Book Image

Learn SOLIDWORKS - Second Edition

By : Tayseer Almattar
Book Image

Learn SOLIDWORKS - Second Edition

By: Tayseer Almattar

Overview of this book

SOLIDWORKS is the leading choice for 3D engineering and product design applications across industries such as aviation, automobile, and consumer product design. This book helps you to get up and running with SOLIDWORKS and understand each new concept and tool with the help of easy-to-follow exercises. You'll begin with the basics, exploring the software interface and finding out how to work with drawing files. The book then guides you through topics such as sketching, building complex 3D models, generating dynamic and static assemblies, and generating 2D engineering drawings to prepare you to take on any design project. You'll also work with practical exercises to get hands-on experience with creating sketches, 3D part models, assemblies, and drawings. To reinforce your understanding of SOLIDWORKS, the book is supplemented by downloadable files that will help you to understand the concepts and exercises more easily. Finally, you'll also work on projects for 3D modeling objects inspired by everyday life. By the end of this SOLIDWORKS book, you'll have gained the skills you need to create professional 3D mechanical models using SOLIDWORKS and be able to prepare effectively for the Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate (CSWA) and Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional (CSWP) exams.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Section 1 – Getting Started
4
Section 2 – 2D Sketching
7
Section 3 – Basic Mechanical Core Features – Associate Level
10
Section 4 – Basic Evaluations and Assemblies – Associate Level
13
Section 5 – 2D Engineering Drawings Foundation
18
Section 6 – Advanced Mechanical Core Features – Professional Level
21
Section 7 – Advanced Assemblies – Professional Level

Opening assemblies and adding parts

In this section, we will take our first steps toward working with SOLIDWORKS assemblies. We will cover what SOLIDWORKS assemblies are, how to start an assembly file, and how can we add a variety of components to our assembly file. Opening an assembly file and adding different parts to it is the first step we need to take when we start any assembly.

Defining SOLIDWORKS assemblies

There are three main sections of SOLIDWORKS: parts, assemblies, and drawings. For each type, SOLIDWORKS creates a different file type with different file extensions. For assemblies, the file extension is .SLDASM, while a part has a file extension of .SLDPRT. In Chapter 10, Basic SOLIDWORKS Drawing Layout and Annotations, we will cover drawings, which have the file extension .SLDDRW.

With an assembly file, we can link more than one part file together to form one product. The following figures highlight two examples of assembly files. The following figure shows a simple...