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Pre-modelling sketching! (That means pencil and paper, or ipad drawings!)
Don’t need full dimensions, just a pictoral representation of your concept
Take advantage of Sketch + Part Symmetry
Fully defined sketches - all lines must be black in your sketch when it’s done. The exceptions to this are splines, and the endpoints of construction lines. Generally good to at least constrain construction lines vertically and horizontally, even if their length isn’t defined
Be careful about Auto-relations - can hold ctrl while drawing to prevent them from occuring
Auto-relations highlight the entity orange, and the relation will appear in yellow before you click
Never use “Fully Define Sketch” - causes Solidworks to just guess what dimensions are important for your design, irrespective of your design intent
In a similar vein, never use the Fix relation - this just locks things in place
Don’t use a dimension where a constraint/relation would work
Selection boxes - if you start in top left, you get a blue box which only selects entities that are entirely within the box. If you start from the bottom right, you get a green box which selects every entity the box touches.
Symmetry Vs. Midpoint - symmetry is always preferable to midpoint
To implement a symmetry relation, click two entities and an entity to mirror over, and add the symmetry constraint
Sketch labels in feature tree
An Underdefined sketch has a
next to the sketch name in the feature tree - this should never be there unless you’re using splinesOverdefinedOver-defined/unsolvable sketches - text in tree is yellow
Sketch with helping hand symbol - shared sketch, should probably avoid unless you have a good reason
Contour based (symbol is a polygonal shape with a hole in it) - should also have a really good reason to use this
General rules for Sketches
1 feature per sketch
Do not cross-reference sketches unless absolutely necessary
Always use closed loops (unless doing a thin feature)
Do not use fillets, chamfers, or patterns at the sketch level - only at feature level
Convert entities
Project pre-existing sketches or entities into the active sketch
Generally stick to sketches and avoid converting entities on faces for stability
Replace Sketch Entities
Maintains all relations in a feature while changing the sketch geometry from one entity to another (say, line to arc)
Quirky Dimensioning tricks
Click on line, click endpoint of the line, you get a crosshairs, can then dimension the angle of the line without needing a reference geometry line
Dimension to tangent
Should start sketches on a major coordinate plane instead of a face whenever possible
Change Sketch Plane
If you started a sketch on the wrong plane, can right click on the sketch in the tree, hit edit sketch plane, and then select a new plane for the sketch to exist on.
This can sometimes cause your sketch to be flipped, but it’s easy enough to flip it back
3D sketches
Red arrows show which coordinate system you’re gonna sketch on (yellow plane also indicated)
Pressing the tab button will flip the coordinate system so you can sketch on different planes
Quick 3D sketch - Weldments
Model what the solid inside your frame would look like instead of the 3D-sketched frame
Select all the edges, convert to lines, delete out the body to leave the weldment structure
Steps:
Make your 3D model
Press F5 to get selection filter - turn on edges filter
open 3D sketch
CTRL + A to select all edges
Convert entities to get a 3D sketch from the body edges
Convert 3D sketch into weldments
Starting a Part - The Correct Way! (example was a cube)
to get a center rectangle, start with a normal rectangle, draw 2 perpendicular construction lines, and use 2 symmetric constraints
Use bidirectional extrude to keep the origin centered on the part
Feature Tree Features
Rollback bar - click + drag up to temporarily absorb features (appear as grayed out)
Helpful for reverse-engineering a part, or making edits to a feature several features back
Right click → Show flat tree view - shows all sketches and features in chronological order
Hit F8 to open flyout menu from tree - columns which appear are hide/show, hide/show bodies, appearances, and transparency
Lets you easily hide and show all of your sketches on the fly
Filter bar - allows you to search for specific items in the tree
Collapsing the tree - single left click on the empty space of the feature tree, and press Shift + C to collapse the tree. May not work if you accidentally select a specific item in the tree
Suppress components
Feature naming + Folders
Features can be renamed and put in folders for better organization and clarity
Show Parent/Child Dependencies
Dynamic Reference Visualization - right click on a part at top of feature tree and click dynamic reference visualization on the flyout menu - have to do this for both the parent and child option
Shows blue arrows for parents of a feature/sketch, purple arrows for children
Shows you dependencies, i.e. what features/sketches need to be intact for a given feature to rebuild properly
Keeping a “Flat” feature tree
Minimize dependencies between features