My Two Favorite Tools in SOLIDWORKS

Posted by & filed under Blog, Cool Stuff, Part Modeling, Productivity Tools, Quick Tips, Surfacing.

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 »

Scaling a Sketch in SolidWorks

Posted by & filed under Productivity Tools, Quick Tips.

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 »

A Compressible Spring

Posted by & filed under Design Tables, Quick Tips.

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

Posted by & filed under Quick Tips, Surfacing.

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 »