Archive for July, 2009

Linking to “Thickness” (trick) in SolidWorks

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Want the option to tie all “future” extrusions in a part to the thickness of your part ?
After you do what ever you need to do to make the first feature of your thin part (extrude & shell, revolve & shell, or just extrude, etc.)
LINK the value of the dimension that would be your “thickness” to a variable name called “Thickness”. (just double click the dimension, click on the Pull Down arrow next to dimension value, and choose Link Value, then type “Thickness”)
This will “trick” SolidWorks to turn on the “link to thickness” option in all your FUTURE Extrude, Cut, etc. commands just like when you are in a sheetmetal part !!
Then you just keep on modeling and turn ON this option as needed !!
Pretty COOL !!

Randy Simmons

Randy Simmons
Application Engineer, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation… (Tips & Tricks from SWworld pt.3)

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

In a 3D Sketch create a spline perpendicular to a face.
If you just pick the SPLINE and the FACE, you get a TANGENT option. This will try to physically MOVE the spline over to TOUCH the face and be TANGENT with the face. Sometimes this is NOT what you wanted and sometimes you will end up with a NO SOLUTION FOUND problem.
More likely what you want is just for the spline to be TANGENT to the face, but not necessarily TOUCH it also…
Pick the SPLINE, the FACE, and any EDGE on the face and you will get the “hidden relation” TANGENT FACE !
You also of course get a handle that you can use to adjust the magnitude of tangency.
tangtoface1

Randy Simmons

Randy Simmons
Application Engineer, CSWP
3DVision Technologies