SolidWorks Intro Tutorial

everyone after some questions that have been raised on my deviantART account I've decided that I'm going to make a brief tutorial on SolidWorks to explain and demonstrate the differences between solid modeling and mesh modeling and that way people who use CAD are already familiar with this but most people who use studio modeling software like 3ds max or maya or cinema 4d blender all those ones all those programs are surface modelers and they require the user to manipulate polygonal meshes in solid modeling you don't need to worry about surfaces at all surfaces are a side effect of the geometry that you create so um got SolidWorks up already I've got a few little practice it practice drawings that we're going to work on I've got this part we'll do this one probably start with this one this one yeah no we'll do this one first little simple guy here so I'm going to minimize that and move that over on my second monitor here so I can see what I'm doing when you open up SolidWorks got a blank screen first thing you want to do is hit the new page button and you have three options to pick from you have part assembly and drawing drawing is essentially what you do in AutoCAD if you're familiar with that I don't recommend drawing in SolidWorks because it kind of defeats the entire purpose of the software to begin with assembly is okay to use once in a while right out right away from a fresh document but I recommend always starting with a part and the reason is because it's going to save that part as its own individual file and you'll be able to make an assembly from that part later on so I have parts selected already I'm going to click OK that's going to bring me into my blank modeling space and I had saw works up and running already so my tabs are a little messed up but by default SolidWorks is going to open and it's going to be on the sketch tab here so the first thing you're going to want to do is click sketch and it brings up your datum plans so you can select from front plane top plane and right plane and depending on the shape you're making is going to really dictate which plane you want to start with then I'll bring this over again so we can take a look at it I my rule of thumb is whatever face has the most detail is the plane you're going to want to start with and judging on our picture here you can see the front view definitely gives us the most definition and the most contours to work with so we're going to start on the front plane so I'm going to select front plane and it's going to zoom in and bring my viewport normal to the front plane which means I'm I'm looking completely perpendicular to the front plane so your basic drawing commands our line rectangle slot circle arc polygon spline ellipse and fill it there's also text and point and those are useful um text is obviously useful if you want to emboss your model with text or symbols or something points are really only useful for a very complex kind of modeling called lofting which won't be explained in this tutorial but maybe later on down the road I'll make a lofting tutorial um anyway you can also see that all these commands have drop-down menus next to them line also has center line which is used exactly as it's described as a centerline or as a construction line it's used as both underneath the rectangle you have about five different ways to make rectangles parallelogram is obviously not a rectangle but it is under the rectangle command the two that I use almost 100% of the time our Center rectangle and corner rectangle I've never really used the other two because they don't really seem that useful I'm not in the context I use rectangles anyway parallelogram I've used on occasion slot is an incredible useful tool most people who are familiar with elongated holes probably start out with two circles connected with two parallel lines and then they trim out the interior walls of the circles to make it a long slot the slot command does that for you immediately you just pick Center Point Center Point and drag your slot and it's done and then you get into dimensioning it and defining the shape of it and we'll get into that once I start drawing but I'm going to delete that quick on top of just your generic slot you've got about three different kinds of slots you can pick from and each one is its own independent command which is really nice and saves a lot of time when you're modeling circle you can either do a 3-point circle or in this case a perimeter circle all that's doing is you're selecting three points and it's going to generate a circle tangent to those points or a center circle which you pick the center point and then define the radius and that's your circle the arc you a center point arc where you pick the center and then you sweep your arc around the screen I guess I can demonstrate that quick just pick a point and then sweep it and it will make the arc longer shorter whichever whatever your intent with the arc is of tangent arc filed a line here and I want an arc tangent to that I can pick oh yeah I've got to pick the line and then wherever I put this arc here it's not working exactly as intended well it made that arctangent to this which is what we would have wanted but see what I'm doing wrong here I don't really ever use this one either because I like to define the ark myself oh I see what it's doing okay this this arc that we're sweeping is going to be tangent perpendicular to this line so if we draw a line here now we have a tangent arc there and I've never used that before so I don't really worry about it the other commands I rarely use ellipses and splines are more useful in a 3d sketch than they are in a 2d sketch maybe you have applications that are useful for you but for me I don't really use it and fill it is useful in sketches definitely and champers you can do that right in the sketch that way you don't have to worry about doing it later on on the 3d part itself but now that I've got the basic commands laid out for you I'm going to bring this up so it can start modeling it move this guy over here I like to start out using the origin while I'm modeling because if you can relate everything to the origin it makes things a lot easier down the road when you want to start making assemblies and stuff so first thing we're going to start with as a narc and doesn't have to be exact right away we just want to get a general arc town I'm gonna draw a center line quick like I'm going a little quick I'm sorry what I just did was um when I was done drawing that arc if you hit escape it brings you out of the command so you can select a new and then when your um like if I draw you know this and I hit escape I'm out so I can pick a new tool again or I can hit enter and start in another location using the same tool all right so now what I want to do is um need one more centerline here and I want this the end of this line segment to be the midpoint of this one so I have that point selected you can see it highlighted blue there I'm going to hold ctrl down and I'm going to select this hidden line here then I'm going to click midpoint it's automatically going to snap my geometry to that location next I want to fix the center of this arc to the origin so I'm going to do that again I'm going to select that point I'm going to hold ctrl and click the origin then I'm going to click coincident I'm going to hit enter and it's finished all right next line tool and I'm just going to sketch the general shape of this part I'm only going to draw half of it because I'll be able to use a command called mirror which will take everything that's on either side of this part that I select and will mirror it over a common center line so after I've got this sketched out generally we're going to start dimensioning it and this is 15 this is 35 and the nice thing about SolidWorks is you can just sketch the general shape whatever you're making first and go back in and add the dimensions later and if you'll notice my lines are turning black as I add dimensions to them what that's doing is the dimensions are actually constraining where those lines sit so after they turn black they're unable to be moved I can't drag them and move them around anymore and that's what we want that's a good thing let's see another thing I can do too is I'm not given dimension of the slot that's open right here and I know I want to be halfway there so what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a line from this point to this point hit enter or actually escape I'm going to select this line and I'm going to tell it to be vertical that will automatically snap that line exactly where I needed to go so now we're going to go up here to the mirror command and you have two dialog boxes to fill in the first box are the entities you wish to mirror so you're going to select everything on one side of the centerline that you want to be reflected over it and then you click mirror about and then you select your centerline and it'll give you a yellow preview and if you like what you see just hit enter and there it is so now we've got our profile see I've got a drawing right here and next we need to extrude it 40 millimeters so going to go to features extrude and right here let's me define the distance I want to extrude it forty I like that so I'm gonna dunder and you can see my sketch is still highlighted in the background that's in case I if I hit enter again it will let me go back in and edit it if I like what I'm seeing I just click in white space and it will deselect that and there is our model you can see right there we got it exact so that's a simple little model to work with and start out right there so that's a good warm-up but uh what if we want to start making something harder we'll do a multi feature model next something like this this'll be a nice and one to work with because it will give me the opportunity to demonstrate more commands as you can see with this model here it only took me one feature to create that and that was our part after that we were done but we want to make a new part that's going to require a few more steps so we'll minimize this one for now and maybe on I'll model it like this so you can actually see the part in what I'm drawing yeah that's good okay um we're done with this one I'm not gonna save it so again I'm going to go up to new page um part day okay maximize that I'm going to go to like sketch tab click sketch now based on what I'm looking at the front and the top view are given along with an isometric view and really you could start with either of them I'm gonna start with the front view just because that's my preference so I'm going to click the front plane and you really want to think in the processes that it's going to take to create this model you really want to think ahead of how you're going to lay it out in order to get from point A to point B a being a sketch to be the completed model and based on what I'm looking at at the front view here I'm actually going to draw this whole profile as as one right away and just ignore what I already know is going to be a rib so I'm going to start out right up the origin draw the general shape of this thing I'm going to dimension it thirty sixty and nine right now I'm going to go to features extrude and the total width is let's see 21:30 oh well I actually should have known that since we've got a diameter of 30 there should have look for that anyway okay I want to extrude that 30 actually I'm going to do something a little different this time we're going to go 15 and then I'm going to open up direction too and I'm also going to do 15 what that's doing is its splitting the direction of the extrusion between the front planes so my sketch is on the front plane and my extrusion Direction is bilateral so it's going behind the plane and in front of the plane so we've got that now we've got a radius back here and all we have to do is fill out that so I'm going to select to fill it and have 30 is 15 select this edge select the back edge hit enter we've got that then we're going to do two cuts first cut I'm going to do the rib so I'm going to select sketch again now I could do this rib multiple ways um I like to do things in as few steps as possible so um if I wanted to do it multiple steps I could sketch on this face draw that triangle extrude extrude cut it back this way until I get to the point I want then I could mirror that over this figure and get it to cut out of the back but we could actually cut this out in one step and you can either start on the top plane or top face or the right face it'll do the same thing for us so I'm just going to choose the top click sketch there we go if you click spacebar it'll bring up your view port window um that will let you pick the orientation of how you want to look at your shape I want to look at it from the top so I'm going to double click top and we're looking at it from the top now now I'm going to use the rectangle command and I'm going to snap to this corner and then just to this edge somewhere I like that so I'm gonna it escaped and I'm going to go up to line and I'm going to choose center line and I'm going to draw a center line right in the center of my part and it escaped and I'm going to dimension the rib and I know the rib itself is seven millimeters so 30 minus 7 is 33 33 divided by 2 if you don't know what 33 divided by 2 is you can actually write it in to the dimension command it acts to the calculator so if I type that in it will automatically make that 16 point 5 and actually I was wrong on the 23:33 I'm gonna do 20 3/2 11.5 obviously and then you're going to mirror that so we'll select just the rectangle then we're going to select your about click the centerline and if I rotate my shape by clicking the mouse or a middle mouse button and rotating you can see my rectangles there and now we're going to go to the feature tab and hit extruded cut and we want them to go down twenty-one millimeters as you can see it lines up right to that edge I also could've went up 10 next and I can choose that edge and it will extrude right to that edge so if I don't necessarily know the dimension of that I just click that line and it will extrude right there or it doesn't like that what do I - next oh okay probably right here there we go so there's our rib now we're just missing one last piece which is the hole that goes through it so again I'm going to click sketch at the top surface look down at it from the top and I'm going to hover over the Ark here until the center point appears that I'm just going to click there my circle automatically be fixed to share that center point then I'm going to dimension my circle and it has a radius of 7.5 so they're 15 features extruded cut this time we want to go through the entire shape so I could type in 30 or I could just go through all it okay and there you have it so that was a three feature object Phillips don't caldas features Phillips are just modifications to a feature so we did this one in three features and I that's the least amount of work you could have done to make this yeah I don't know if there's any way you could have done that any fewer possible moves Oh actually I'm sorry we're not done I just noticed some champers well if you see here it's telling us that these chambers are nine by nine so we know that they're at a 45 degree angle because of that so if I go over to my modifiers up here I'm going to select chamfer underneath the Philip drop-down menu and I'm going to modify that to be nine millimeters they default at 45 degrees so you won't ever have to change the angle unless you wanted different than 45 degrees select the two edges that I want to chamfer okay and there we have it not one shape is complete and that gets these two little simpletons out of the way now we'll do we'll do a harder one I'm liking this one right here I've had my eye on this one so this guy be a little tougher to do not much it'll definitely demonstrate a few more options that we can work with let me get this out of the way I'll put him right here close this one out both to new all right now there's a few possibilities for where we could start with this one I'm going to recommend for easiness started using the top plane so I'm going to click sketch top plane and I'm going to start with this circle here and I'm going to start right at the origin and we've got a diameter of 1.5 I'm assuming this one's an inches but I'm just going to keep SolidWorks and millimeters and we'll just pretend this is a really small part to something so if you have 1.5 and I'll zoom in with my mouse wheel that this dimension in here if you double-click your mouse wheel it will fit it to the screen better okay and the outside has a radius of 1.37 so we're going to draw another circle at the same center point and to mention that and 1.37 times two and then we know from the center on the plate is one inch in either direction so I'm gonna dry centerline here horizontal that little green box lets me know that it's fixed that horizontal which is what I want and the distance from the center of the circle to the edge of the plate is three point five and now I'm going to use the offset command and I'm going to offset in both directions so I want to pick bi-directional hit okay and I've got some excess lines here so I want to trim those I'm going to click trim and it's defaulted on a tool called power trim which lets me just click and drag my mouse over the line I want to cut and it automatically trims it and enter ok when you're done and actually should have trimmed this to I'm going to close the back of our bottom here and then we're going to extrude it point three seven so there's the bass now what we could do is in the least amount of steps we could extrude these two arms here up as rectangles or we can draw on this surface here and extrude it as a solid across this and then subtract the channel out of the middle of there but I like the idea of the least steps possible so I am going to sketch them as rectangles and I'm just gonna sketch one so that way I can mirror it okay now I want to extrude them and they stand 1.75 because the plate is already point 3 7 so we can subtract point 3 7 off of that one point 3 7 add the radius which is 0.75 so we know that these stand Apple 1.75 off of the base here it okay and then we're going to fill it our edges so five okay and then we have one more Philip to do right here actually two for Philips one two three four Oh point three seven it okay we've got a series of holes to cut Sketch I'm not going to flip my model because I can just snap to the center right from here 7:5 or no no Oh point five and going to extrude cut all the way through to normal actually here's a good example of me making a mistake from my first drawing what I can do now is I could start a new one and write on the surface and cut that hole or I could go back and modify the existing drawing that I already have to make this base plate and I'm going to choose to do that so I can keep this as small as possible so I'm going to go over to my feature tree over here and I'm going to click the + next to boss extrude one and I have sketch one here that's the sketch I used to make that shape and I'm going to click Edit sketch and now what I can do is I can come in here and draw that circle that I missed earlier 25 and it's with seven five in now if I update it there it is and I didn't have to add another feature so now we're done with that part fix the shadows here there we go all right so I think that's the ultimate basics of SolidWorks is just adding or subtracting from a solid model as you can see I've done absolutely nothing with services I haven't used anything related to polygons or vertices or anything it's just straight up solids and if I want to I'm able to export these if I save as I have a laundry list of file extensions to choose from aegis step STL um pair of solids basically anything that a regular mesh modeler any generic file extension can be used in SolidWorks to export out of SolidWorks anyway and I would be able to share my models with someone who uses mesh software and they would be able to edit my model in their software and SolidWorks converts it into a mesh model but I don't need to do that so I'm going to close this part since we're done with that one and I think that concludes my basic tutorial for now since I've made this first one I realized how much I could actually elaborate on and explain but I think I'm going to save that for future tutorials that way they don't drag on forever and I can actually upload them at a decent rate so this will conclude my first tutorial and check back if you're interested in learning some more SolidWorks I think I'll start setting up some more tutorials to actually start making useful things and not just abstract components to demonstrate what SolidWorks does but um thanks for watching and I hope it was educational and now you'll know the difference between solid modeling and mesh modeling

Channel: Steven Kiley

Views: 273,467

Keywords: solidworks, solid, works, 3d, modeling, tutorial, part, creation

Id: TvBoZ6kH3Q8

Length: 37min 12sec (2232 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2012