edge

Start sketching in SOLIDWORKS by selecting an edge

This is one of those interesting sketching in SOLIDWORKS tricks that can be very useful and you may not be aware of. In a SOLIDWORKS Part simply select any Edge of any Solid Body and click Insert > Sketch. A sketch plane is created automatically, normal to…

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SOLIDWORKS Conceptual Designer Tutorial: Best Practices for Defining Features [VIDEO]

This video explores the different outcomes between selecting a sketch object, a sketch, one or more edges, or even a face when defining features in SOLIDWORKS Mechanical Conceptual. Looks like old best practices hold true for SOLIDWORKS Mechanical Conceptual: Always select the BIGGEST ENTITY you…

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SolidWorks 2014 Tutorial: What Was Hard Now Is Easy When Applying Tangent Mates [VIDEO]

SolidWorks has always been a user-friendly software, mostly because 99.9% of the workflows in SolidWorks are natural, like in the real life. From this point of view, compared with other CAD software packages, users are really pampered when working in the SolidWorks Universe. It is understandable then why some SolidWorks users might become frustrated when having to find workarounds for the other 0.1% of the situations, when the solution to a specific problem is not so intuitive. Case in hand: applying a simple tangent mate between a curvilinear edge or a sphere and another face was very hard to do in SolidWorks 2013 and older versions. The Javelin Blog published such a solution in the past. The SolidWorks Forum has a full discussion about this topic turned into a…

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Alin’s SW2013 Pick of the Day – Fast Edge Selection

When applyIng a fillet feature to a lot of edges, the most time consuming part is selecting them. In SolidWorks 2012 and prior, selecting edges based on rules was available only when using the FilletXpert. Because of that, the user’s options were restricted to applying constant radius fillets only. Starting with SolidWorks 2013, this functionality has been extended to manual fillets, offering fast edge selection for constant and variable radius fillets. This video presents two different techniques for saving time while filleting. In more complex models, these workflows can potentially save minutes or even hours of what it is in the end a very boring and repetitive task.

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Let’s get picky and use the Selection Manager

Dan Johnson asks this question in the SolidWorks Forum: I am trying to create a handle that is part of a scanner body and I made my curves using a 3D sketch. When I try and make either a loft or boundary surface, I try to grab just one curve in my 3DSketch, but it wants to grab the entire 3DSketch. How do I select just 1 curve for my profile? I tried the right mouse click, selection filter, but it grabs the entire 3d sketch too. Can anyone help?

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