Planes, Trains and Automobiles (or maybe just Planes…)

Michael LaFleche — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:35:28 +0000

SolidWorks 2010 overhauled the Reference Planes tools so that they work like familiar and easy to use Mates. By implementing this new way of developing Reference Planes, it doubles the amount of planes that you can create in one step. Here’s how it works: Go to the Reference Plane tools in the drop down menu “Insert… Reference Geometry… Planes… or choose the Reference Geometry drop down icon in the Features Command Manager all the way towards the right side of the toolbars. You will then be presented with a PropertyManager that looks like the one pictured to the left.

You may ask yourself, where are all of my choices I used to love? You may then ask yourself, is this good or is this bad? You may ask yourself, my God, what have they done? (Sorry, I was just listening to the Talking Heads on my drive down to the office this morning). Essentially, SolidWorks interprets your selections just like Mates. For the first reference, select a planar surface and you will then see the PropertyManager come to life, like in the image below:

You will notice it defaults to an offset plane. But you could also select a second reference, like another edge, to create a plane rotated at another angle. My favorite is creating a center plane. Simply select 2 planes and it will give you the choice of a centered plane. Selecting 2 cylindrical planes will give you an easy tangent plane. Try it out!!!

To Derive or not to Derive, that is the question…

Michael LaFleche — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:25:42 +0000

One of our Application Engineers pointed put a often overlooked function in SolidWorks called “Derived Sketch”. This tool derives a sketch from another sketch that belongs to the same part, or derives a sketch from another sketch in the same assembly! When you derive a sketch from an existing sketch, you are assured that the two sketches will retain the characteristics that they share in common. Changes that you make to the original sketch are reflected in the derived sketch. To derive a sketch from a sketch in the same part: Select the sketch from which you want to derive a new sketch. Hold the Ctrl key and click the face or plane on which you want to place the new sketch. In the example below, I created an Offset Reference Plane by holding the CTRL key and dragging one of my planes away at 1 inch. Then I chose Insert, Derived Sketch from the pull-down menu. This is one of those secret handshakes in SolidWorks where you have to pre-select to get the command to appear. (It is a species nearing extinction, now that “Convert Entities” now has a property manager interface in SolidWorks 2010. Now that you have initiated the secret handshake, the sketch appears on the plane of the selected face, and the status line indicates that you are editing the sketch. Position the derived sketch by dragging and dimensioning it to the selected face. (The derived sketch is rigid and drags as a whole entity.) I rotated my sketch 90 degrees about the midpoint of the first sketch. You can add relations to the original sketch so that things are coincident, parallel, ect… Then exit the Sketch. Make a feature like normal. In my example I created a lofted feature. Now if you change anything in the original sketch, the other sketch updates.

If you wish to “un-derive” the sketch so that it no longer receives the updates of the original, simply right-click the derived sketch feature in the tree and choose Un-Derive. Thanks to Paul Hagenow of CAPINC Technical Support for suggesting to post this topic!

CAPUniversity » Reference Geometry

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (or maybe just Planes…)

To Derive or not to Derive, that is the question…