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Asked By Ed G.
One of the best and most important aspects of using Solidworks as a parametric, feature-based CAD system is that you, as the user, have the ability to control your own design intent when modeling parts and assemblies. New SolidWorks users sometimes struggle with the design intent when creating models. By design intent, I mean that how you create features and relationships in SolidWorks determines how the model will behave if and when changes are made to the geometry. By creating the appropriate parametric relationships, you can ensure that designs can be updated quickly and without errors. In this SolidWorks Video Tutorial, I’ve been asked to take this part, where the first feature was created on the top plane, and switch the entire part to the front plane. Let’s take a look at how applying design intent factors into accomplishing this task.
Asked By Dan V.
The best way to create 2D geometry on a 3D surface or face in SolidWorks is by using the Projected Curve command. In this SolidWorks video tutorial, you’ll see how to use the projected curve to create a circle on a cylindrical face.
Asked By Nick H.
Splines are a really useful design tool, and come in handy when creating complex curved shapes. If you’re familiar with splines, you know that they can be fully defined by dimensioning each of the spline points, as well as the drag handles. However, have you ever wondered how to get the exact X and Y points for the spline? Well, you can click each of the control points, and see the coordinate values on the status bar at the bottom, but what about the coordinates for the areas of the curve in between? I’d like to show you a trick you can use to have SolidWorks calculate and output the coordinates of a spline.
Asked By Frank From Modellers
Besides being a very user friendly design tool, SolidWorks also has lots of tools that let you analyze your designs. This SolidWorks Video Tutorial shows you one of the many ways to measure to the center point of a face, and the technique used will work with both curved and linear surfaces, as well as both planar, or 2D, and non-planar, 3D, surfaces. Enjoy!
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