IN THIS CHAPTER
Copying and moving sketch entities
Working with sketch pictures
Creating text in a sketch
Applying colors and line styles to sketches
Overlapping sketch tools
Drawing in a 3D sketch
Editing and copying tutorial
Controlling pictures, text, colors, and styles tutorial
Using metadata tutorial
Sketching calculator tutorial
Previous chapters have described the basic tools for sketching. This chapter takes you to the next level, teaching you about more advanced sketch tools, how to edit and manipulate sketches, and how to work with sketch text, sketch pictures, and sketch colors. At the end of this chapter, with a little practice to reinforce the tools and techniques, you should feel like you have mastered the topic of SolidWorks sketching and can handle almost any problem that is thrown at you.
Delete is not an editing option. In time, you will find that this is good advice, even if you don't agree with it now. There are times to delete instead of editing, but you should delete only when it is necessary. In my own work, I sometimes go to extreme lengths to avoid deleting sketch entities, often just to stay in practice, but also because deleting sketch entities, or even features in a part, increases the likelihood that sketch or mate relationships will be broken.
The main reason to avoid using Delete is that when you are editing a sketch that has other features that are dependent on it, the dependent features may lose their references, or go dangling. Because of this, even when you can use the Delete command instead of making edits, it is still a good practice to edit instead. Deleting relations is not as critical as deleting sketch entities, unless the relations are referenced by equations or design tables.
Best Practice
Before deleting sketch entities, try to understand what types of relationships the change will affect downstream. Be sure to consider other sketch relationships within the current part, mates, and in-context relations and even mates in the assembly, and things of this nature. In fact, it is best to have all of this in mind when you are creating relationships to begin with. Try to make relations to the most stable entities available, which usually means having sketches and reference geometry entities as high up in the tree as possible.
Display/Delete Relations is your primary tool when dealing with sketch relations. It is particularly useful for sorting relations by the various categories shown in Figure 6.1. The capability to show sketch relations in the graphics window is nice; sorting them in a list according to their state makes this feature even more useful. To show the sketch relation symbols on the screen beside the sketch entities, use the menu selection View Sketch Relations.
Sketch relations in the Display/Delete Relations dialog box can be divided into the following categories:
The Not Solved condition causes sketch entities to turn pink and often accompanies other entities that are overdefined. Not Solved typically refers to a dimension or relation that cannot be applied because of the conflict. The lower-right corner of the screen and the status bar show flags warning that the sketch is overdefined, as shown in Figure 6.2.
When an overdefined situation exists, all the relations and dimensions in a sketch often become overdefined. This can look like a daunting task to repair, especially when the entire problem is caused by a single relation. Do not automatically delete everything. Instead, try deleting or suppressing the last dimension or relation that was added, or a single relation that looks suspect. You can suppress a dimension by setting it to Driven in the right mouse button (RMB) menu, and you can suppress relations in the Display/Delete Relations PropertyManager.
Cross-Reference
In-context design, also called top-down, as well as locked and broken relations are covered in detail in the SolidWorks 2011 Assemblies Bible (Wiley, 2011).
Caution
Some of the relations listed in the Display/Delete Relations dialog box may be colored to signify the state of the relation. Unfortunately, colored relations are typically placed at the top of the list to attract attention, but when you select them, they are always gray, and so the advantage of color-coding is always defeated for the first relation in the list. The only way around this is to select a relation other than the first one in the list. If there is only one relation in the list, you cannot see the state color.
A setting in Tool Options controls the display of errors. You can choose Tools Options FeatureManager to find an option called Display Warnings, where you can choose Always, Never, and All but Top Level. When a sketch contains sketch relations with errors, they display as warning signs on the sketch and will propagate to the top level of a part or assembly if you have selected the Always option.
The SketchXpert, shown in Figure 6.3, can help you to diagnose and repair complex sketch relation problems. The Diagnose button at the top creates several possible solutions that you can toggle through using the forward and backward arrow buttons in the Results panel. The Manual Repair button displays all the relations with errors in a window where you can delete them manually.
By selecting the option at the very bottom of the dialog box (Always open this dialog when sketch error occurs), you can make the SketchXpert appear whenever a sketch error occurs. To display the SketchXpert manually instead of automatically, you can access it by right-clicking in a sketch.
SolidWorks offers several different tools to help you move sketch entities around in a sketch. In SolidWorks, it is usually recommended to keep the sketch as simple as you can, and to create patterns using feature patterns rather than sketch patterns. The following section discusses the main tools for moving and copying sketch entities.
Move entities enables you to move selected sketch entities by either selecting From and To points, or by typing in XY coordinates for the move. When the Keep relations option is unselected, the Move tool automatically detaches sketch segments whose endpoints are merged, as shown in Figure 6.4. If Keep relations is selected, SolidWorks moves the entities and tries to maintain the sketch relations and merged points. All the tools have a pushpin icon in the interface. You can use the tool multiple times in succession when the pushpin icon is pushed in; tools with the pushpin are deactivated after one use if the pushpin icon is not pushed in.
Rotate entities rotates selected entities in a sketch in the same way that Move entities works. You can drag the angle or type it in manually. The green check mark icon is on the RMB, as shown in the cursor display in Figure 6.5.
The Keep Relations option does not actually keep any relations — it deletes the Horizontal and Vertical relations in the sketch, as shown in Figure 6.5 — but it does keep the merged endpoints, as shown in the rightmost image of Figure 6.5. This can be useful, especially considering how many sketch relations it would take to make a sketch move like this naturally.
The Copy entities tool works exactly like the Move entities tool, except that it copies instead of moving. The Copy entities tool enables you to copy selected sketch entities by either selecting From and To points or by typing in XY coordinates to place the copy. SolidWorks copies the entities and tries to maintain the sketch relations and merged points.
Scale entities is one of those functions probably best left alone. This is because the results are erratic and unpredictable, particularly if there are dimensions on the sketch. This tool works on a selection of entities, particularly on an isolated selection that is not connected to other entities in the sketch. The PropertyManager for the Scale Entities tool is shown in Figure 6.6.
The Modify Sketch tool has been available in SolidWorks for a long time, but it has been superseded by some of the newer tools mentioned previously. However, it still has some unique functionality that is not covered by any other sketch tool. Modify sketch works on the entire sketch rather than on selections from the sketch, and it works best if there are no external relations between sketch entities and anything outside the sketch. It can also work on a sketch without the sketch being active. While most feature and tool interfaces have been moved to the PropertyManager, Modify sketch still uses a dialog box, as shown in Figure 6.7, that floats in the graphics window.
The Modify Sketch dialog box enables you to perform the following functions:
When you place the cursor over the knobs on the Moveable Origin, the cursor symbols change to indicate the functionality of the RMB. These cursors are shown in action in Figure 6.8. The cursors enable mirroring about X, Y, or both simultaneously.
Note
The one thing about Modify Sketch that many people find unsettling is that the red sketch origin moves and rotates along with the rest of the sketch. Once you make peace with the fact that you can't use the red sketch origin for much anyway, this becomes unimportant.
Probably the simplest way to copy sketch entities in a sketch is to select the entities and use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V or one of the many other methods available for this purpose (such as the RMB button menu, the Edit menu, and Ctrl+dragging).
In addition to copying selected entities within an active sketch, you can also select a sketch from the FeatureManager and then copy and paste it to a selected plane or planar face (if you are not in a sketch to begin with). This creates a new sketch feature in the FeatureManager that is not related to the original, although it does maintain internal dimensions and relations. (External relations are not copied with the sketch.) This is particularly useful when setting up certain types of lofts that use several profiles that can be created from a single copied profile. Copying and pasting is a fast and effective method of putting sketches on planes.
Copying a sketch is similar to the derived sketch (addressed later in this chapter), except that with a copied sketch there is no link, and with the derived sketch the new and old sketches remain identical through changes to the original sketch.
If a selected set of sketch entities has no external relations, then you can select it as a group and move it without distorting or resizing the sketch. For best results with this technique, avoid dragging endpoints — drag an actual line.
A derived sketch is a parametrically linked copy. The original parent and derived sketches do not need to have any geometrical relation to one another, but when the parent sketch is changed, the dependent derived copy is updated to stay in sync.
To create a derived sketch, you can select a plane or planar face, Ctrl+select the sketch of which you want to make the parametric copy, and then choose Insert Derived Sketch.
When you create a derived sketch, you cannot change its shape or size; it works like a block of a fixed shape driven by the parent. However, you can change the position and orientation of the derived sketch. Figure 6.9 shows a derived sketch and its parent. Modify Sketch is a great tool to use for manipulating derived sketches that are not related to things outside the sketch, especially for mirroring or rotating.
Sketch pictures are images that are placed in a sketch on a sketch plane. You can size and rotate the images, give them a transparent background, trace over them, and suppress them. They display as a child of the sketch in the FeatureManager. Image types that you can use as sketch pictures are BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, and WMF.
To bring a picture into a sketch, the sketch must first be active. Click Sketch Picture on the Sketch toolbar (it is not there by default, and so you may need to drag it onto the Sketch toolbar from the Tools Customize Commands dialog box). You can also access this command by choosing Tools Sketch Tools Sketch Picture from the menu. You cannot use sketch pictures in assembly sketches, but you can use them in a part sketch in an assembly.
To change the size of a sketch picture, you can double-click it and drag one of the handles around the outside of the image. When the picture comes into the sketch, it is usually too big, having been sized at a ratio of 1 pixel to 1 mm. To size a picture accurately, you should include a ruler or an object of a known size in the image. If you cannot do this, the next best thing is to guess the size. Draw a line in your sketch and dimension it to approximately the size of something that is recognizable in the image, and then move the image by clicking and dragging it to lay the dimensioned sketch entity as close over the object in the image as possible.
You can rotate and mirror images, as well, using the Sketch Picture PropertyManager. Images are opaque, and you cannot see the model through them, but at the same time, you also cannot see the images through the model. They are like flat pieces of paper that are pasted to the model or hanging in space.
You can add transparency to images, either by selecting a color or by using the built-in transparency in the image file (alpha channels are only available in certain types of image files). When you select a color to be transparent, you will also need to increase both the Matching Tolerance and the Transparency value sliders, which are by default set to their minimum values.
Caution
If a sketch picture has had user-defined transparency applied to it, and you double-click the picture, SolidWorks automatically bumps you into the eyedropper mode, which selects a color to be transparent. A single extra click in this mode can make a mess of your Sketch Picture transparency settings by changing the selected transparency color.
Sketch pictures cannot be shown on a drawing associatively. The only way to do this is to capture an image of the sketch picture that is being shown in the model, and put this image in the drawing. PhotoView 360 does not use sketch pictures, either, and Decals are a separate item altogether.
Tip
Although the most common use for the sketch picture is as a tracing guide, you can use it for a wide variety of other purposes. For example, any sort of logo, decal, or display that is on a flat surface can be shown as a sketch picture.
Best Practice
Best practice for using sketch pictures is to put them into a separate sketch near or at the top of the FeatureManager. Even though you can have sketch entities in a Sketch Picture sketch, I recommend keeping them in separate sketches. This is because when you use the sketch entities for an extrude or a loft guide curve, this sketch will be consumed under that feature, meaning the image becomes buried somewhere in your model rather than being easily accessible at the top of the FeatureManager.
When building a model from images, it is often helpful to have three or more images from orthogonal views, similar to re-creating a part from a 2D drawing. If you have a left and a right view, it may be a good idea to put them on planes that are slightly separated so that the images are not exactly on top of one another, which makes them both hard to see. Putting them on slightly offset planes means that one will be clearly visible from one direction and the other visible from the other direction.
Each sketch picture must be in a separate sketch. Figure 6.10 demonstrates the use of multiple sketch pictures to trace the outline of a vehicle, with the partially complete model shown with the images.
Additionally, you can put multiple sketch pictures inside a single sketch if you want to do that. Both images show up in the FeatureManager, and both can be displayed at the same time, although you may have difficulty if you want to put them on top of one another.
When taking digital photographs to be used as sketch pictures in SolidWorks, you have to consider how perspective affects the image. Perspective can make it difficult to size items in the foreground or background. You should be aware of this, as well as that objects at different distances from the camera will appear at distorted sizes. If you are taking the pictures that will be used as sketch pictures, you can minimize the effects of perspective by standing farther away from the object and using zoom on the camera if possible.
When you are drawing a sketch of an object, you are usually drawing theoretically sharp corners of the model. Real parts usually have rounded corners, so you may have to use your imagination to project where the 3D surfaces would intersect at an edge minus the fillets.
When you are reverse-modeling a part from images, you are not using an exact science. It is better than not being able to put pictures into the sketch, but there is nothing about it that can be considered precise.
Auto Trace is an add-in that you can select by choosing the Tools Add-ins menu. Auto Trace is intended to trace between areas of contrast in sketch pictures, creating sketch entities. To use Auto Trace, make sure the add-in is activated. Activating the Auto Trace add-in activates a set of arrows at the top of the Sketch Picture PropertyManager. There is nothing to identify the functionality with the Auto Trace name. Figure 6.11 shows the Sketch Picture and Auto Trace PropertyManagers. The sliders for the Auto Trace functionality do not point out which end is high and which is low.
Auto Trace works best with solid blocks of black and white in the Sketch Pictures. To achieve this, you may need to use image processing software and reduce your picture to a two-color (black and white) bitmap, TIF, or PNG image. Even if this pre-processing gives perfect results, don't expect much from Auto Trace.
I can't imagine a situation in which I would use this myself or recommend anyone else use it. In all cases, including idealized demonstration images or those in which traced images would be of the most benefit to the user, such as logos with complex curvature, I believe it would be faster and more accurate to do the tracing manually, even it means using splines.
Sketch text uses TrueType fonts to create text inside a SolidWorks sketch. This means that any TrueType font that you have can be converted to text in solid geometry; this includes Wingdings and symbol fonts. Keep in mind that some characters in certain fonts do not convert cleanly into SolidWorks sketches. Sketch text still has to follow the rules for sketching and creating features such as closed contours, as well as not mixing open and closed contours.
You can make sketch text follow a sketch curve; to space it evenly along the curve, you can control character width and spacing, as well as overall size, by specifying points or actual dimensions. Sketch text can also be justified right, left, centered, and evenly, as well as reversed, rotated, and flipped upside down. Figure 6.12 shows the Sketch Text PropertyManager and some examples of sketch text options.
The icons in the Sketch Text PropertyManager are self-explanatory, other than the Rotated Text option, which rotates individual letters (as shown in the Dimension the Placement Point text in Figure 6.12), and not the whole string of text.
You can use the Sketch Text tool multiple times in a single sketch to make pieces of text with different properties. Each string of text has a placement point located at the lower left of the text. This point can be given sketch relations or dimensions to locate the text.
If the text overlaps in places, as shown in Figure 6.12, you can correct this in a couple of ways. First, you can extrude it with the Merge option unselected so that each letter is created as a separate solid body. You can also explode sketch text so that it becomes simply lines and arcs in a sketch, which you can edit the same as any other sketch. You can also adjust the Width Factor and Spacing settings.
Starting in the 2010 version of SolidWorks, you can link the text to a custom property. This means that sketch text can be changed with configurations. Configurations are covered in a later chapter. The text used to extrude a feature can come from Custom Properties, which can be driven by a design table or directly through the Sketch Text PropertyManager.
Performance
Sketch Text can dramatically slow down the performance of your SolidWorks part. If you write an entire paragraph of text in a sketch and use that text to extrude a solid feature, you are likely to notice that the part runs much more slowly. One way to avoid this is to suppress the feature and only turn it on when needed.
Custom colors and line styles are usually associated with drawings, not sketches; in fact, they are most valuable when used for drawings. In sketches, this functionality is little known or used, but is still of value in certain situations.
In drawings, you can use the Color Display Mode button to switch sketch entities on the drawing between displaying the assigned line or layer color and displaying the sketch status color. It has exactly the same effect in part and assembly sketches.
When you select the button, the sketch state colors are used. When the button is not selected, any custom colors that you have applied to the sketch entities appear. If the button is not selected and you have not applied colors to the entities, then the default sketch state colors are used.
You can use sketch colors for emphasis, to make selected sketch entities stand out, or to make sketches with various functions immediately distinguishable. Color Display mode only has an effect on an active sketch. Once a sketch is closed, it returns to the gray default color for inactive sketch entities.
Line color enables you to assign color to entities in an active sketch. The Color Display Mode tool determines whether the assigned color or the default sketch status colors are used.
You can use the Edit Sketch Or Curve Color tool to assign color to an inactive sketch or to a sketch block. The color that you assign to sketches in this way displays only when the sketch is inactive, instead of the default gray color. The sketches also follow the toggle state of the Color Display Mode button. For example, if the Color Display Mode button is selected, then inactive sketches display as gray. When the Color Display Mode button is unselected, then inactive sketches display in any color that you have assigned by using the Edit Color tool.
When you use this tool to color a sketch block, the block displays the color inside the active sketch. You cannot use the Line Color tool mentioned earlier to assign color to a block.
The Line Thickness and Line Style tools function independently from the Color Display Mode button, but they are still used only when the sketch is active. As soon as a sketch that contains entities with edited thickness and style is closed, the display goes back to the normal line weight and font.
To assign a thickness or a style, you can select the sketch entities to be changed, click the button, and then select the thickness or style. Although a single sketch entity may have only a single thickness or style, you can use multiple thicknesses or styles within a single sketch. Figure 6.13 shows a sketch with the thickness and style edited.
Cross-Reference
Line thickness and line styles are covered in more detail in the discussion of drawings in Chapter 18.
SolidWorks has a lot of functionality that overlaps between multiple topics. The following tools could appear in other sections of the book, but I include them here because they will help you work with and control 2D sketches in SolidWorks. Almost everybody who opens the SolidWorks software at one time or another has to use a sketch, so these tools could be applied by a wide swath of users.
As the name suggests, RapidSketch is meant to help you rapidly create a number of sketches on different planes or flat faces. As you move a sketch cursor over flat faces of a model, the faces highlight to indicate that you can start a new sketch there.
The workflow with this tool is that you start in one sketch, with an active sketch tool, move the cursor over another plane or face without exiting the first sketch, and start sketching the entity on the new plane.
The only real downside of using RapidSketch is that if you sketch on a particular plane or face where other planes or faces might be visible in the background, SolidWorks might interpret certain selections as trying to change sketch planes. To get back to a previous sketch, deactivate the current sketch tool (for example, by pressing Esc) and double-click the previous sketch you want to return to. To move to a later sketch, use the normal sketch exiting techniques.
RapidSketch is a rarely used function in SolidWorks. It has been available for several releases now, but it has not caught on with users. I have yet to see a compelling case for its use.
You can add Sensors in the SolidWorks FeatureManager for parts and assemblies by right-clicking the Sensors folder and selecting Add Sensor. You can find the Sensors folder at the top of the FeatureManager. If you cannot find the Sensors folder, choose Tools Options FeatureManager and make sure the Sensor folder is set to Show.
You are not limited to using sensors only when working with sketches; you can use them outside of sketches in parts and assemblies to warn you when various types of parameters meet various types of criteria.
Figure 6.14 shows the Sensor PropertyManager. You can create sensors for measurements, simulation data, or mass properties. The reason I have included Sensors in this chapter is the measurement options, which enable you to select a dimension and set a range of values or criteria for which you want to be notified. The dimension can be a driving (black) sketch dimension, a driven (gray) dimension on a sketch, or even a driven dimension placed directly on solid geometry.
FIGURE 6.14 shows what happens when a sensor finds a condition that you asked it to notify you about.
In addition to turning Sensor alarms on or off, you can also suppress Sensors when they are no longer needed or to improve performance.
Sensors are a great way to keep an eye on particular values, such as wall thickness or clearance between parts. You can use a Sensor to monitor any value you want to monitor but don't drive directly.
Metadata in SolidWorks is non-geometrical text information. Metadata is particularly helpful as keywords in searches as well as in Product Data Management (PDM) applications. If you don't use metadata within your CAD documents, it can be easy to forget that it is there at all.
You can use the following items as metadata in SolidWorks files:
Metadata searches can be particularly useful in large assemblies or parts with long lists of features that you need to find or search through. You can conduct searches for metadata through the FeatureManager Filter at the top of the FeatureManager. The Advanced Search function in assemblies can also search metadata sources. SolidWorks Explorer is a good first-level data management solution that can search, display, and edit metadata and previews. Windows Explorer can also search properties and tags.
In SolidWorks, the only construction geometry that can be created directly is the construction line. All other sketch entities can be converted to construction geometry by selecting the Construction Geometry option within the sketch entity's PropertyManager or by using the Construction Geometry toggle toolbar button.
SolidWorks terminology is inconsistent, because it sometimes refers to construction lines as centerlines. The two are really the same thing. Centerlines are used for revolved sketches and mirroring, but there is no difference between a centerline and a construction line in SolidWorks.
Construction geometry is useful for many different types of situations. I use it frequently for reference sketch data. You can make sketch relations to construction geometry and can use it for layout sketches or many other purposes limited mainly by your needs and imagination.
The 3D sketch is an important tool for creating weldments (and many other features) in SolidWorks. Structural frames are a large part of the work that is typically done using weldment functionality in SolidWorks, and frames are most often represented as 3D wireframes. You can do this with a combination of 2D sketches on different planes, with a single 3D sketch, or with a combination of 2D and 3D sketches. If you have confidence in your ability to use 3D sketches, then that is the best way to go. Three-dimensional sketches can be challenging, but they are certainly manageable if you know what to expect from them.
Earlier chapters discuss the tools that are available for 3D sketches; this chapter covers techniques for 3D sketching.
When drawing a line in a 3D sketch, the cursor and Origin initially look like those shown in Figure 6.15. The large red Origin is called the space handle, with the red legs indicating the active sketching plane. Any sketch entities that you draw lie on this plane. The cursor also indicates the plane to which the active sketching plane is parallel. The XY graphic shown in Figure 6.15 does not mean that the sketch is going to be on the XY plane, just parallel to it.
Pressing the Tab key causes the active sketching plane to toggle between XY, YZ, and ZX. The active sketching plane indication does not create any sketch relations; it just lets you know the orientation of the sketch entities that are being placed. If you want to create a skew line that is not parallel to any standard plane, you can do this by sketching to available endpoints, vertices, Origins, and so on. If there are not any entities to snap to, then you need to accept the planar placement, turn off the sketch tool, rotate the view, and move one end of the sketch entity.
An excellent tool to help you visualize what is happening in a 3D sketch is the Four Viewport view. This divides the screen into four quadrants, displaying the Front, Top, and Right views in addition to the trimetric or isometric view. You can sketch in any of the viewports, and the sketch updates live in all of the viewports simultaneously. This arrangement is shown in Figure 6.16. You can easily access the divided viewport screen by using buttons on the Standard Views toolbar. You can also manually split the screen by using the splitter bars at the lower-left and upper-right ends of the scroll bar areas around the graphics window. These window elements are also described in Chapter 2.
When unconstrained entities in a 3D sketch are moved, they move in the plane of the screen. This can lead to unexpected results when viewing something at an angle, moving it, and then rotating the view, which shows that it has shot off into deep interplanetary space. This is another reason for using the Four Viewport view, which enables you to see what is going on from all points of view at once.
Sketch relations in 3D sketches are not exactly the same as in 2D sketches. Improvements have been made in the past several versions, but 3D sketches still lack some important bits of functionality. Pierce is not applicable in a 3D sketch, and is replaced by Coincident, because in 3D sketches there is no difference between Pierce and Coincident. Relations are not projected into a plane in a 3D sketch the way they are in 2D.
On the other hand, several other relations are available in 3D sketches that are not found in 2D sketches, such as AlongX, AlongY, AlongZ, and OnSurface.
As mentioned earlier, relations in 3D sketches are not projected like they are in 2D sketches. For example, an entity in a 2D sketch can be made coincident to an entity that is out of plane. This is because to make the relation, the out-of-plane entity is projected into the sketch plane, and the relation is made to the projection. In a 3D sketch, Coincident means Coincident, with no projection.
As a general caution, keep in mind that solving sketches in 3D is more difficult than it is in 2D. You will see more situations where sketch relations fail, or flip in the wrong direction. Angle dimensions in particular are notorious in 3D sketches for flipping direction if they change and go across the 180-degree mark. When possible, it is advisable to work with fully defined sketches, and also to be careful (and conservative) with sketch relations.
For example, the sketch shown in Figure 6.17 cannot be fully defined without also overdefining the sketch. The main difficulty is that the combination of the tangent arc and the symmetric legs of the end brace cannot be located rotationally, even using the questionable reliability of 3D planes that are discussed next.
This set of sketch entities cannot be located rotationally within the 3D sketch
It is possible to create planes directly in 3D sketches. These planes work like regular planes starting in SolidWorks 2010, where they are defined by constraints and selections rather than selecting a type of method to define a plane. Sketches can be created on these planes, and move with the planes. Having planes in the sketch also enables planar sketch entities such as arcs and circles in 3D sketches.
Unfortunately, there is a lot to watch out for with 3D planes, as they are called. The first thing to watch out for is that they do not follow their original definition like normal Reference Geometry type planes. Figure 6.18 shows the PropertyManager interface for creating 3D planes; however, keep in mind that the plane does not maintain the original relation to these initial references. The parent-and-child relations that SolidWorks users are used to are suspended for this one function, or work in the reverse from what you normally expect.
3D planes cannot be fully defined unless there is some sketch geometry on the plane that is in turn related to something else. Limited types of sketch relations can be applied directly to the plane itself, Horizontal and Vertical relations cannot be applied directly to the plane to orient it. Horizontal and Vertical relations of entities on the plane are relative only to the plane and not to the rest of the part, and so making a line horizontal on the plane does not mean anything when the plane rotates (which it is free to do until it is somehow constrained to prevent this).
Beyond this, when a plane violates a sketch relation, the relation is not reported, which severely limits the amount of confidence that you can place in planes that are created in this way. The biggest danger is in the plane rotating, because that is the direction in which it is most difficult to fully lock down. The best recommendation I can make here is reference sketch lines given some relations to something stable, preferably outside of the 3D sketch.
If you choose to use these planes, to activate the plane for sketching, you can double-click the plane with the cursor. The plane is activated when it displays a grid. You can double-click an empty space to return to regular 3D Sketch mode. The main thing that you give up with abandoning 3D sketch planes is the ability to use the dynamic drag options when all loft or boundary sketches are made in a single 3D sketch, which I have never used except to demonstrate the idea once.
Some path segments that are allowed in 3D sketches can only be used if they are sketched on a plane. These entities include circles and arcs, and can include splines, although splines are not required to be on a plane. It has already been mentioned that to sketch on a 3D Plane (a plane created within the 3D sketch), you can simply double-click the plane.
To sketch on a standard plane or reference geometry plane, you can Ctrl+click the border of the plane with the sketch entity icon active, or double-click the plane. The space handle moves, indicating that newly created sketch entities will lie in the selected plane.
Dimensions in 2D sketches can represent the distance between two points, or they can represent the horizontal or vertical distance between objects. In 3D sketches, dimensions between points are always the straight-line distance. If you want to get a dimension that is horizontal or vertical, you should create the dimension between a plane and a point (the dimension is always measured normal to the plane) or between a line and a point (the dimension is always measured perpendicular to the line). For this reason, reference sketch geometry is often used freely in 3D sketches, in part to support dimensioning.
Three-deminisional sketches are extremely powerful for many different applications. The problem is that they are also limited in some of their capabilities, and they do not work exactly like 2D sketches. You will benefit from knowing how to use 3D sketches at some point, even if it isn't every day.
This tutorial guides you through some common sketch relation editing scenarios and using some of the Copy, Move, and Derive tools. Follow these steps to learn about editing and copying sketches:
An easier way to repair the dangling relation is to click on the dangling sketch point once. It will turn red. Next, drag the point onto an entity that you want to reattach the relation to.
Tip
Because selecting and deselecting the display of the sketch relations in the graphics window is a task that you will perform many times, this is a good opportunity to set up a hotkey for this function. As a reminder, to set up a hotkey, choose Tools Customize Keyboard, and in the Search box type relations. In the Shortcut column for this command, select a hotkey to use.
This tutorial guides you through some of the miscellaneous functions in sketches, and shows you what they are used for and how they are used. Follow these steps to learn how to control these items:
To create the 2.10 dimension as shown, select the arc and circle with the Dimension cursor while pressing down the Shift key.
Performance
Sketch Text is a real performance killer. The more text that you use, the longer it takes to extrude. Draft on the extrusion adds to the time required.
If you integrate the use of metadata into your company's modeling process, your SolidWorks models can be a resource for much more than just geometrical data. In this tutorial, discover the hidden treasure of extra information stored as metadata in this model.
Sketches can be used as geometrical calculators. Parametrics can be extremely powerful when you can define relationships between geometry. In this tutorial, you will set up a sketch to calculate the complex size and location relationships between the rings of a child's stacking toy.
Many tools that are available in sketches are not commonly covered in the most popular sources of information, including official training manuals. The difference between a good CAD tool and a great communication tool can be minor functions that just make life a little easier, or the presentation or editing of data a little better. When you explore the capabilities of SolidWorks, it usually rewards you with functionality that is not immediately obvious.