Visualizing Sustainability Properties

You can use Assembly Visualization to focus on the components that most affect an assembly's environmental impact.

Not available with SustainabilityXpress.

SOLIDWORKS Sustainability evaluates the environmental impact of a design throughout the life cycle of a product. In Assembly Visualization, you can sort components by Sustainability properties, which are related to items such as energy consumption and air acidification. You can apply colors to the components based on the value of a particular property, to help you visualize the relative environmental impacts of the various components.

To sort and visualize Sustainability properties:

  1. In the assembly, click Sustainability (Tools toolbar or Evaluate tab on the CommandManager) or Tools > SOLIDWORKS Applications > Sustainability.
  2. In the Sustainability Task Pane, apply materials and other properties and click View Results.
  3. Click Assembly Visualization (Tools toolbar or Evaluate tab on the CommandManager) or Tools > Evaluate > Assembly Visualization.
    The Assembly Visualization tab appears in the FeatureManager pane.
  4. On the Assembly Visualization tab, click the arrow to the right of the column headers and click More.
  5. In the Custom Column dialog box:
    1. In Properties, select a Sustainability property (for example, Sustainability-Total Carbon).
    2. Click OK.
    The selected property appears at the top of the sorting property column.
    Click a column header to sort the components by that property. Click again to sort in reverse order.
  6. To apply colors to the components based on the value of the property:
    1. On the left side of the panel, click the vertical bar to turn on the color spectrum.
    2. To change the color of a slider, right-click it, click Change color, and select a color. For example, you can change the lower slider to green to show that components near the bottom of the list are more environmentally friendly.
    You can double-click a slider to turn the color on and access the color palette in one step.
    The value of an assembly’s property in the Sustainability Task Pane might be higher than the sum of the component values in the Assembly Visualization panel. The reason for the difference is that the value for the assembly can include additional factors such as transportation from the factory to the consumer and energy consumption over the life of the assembly.