Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work with some plastic parts. The parts that I’ve been creating use the Master Model approach. Now this has both upsides and downsides. The technique allows for avoiding the some of the pitfalls of assembly design, such as a complex reference structure. Because everything lives in one part,… Read more »
Posts Tagged: SolidWorks
Properly Terminating a Thread in SOLIDWORKS
So how do we terminate the threads on something like a mason jar or plastic bottle? Unfortunately the Thread Wizard, added to SOLIDWORKS 2016, does not give us a simple option to finish a thread. There’s a couple methods that I like to use. There is one that is quick and straightforward, and the other… Read more »
Scaling a Sketch in SolidWorks
Scaling a part in SolidWorks is pretty straight forward, using the scale feature. I even wrote a post about it here Scale a Part in SolidWorks. But what if you want to scale a sketch? That’s where the scale entities command comes in. It allows you to select out any number of sketch entities and… Read more »
Photoview 360: No Need to be Camera Shy
You probably do it all the time; I know I do. You set up the perfect view, for a render, in Photoview 360 and create a render, only to have to make a small change to the model for a new render. You then go back and spend a few minutes trying to recreate the… Read more »
A Compressible Spring
While it is difficult to simulate the actual compression of a spring in SolidWorks, you can create multiple configurations to represent the different compression states of a spring. This will allow you to quickly switch back and forth between different lengths of a spring, and with a design table, you can easily create as many… Read more »
Getting Twisted: Driving a Helix by a Path
The Helix/Spiral tool in SolidWorks is limited to creating straight helices and spirals, so to create a helix along a curved path, you have to get a little creative. The twist along path option, in swept features, allows you to forego the use of the Helix tool and use a combination of a swept surface… Read more »