SOLIDWORKS 2019: Treehouse Enhancements

Treehouse is a great tool to visualize, build, and manage assembly structures. It’s a standalone application that was released in 2015. The real value of treehouse comes from ability to setup your file structure before ever modeling anything in SOLIDWORKS. The new improvements in Treehouse 2019 really add a lot of value to using Treehouse in this way. These new additions in SOLIDWORKS 2019 include the ability to show or hide the file images on tiles, add custom properties, add configuration-specific properties, turn the display into a list view, add multiple files for import, and include these file images in a Microsoft Excel export.

Treehouse can be accessed in the SOLIDWORKS tools under the Windows start menu by going to Start > SOLIDWORKS Tools 2019 > SOLIDWORKS Treehouse 2019. You can also type Treehouse into the Windows search menu and get right to it.

 

Show or Hide File Image

The first new feature to mention is the ability to show or hide the file image on the nodes within the tree. This has been added in the cases where the tree is very large, and the user wants to maximize the screen area. The three images below (Figure 1, 2, and 3) show the option with images and then without and where to find the checkbox to display the file images.

Figure 1: File images displayed

 

Figure 2: File images hidden

 

Figure 3: Display file images on the nodes checkbox

 

Use Custom Property

Next up, in the past, Treehouse has used the file name to identify the nodes that make up the assembly structure. With SOLIDWORKS 2019, now you can use any available custom property by selecting it from a dropdown in the options shown in Figure 4. Figure 5 shows the nodes after the custom property description has been applied.

Figure 4: Dropdown for custom property name

 

Figure 5: Custom property description applied to nodes

 

Adding New Items to the Tree

Adding new items to the tree is quick and easy with a simple drag and drop of one of the blank template files from the left-hand side of the window. Just select the type of file you want to add and drag it over to the assembly or sub-assembly you want to assign it to. Figure 6 shows the addition of a blank part being added to the Turret Axle Sub-assembly. In addition, custom properties can easily be added directly from the node by clicking on the “show document properties” box to add custom properties and/or configuration-specific properties.

Figure 6: Adding a blank part template to a sub-assembly

 

Include File Images in Excel

Finally, when exporting to Excel, there is an option to include the file images in the Excel sheet providing greater clarity when finding parts, thus reducing the chance of misidentification (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Checkbox to have images displayed on an Excel export

 

Once this box is checked for the Excel export, Figure 8 shows an example of what the Excel sheet would look like. The document preview column displays the file thumbnail.

Figure 8: File images displayed on Excel sheet after export from Treehouse

 

With the many improvements to Treehouse 2019, the tool provides great value. Try out some of these new features or give Treehouse a try for the first time and see how it can streamline your assembly creation.