SOLIDWORKS Mirror Entities and Dynamic Mirror Entities are two excellent tools for mirroring 2D sketches. Mirror Entities allows a user to mirror their sketches about a common centerline after the sketch has been created. With Dynamic Mirror Entities, geometry can be sketched and mirrored simultaneously.
SOLIDWORKS assemblies let you choose from four categories of mates: Standard, Advanced, Analysis, and Mechanical. Mechanical Mates allow us to create a Rack and Pinion Mate that creates a standard rack and pinion relationship between—you guessed it—a rack gear and a pinion (or spur) gear.
Mates are constraints that hold components together in SOLIDWORKS assemblies. Like Relations in sketches, they are geometric conditions relating one entity to another. Each Mate requires you to select two (or more) faces, edges, or vertices on separate Parts to build a constraint holding those parts together.
Exporting curved surfaces in SOLIDWORKS used to be a somewhat difficult process, often requiring additional software. In 2015, the Surface Flatten tool was introduced in SOLIDWORKS Premium. The Surface Flatten tool makes it very easy to take an existing curved surface and create a 2D file that can be used in machining applications.
In SOLIDWORKS, there are evaluation tools that allow us to calculate specific properties of our models. Sometimes though, we need to do a little prep work on the model in order to get the calculation desired. For this example, we'll review how to seal a hollow container and convert it to a solid to calculate its volume.
In this tutorial, we explain how to create four different reference planes in SOLIDWORKS: offset, angle, mid, and cylindrical surface planes. The most common type of reference plane is an offset plane. To create an offset plane, select the Reference Geometry drop down on the CommandManager and choose the Plane option.
To understand what smart explode lines in SOLIDWORKS are, we first need to understand what an explode line is. An explode line is a route sketch line that helps to show the position a component came from before creating an explode in SOLIDWORKS. Explode lines can be a time-consuming task to implement.
Have you ever needed to pull a cross-section of a solid with the ability to trace it? SOLIDWORKS has two tools that simplify this task: SOLIDWORKS Slicing tool and Intersection Curve. In this article, we'll look at both options and distinguish the differences between the two.
In this quick tip, we review the steps to add weld beads to a weldment file. The Weld Bead feature allows you to add the bead and weld symbol to your SOLIDWORKS model and drawing. The Weld Bead feature is a simple graphical representation and will not affect the performance of the model.