Trimming, mirroring and relationships.

Hey, this is my 3^rd update on my SolidWorks blog

This week I have learnt about trimming, mirroring and relationships.

Trimming was pretty straight forward, all that was required was to select the trim entities and move the courser over the lines that were no longer required.

Relationships were a little more challenging for me as I was unsure of how to change them (You can change them by clicking the two points of the line and holding shift or clicking on the relationships) By doing this I was able to create a tangent relationship between a straight line and a circle.

Mirroring was my favourite tool this week as you only need to create a section of your part (if the part is symmetrical). All you need to do after drawing the part is select the mirroring tool, then select the entities that you want mirrored (the line you want copied) then select the axis you want it copy around.

I have been having some issues with undefined parts. I have been defining the dimensions that I was given in class but for some reason a lot of my shapes are still undefined. If you know how to resolve this issue please leave a comment

Till next time,
Deanna (design student)

The Basic Skills

Hey, this is my 2^nd update on my SolidWorks blog

This week I have learnt how to use some of the basic tools in SolidWorks.

To be honest I got stuck right away when opening a [part] from the start up screen.  

I followed to instructions provided in class and clicked on [new] but every time this (see picture above) popped up and not [part], [assembly] and whatever else pops up. I repeated this a few times before clicking ok, this is when the menu I was looking for popped up.

I was then able to begin using the sketch tool to making shapes.

As always, I was all-over the place creating sketches over other sketches without knowing what was going on.

But I finally got the hang of it and then was able to move on to defining the shape with smart dimensions.

I was unsure of how to measure angles so I had to get some help on this (you have to click on the lines you want to measure the angel between)

From there on I didn’t have any more problems and I could finish my shapes by extruding and setting the materials

Till next time,
Deanna (design student)

Introduction to solidworks

Hi guys,

I’ve recently started using Solidworks as part of my product design course and wanted to share my experience with the wider community, so that you can learn all about it with me.

My initial thought was that the interface was a confusing to navigate  

After reading the Introduction to solidworks PDF I was still confused 

 

  I finally figured out how to rotate images with the mouse. You click in the scroll button!

After playing around with Solidworks for a while I managed to measure the degrees between points. I am unsure of how I did it and at this stage wouldn’t be able to recreate what I did with the very limited knowledge of this program.

(Feel free to comment if you know how!!)

Ive seen some seriously awesome things done with this program, so I will persevere!! And you should too!

Till next time,

Deanna (Design student)