Ultimate SolidWorks Tutorial for Absolute Beginners- Step-By-Step

hi there welcome to this tutorial if you are an absolute SolidWorks beginner then you came to the right place we are going to cover everything you need to be able to work with the software from the moment you open SolidWorks up to creating a 3d part assembling that part and creating a 2d drawing of your model now remember SolidWorks is a very capable CA D software with tons of useful features and tools to offer but covering them all in this video might be a little overwhelming for you so I am going to instead introduce you to the basic tools in this video and prepare you for a good start once you learn these basics you can always come back for more at our website with our free weekly blogs at SolidWorks tutorials dotnet to learn all of these features more in depth with lots of interesting examples you can find it under link number one in the description section below now before we start I have five important tips for you at the end of this tutorial don't miss out on them make sure to listen to them you're going to really want to hear it so let's get started this is what you'll see when you open your SolidWorks I'm using the 2017 version but the instructions in this video are valid for almost any version you use let's go here and start a new document now in this pop-up window you'll have three sections this one over here is to create a single 3d part this one is to visually assemble the parts you created in the first section and this one is to create an engineering 2d drawing of your model either from a part or from the assembly section let's go to the part first double-click on it now you are seeing the interface of your 3d modeling environment before you feel overwhelmed with all of these small icons and buttons let's take a step back and take a deep breath did you do that now I want you to ignore all of these buttons and only pay attention to the ones I tell you I will break it down for you like this over here we have the manager's feature manager property manager configurations manager dim expert manager and display manager I want you to only see the feature manager and the property manager and ignore the rest over here we have our tabs features sketch surfaces sheet metal and evaluate I want you to ignore all of them but features and sketch that's all now let's see what each of these have to offer we are looking at the features manager I want you to ignore whatever is inside here except these three front plain top plane and right plane these three are all you need to know for now we haven't started creating a part yet so let's get to it in order to create a 3d part you will first need to make a 2d sketch and in order to create a 2d sketch you will need a plane first things first select a plane by clicking on one of these three now we go to the sketch tab and activate the sketch mode here once you do that you see these buttons rebuild and close rebuild saves your sketch and exits the sketch mode and close well exits it without saving anything over here we have different tools to draw our sketch with and here we have other useful sketching tools which I won't be covering in this video but I encourage you to learn more about the art of sketching in SolidWorks by going through link number two in the description below let's draw a circle on the front plane hey pay attention here we are still in the features manager but once I select the circle it switches to property manager in the property manager I can see the different types of circles I can draw which are two kinds as the icons show I need two points for this type circle and three points for the other perimeter circle I will draw the first kind now wherever I click it will be my point number one ie the center of the circle if I put my cursor on the origin point then it gets highlighted in orange and a small yellow rectangle appears next to it this small rectangle means that my point is intersecting with another entity in this case the origin it means my point is going to be merged with the origin and will be fixed because the origin is fixed now the next point anywhere I click ends the process of drawing my circle the circle is now highlighted therefore it is in green if I press escape on the keyboard then it will end the highlight also keep that in mind that escape exits tabs menus sketches and etc it is very useful to have your left hand if you are a righty on the escape almost at all times the circle is now in blue each sketch color has its own meaning blue means the sketch is under defined you can also check it here under defined means that the sketch is not unique and can be dragged around this is a very unstable situation that you should be preventing by always making your sketch fully defined there are different ways to do so one way would be to click on your sketch and click on fix and then it turns into black but do not do that let me go a step back by holding ctrl and pressing the Z the right way to fully define your sketch is to assign right dimensions and relations to it to assign a dimension you need to use the smart dimension smart dimension can assign any type of dimension ie an angle radius distance arc length and etc if I click on my circle and move my cursor around without holding the mouse key I will see the dimension in different positions so I will just click above my circle and add it there now I can just enter any value I want don't worry about changing your dimensions if you are in the states to know how to change your dimensions go to the link number three in the description below I just type in 10 and press Enter notice my circle didn't shrink from having a diameter of 200 to 10 the reason is that the very first sketch that you set a dimension on sets the scale for your drawing environment but the second sketch dimension and the ones after won't look at this example if I draw a second circle and set its diameter to 10 unlike the first it shrinks because 10 is now this much so the second sketch has to adjust now I don't want the second circle anymore I want to select it and delete it I can select it either by clicking on it or I can draw a box to select multiple entities at once pay attention here if I draw my box or lasso only by clicking on an empty field from right to left it will be in green if I do it from left to right it will be in blue what is the difference you ask us for the blue if I put the second circle fully inside this area and only a part of the first circle and let go of my left mouse key then only the entities that are completely inside of the area will be highlighted but if I do it from right to left and create a green area even if a part of my entity is touched then all of them get highlighted now I am going to delete the second circle by clicking on it and pressing delete on the keyboard to exit the drawing I have to rebuild the sketch go here and click on this item or you can press control B or ctrl Q or even here all the same time to go to the features tab which offers you the tools to create a 3d body of your sketch first try the extruded boss or base which is probably one of the most used features in SolidWorks this feature in general uses your sketch as a profile and extrudes a volume out of it you can select the amount of extrusion over here I cannot emphasize on this more but make sure to check the link number four to learn everything you can do with this capable feature so let's click OK this is now a part or a body now that we have a body I can tell you how I can move or rotate my part use your mouse wheel to zoom in or zoom out turning it upwards zooms back which to many people is counterintuitive I don't even think about it anymore if I press and hold the mouse wheel while moving my mouse around I can rotate my part now if I hold the control first then press the mouse wheel I can drag my part pressing the arrow key on the keyboard will rotate my part 15 degrees in different directions if I hold shift then press the arrow keys then it will rotate 90 degrees when I press the spacebar I see the pop-up menu which has the shortcuts to different angle views front top right isometric and etc if by pressing the spacebar you come across this cube it is because this option is activated it is not bad but you can turn it off over here I don't like it if by chance I lose my part say I zoom out way too much I can find it back immediately by pressing F on the keyboard how to edit or delete the already created features you can click on the feature you created and this menu will pop up if not just right-click on the feature here you see edit feature and here you see edit the base sketch of the feature you can easily edit them here how to delete it select it and press Delete on the keyboard I am now left with my sketch because I only deleted the feature on the top let's see what else we can do with this sketch I need to edit it so either I double-click on it or right-click here and select edit sketch I press the spacebar and select normal angle view now I select a line to draw a line vertically to cut my circle in half notice when I'm in drawing mode some dashed lines appear and disappear as I move my mouse these are quick snapping points which help you to add a relation between your entity and other entities if you haven't figured that out by now an entity is basically anything you draw press escape now my circle is divided in half and I have to get rid of one half for that I need trim entities this tool offers five different types of tools to trim or cut your entities I want you to forget these bottom four and only use the power trim for the first year of your practice to use the power trim you start off by clicking anywhere and hold your left mouse key and drag your cursor on to whatever you would like to trim it will then trim the entities bounded between the other entities otherwise it will completely remove that entity if it is not bounded so in this case if I cross over this half it will trim off and leaves me with half a circle this is what I want now I can rebuild the sketch go to the features tab and select revolved boss/base this tool allows you to rotate your 2d sketch around one straight axis and create a volume from that let's go ahead and choose the vertical line as our axis of revolution and click OK now we have a sphere how about this time we reuse the very same sketch hmm to do that find the feature you created out of your sketch open its combo and select your sketch now go to the features tab select extruded cut which is the negative form of extruded boss and extrude it for 30 millimeters click OK now we have a semi sphere now guys whenever you want to draw a sketch and you forget to select a plane first you can open this combo and select it from here but when your part does have a flat surface it can also function as a plane and you can draw a sketch on it like this select this flat surface and choose sketch not edit sketch from this popup menu let's draw two rectangles this time I am going to assign dimensions to only one of them the length is 5 and the height is too the other one is going to share these dimensions how by adding some sketch relations to it let's select this side hold the ctrl key down and select this one and this one now I can add a relation to them from here I can make them equal in length so I don't need to set a separate dimension to this one also I repeat it for this side hold the control key down and select the second one and let go of the control key and the mouse key it is not over yet I will make these two collinear if I would like to delete an already existing relation from an entity I click on it and find that relation here click on it and press Delete on the keyboard I just pressed ctrl Z to go back the two bottom corners of the first rectangle are sitting on the circumference of the circle if I add the right relation to them remember every time I select two or more entities at the same time I am holding the ctrl key down okay this rectangle is fully defined and black this one is not fully defined and some entities are blue it means they can be changed the last point is to assign one dimension to set the distance between the two and it is going to be say 1 millimeter now they are both fully defined before I continue I want to quickly refer back to the start of this video when I talked about over defining your sketch I'm going to make an example and then get back on track is that Alright I will click on this side and remove its horizontal relation by pressing delete on the keyboard I will delete this dimension as well now I may drag this side down a bit I would set the height of this side to 3 and then I would apply the horizontal relation once again to this side you see it is geometrically not possible to solve such a shape bounded by such conditions so what I get is a red sketch and an over defined line that says no solution found message just to show you how it is let's undo that and try it differently I put everything back to normal the way it was this time I won't remove the horizontal relation and directly try to add a dimension to this side but I won't be able to and the dimension is derived and in grey because the shape is already fully defined such dimensions carry no function now the rectangles have served their purpose and it's time to delete them both by highlighting them and pressing delete on the keyboard now we will draw a circle but this time we will use a new tool this tool is convert entities you find this handy tool here in the sketch tab activate it and select these two outer edges over here and click OK it converts the outer edges or any other edges that I pick by selecting them manually into a 2d sketch on a plane I emphasize it works only when you are in sketch mode don't forget that rebuild the sketch by clicking here now select the right plane and activate the sketching mode I want you to merge the starting point with the center of your circle and draw a horizontal line and then break it and draw an inclined one upwards like this rebuild this one as well this time for demonstration purposes only I won't be fully defining this sketch now go to the features tab selecting swept boss or bass this amazing tool allows you to take a 2d profile which is nothing but a single closed sketch and sweep it over a defined path which is either a closed or an open sketch pay attention you must draw your profile and path in two separate drawing modes since we just did that I'm going to select the circle as my profile and select the line as my path this is the preview of my final result click OK and now we have this let's edit the path without deleting the feature I go to the feature manager find the feature opened it up find my path sketch and select edit sketch here since this isn't fully defined I just drag it a bit this way like this and rebuild the sketch again now you see the change in results immediately I am going to stop here for the first section and now those five promised messages one if you want to learn SolidWorks much faster than what it usually takes other people then you must work on this special technique that I am about to share with you there are always more than one way to create any 3d part the key to learn SolidWorks faster is to know as many tools and features as possible since they function differently the more you know the better you can decide which ones to create your design faster too if you want to learn more subscribe to this channel and more importantly to the website to get free weekly tutorials and leverage those insider tips and tricks 3 also check out the 3-hour video tutorial on our website to create an Ikea desk lamp from scratch to assembly step by step which is link number five below this will boost your learning curve more than you can even imagine for if you find this tutorial helpful please consider supporting us in patreon you will find it as link number six below five thank you so very much for watching this don't miss out on the next video we are going to put what we learned here into practice together

Channel: SolidWorksTutorials With Aryan

Views: 1,014,305

Keywords: solidworks, tutorials, beginner, learn, practice, step by step, solidworks beginner, solidworks tutorial, design, changing units, sketch, feature, part, drawing, create, solidworkstutorials.net, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, reusing sketch, extruded boss, extruded cut, revolved boss, editing sketch, editing feature, feature manager, property manager, convert entities, how to use solidworks, guide, solidworks with ryan, solidworks training, learn solidworks, solidworks tips, coupling, blender, ryan

Id: qtgmGkEPXs8

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 01 2018