degrees of freedom (like Limit mates), or just leave them floating.

But wait, there’s more; you could create an endless number of additional assemblies, each with multiple instances of the spring inserted and “flexible”. Open up the “Flex spring for dog” part individually to review all the features comments and instructions on how to create this assembly as shown.

Features: Sweep,Surface Cut, In-Context Planes, and In-Context Sketches

Complexity: Moderate

Download:spring dog components–  which contains the following: puck for flex spring construction.sldprt, flex spring for dog.sldprt, flex spring construction.sldasm, dog head.sldprt, dog tail.sldprt, spring dog.sldasm.