I really do believe that small things add up. In our day to day use of SolidWorks, there are little nuances, in our work, that make us a bit less efficient. I know I probably sound like a broken record, as I spend so much time talking about the small things that make SolidWorks that much quicker, but I truly believe that designing great products becomes easier when we’re not constantly fighting with SolidWorks.
That may be a bit of a long winded intro, but part of my goal with SolidWize is to show, users of the program, new aspects of the program that will either make life easier or make it easier to create complex geometry. So here’s the setup. You add a floating line to a sketch, or maybe you have one line, and everything else is an arc. You need to create an angle dimension for that sketch line, so like me you create a reference line to dimension from. There’s a much easier way. I’m not sure when SolidWorks added this feature, but if you click a line and a point on the line, while in the smart dimension tool, you can create an angle dimension.
For a full tutorial, check out the video below, and don’t worry, if you’re really pressed for time, this one only requires a minute and forty one seconds of your time 😉