The assembly environment, my favorite modeling environment.
Most certainly the money is made in the part environment. New concepts are created, the design details are mastered, and the end product is defined. But the assembly environment is where the cost is saved and the magic all comes together. From the largest frame weldment to the tiniest machine screw.
Do all the tolerances stack up?
Do all the piece parts interact as imagined?
Needless to say, your CAD system must be able to mimic reality when it comes to assembling your assembly, and the new features in Solidworks 2014 make the mathematics behind assembly more lifelike.
#1 - Spherical Mates
From tooling balls to conveyors, machines have parts that interact with spherical surfaces. Mating to spheres has often required unreleasing a released component part in order to add tangent planes that, in turn, allowed for accurate positioning within the assembly. Yes, the part was in the right position, but it was not mated in such as way that the virtual components matched reality. When trying to simulate this surface interaction, the virtual model failed. Solidworks 2014 improves this condition with enhanced spherical mates.
#2 - Rotation Lock
Actually, this is not one of my favorites but one that is long overdue. There are two schools of thought to assembly modeling: 1) fully constrained and 2) realistically constrained.
If a part can rotate in real life, let it rotate in the assembly model. On the other hand, open degrees of freedom can result in unanticipated changes further in the value stream, so it is better to lock all open degrees of freedom. Rotation lock allows for an easier way to constrain that last degree of freedom on axially aligned (concentric) components.
#3 - Slot Mate
Because pins and bolts don't just go into circular holes. Finally, I don't have to create a bunch of reference geometry just to mate a screw to a slot. This is a great time saver and improves the realism of the assembly model.