Reversing sketch dimensions is one of the best time saving enhancements introduced by Solidworks 2009. It applies to 99% of the driven dimensions at the sketch level.
At this time (SolidWorks 2012) the only type of sketch dimension which cannot be easily reversed is the Offset dimension. There is no Reverse button on the Property Manager of such a dimension and by entering a negative value you just get an error instead of reversing or flipping the dimension (fig. 1).
Fig. 1 Error received when trying to reverse an offset dimension
On the other hand, deleting the dimension will delete the offset relation, so that is not the best solution either.
What else can you do? Watch this video for a possible workaround to the reverse offset dimension challenge:
Related posts tagged with: dimension, entities, flip, Offset, reverse, Sketch, SolidWorks
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Hi Alin:
First of all let me say that I really like your videos. However, I didn’t really get all of the gymnastics for the “Reverse Offset Dimensions” video. When you use the “Offset Entitiies” tool, the default offset is to the outside. To offset it to the inside, why not just click on the “Reverse” button in the “Offset Entities” menu, listed under the “Add dimensions” button. Problem solved.
Frank
Thanks for your kind words, Frank. You are correct in saying that if the user pays attention at the time the offset entities are created, the result will match the expectation.
If for any chance, the offset direction needs to be reversed after the offset command has been completed, the information from this blog post can be used to save time by avoiding deleting the offset entities and redoing them from scratch. Consider how many problems would appear if other features are defined by those entities later in the tree…