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

Sketching lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, and ellipses

In this section, we will discuss the major sketching functions and how to use them. These include sketching lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, and ellipses. We will address each of these sketching commands separately and find out how to define each one.

The origin

On the canvas, you should be able to see a small red dot with arrows, as shown in the following figure. This dot is located exactly where the two red arrows meet and represent the origin point of the canvas. It is also the only defined and fixed point in our SOLIDWORKS infinite canvas:

Figure 3.14 – The SOLIDWORKS graphical representation of the origin

Because it is the only fixed point, it is very important to always link our sketches to that origin point. Otherwise, our sketch will always be under-defined in the infinite canvas.

Sketching lines

To illustrate how to sketch lines, we will sketch the following shape. Note that...