Why?

Having an accurate representation of PCB's helps with integration as well wire management and board placement. Using boards directly instead of using placeholders also helps reduce errors during manual transfer into a SolidWorks file. When the electrical team generates PCB's, they generate a STEP file or parasolid file (.x_t) which can be found in their GitHub. In this form the files cannot be used in SolidWorks assembly so some work has to be done in order to use them. Doing a lazy conversion into a SolidWorks files creates an unnecessary number of separate scattered files and an unnecessary file size which can make working in assemblies an issue. These files give us a data overload, as mech members we do not care about the placement of every single resistor or capacitor on the board (except for rendering purposes but that is a different story for a different time).

Opening the raw file

1. Open the STEP or parasolid in SolidWorks. This can take a while, this is normal (one step took me a whole 2 hours to open)...
   
   
   
2. First of all Save the file as a SolidWorks part as soon as it opens
   
   
   
3. Dissolve the step in the feature tree (right click) and break the link.
   
   
   
4. Save file.

Importing done.

Create Lightweight Configuration

1. Create a derived configuration of the original called "lightweight" (name it exactly the same as in the guide for consistency). This step can also take quite a while.
   
   
   
2. Turn on the body selection filter (appendix please) (turn off all filters with F6)
   
   
   
3. Whilst in the lightweight configuration, select all the bodies you would like to keep. This is usual just the green panel, any ports and any other important features for the mechanical design. This could be LED's or any other tall components but this is not strict. primary purpose is to reduce the poly count whilst keeping a useful reference
   
   
   
4. Press the delete key to perform a feature delete, select the option keep bodies
   
   
   
5. Save, then go back into the main configuration we are going to make a decal.
6. Get into normal view of the top of the PCB and take a screenshot. crop screenshot and save in a sensible location with a sensible name (this is a temp file which will get deleted later).
   
   
   
   
7. Go back into the lightweight configuration
8. Go into Appearances > Decals then right click to add a decal
   
   
   
   
9. Import the recently saved decal, scale and rotate to fit on the top surface.
   
   
   
   
10. Go into Settings > Document Properties > Model Display, then tick "Store appearance, decal and scene data in model file"
    
    
    
    
11. Save the file you are done now! The temporary image decal can also be deleted

Further Optimizations

Reducing Polygons

for references such as this one, we do not care if a circular object looks like a hexagon, we just need to know where the shape is in the context of PCBs. This can be done in the document settings. This change will decrease the file size as well as decrease load times.

1. Go into Options > Document Properties >Image Quality
2. Slide both of the sliders to low, and apply
   
   
   
3. Save the file

Removing Redundant Bodies and Surfaces

Permanently deleting (not a feature delete) unnecessary surfaces and bodies can give you the biggest load time saves in the long run but take the most time to do. This step involves permanently deleting any unnecessary surfaces or bodies from both the default config and the lightweight. This step is extremely important when working with massive PCBs as this can turn out to be one of the only effective ways to improve performance significantly.

1. Turn on the face selection filter (not completely necessary but it works great for me). This is different from before where as the body and surface selection filter leads into a feature delete which appears in the feature tree, the face delete, permanently deletes the item from the feature tree (which is where the savings come from).
   
   
   
2. Select yes to all.
3. Repeat until all unnecessary items are removed.
4. Save file.