07-solidworks Advanced Surface Modeling 2007.pdf

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SolidWorks® 2007

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Advanced Surface Modeling

SolidWorks Corporation 300 Baker Avenue Concord, Massachusetts 01742 USA

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COMMERCIAL COMPUTER SOFTWARE - PROPRIETARY U.S. Government Restricted Rights. Use, duplication, or disclosure by the government is subject to restrictions as set forth in FAR 52.227-19 (Commercial Computer Software Restricted Rights), DFARS 227.7202 (Commercial Computer Software and Commercial Computer Software Documentation), and in the license agreement, as applicable. Contractor/Manufacturer: SolidWorks Corporation, 300 Baker Avenue, Concord, Massachusetts 01742 USA Portions of this software © 1999, 2002-2006 ComponentOne Portions of this software © 1990-2006 D-Cubed Limited. Portions of this product are distributed under license from DC Micro Development, Copyright © 1994-2006 DC Micro Development, Inc. All rights reserved Portions of this software © 1998-2006 Geometric Software Solutions Co. Limited. Portions of this software are © 1997-2002 Macromedia, Inc. Portions of this software © 1986-2006 mental images GmbH & Co. KG Portions of this software © 1996-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. MoldflowXpress is © 2005 Moldflow Corporation. MoldflowXpress is covered by US Patent No. 6,096,088 and Australian Patent No. 721978. Portions of this software from PCGLSS 4.0, © 1992-2006, Computational Applications and System Integration, Inc. Portions of this software © 2006 Priware Limited Portions of this software © 2001, SIMULOG. Portions of this software © 1995-2004 Spatial Corporation. Portions of this software © 1997-2006, Structural Research & Analysis Corp. Portions of this software © 1997-2006 Tech Soft America. Portions of this software are copyrighted by and are the property of UGS Corp. © 2006. Portions of this software © 1999-2004 Viewpoint Corporation. Portions of this software © 1994-2006, Visual Kinematics, Inc. Copyright 1984-2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated and its licensors. All rights reserved. Protected by U.S. Patents 5,929,866; 5,943,063; 6,289,364; 6,563,502; 6,639,593; 6,754,382; Patents Pending. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, the Adobe PDF logo, Distiller and Reader are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. For more Adobe PDF Library intellectual property information, see Help About. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG group. Other portions of SolidWorks 2007 are licensed from SolidWorks licensors. All Rights Reserved.

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© 1995-2006, SolidWorks Corporation 300 Baker Avenue Concord, Massachusetts 01742 USA All Rights Reserved U.S. Patents 5,815,154; 6,219,049; 6,219,055; 6,603,486; 6,611,725; 6,844,877; 6,898,560; 6,906,712 and certain other foreign patents, including EP 1,116,190 and JP 3,517,643. U.S. and foreign patents pending. SolidWorks Corporation is a Dassault Systemes S.A. (Nasdaq:DASTY) company. The information and the software discussed in this document are subject to change without notice and should not be considered commitments by SolidWorks Corporation. No material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose without the express written permission of SolidWorks Corporation. The software discussed in this document is furnished under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of this license. All warranties given by SolidWorks Corporation as to the software and documentation are set forth in the SolidWorks Corporation License and Subscription Service Agreement, and nothing stated in, or implied by, this document or its contents shall be considered or deemed a modification or amendment of such warranties. SolidWorks, PDMWorks, 3D PartStream.NET, 3D ContentCentral, eDrawings, and the eDrawings logo are registered trademarks of SolidWorks Corporation, and FeatureManager is a jointly owned registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation. SolidWorks 2007 is a product name of SolidWorks Corporation. COSMOSXpress, DWGeditor, DWGgateway, Feature Palette, PhotoWorks, and XchangeWorks are trademarks of SolidWorks Corporation. COSMOS and COSMOSWorks are registered trademarks, and COSMOSMotion and COSMOSFloWorks are trademarks of Structural Research & Analysis Corporation. FeatureWorks is a registered trademark of Geometric Software Solutions Co. Limited. ACIS is a registered trademark of Spatial Corporation. GLOBEtrotter and FLEXlm are registered trademarks of Globetrotter Software, Inc. Other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Document Number: PMT0103-ENG

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction

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Table of Contents

About This Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Course Design Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Using this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 About the Training Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Windows® XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conventions Used in this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

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Lesson 1: Introduction to Surfacing What is solid? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Behind the Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Working with Surface Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Checking for a Closed Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Parameterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Surface Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Feature History in an IGES File? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Why use Surfaces? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 When not to use Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Mixing Metaphors: Hybrid Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Workflow with Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Working with Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Layout Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Identify Symmetry and Edges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Identify Functional Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Check your Models Frequently. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Folders in the FeatureManager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 i

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Clean-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Exercise 1: Trimming Surfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

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Lesson 2: Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling Hybrid Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Using Surfaces to Modify Solids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Interchanging between Solids and Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Surfaces as Construction Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Stages in the Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Editing Imported Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Exercise 4: Using Import Surface and Replace Face . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Exercise 5: Using Surfaces to Create Solids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Exercise 6: Finial Wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Lesson 3: Surface Modeling Stages in the Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Using Sketch Picture to Capture Design Intent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Lofting Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Modeling the Lower Half . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Filling in Gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Preparation for Using Filled Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Creating a Knit Surface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Design Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Dynamic Feature Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Replacing a Face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Exercise 7: Mouse Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Design Intent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Exercise 8: Halyard Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Exercise 9: Bar of Soap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Exercise 10: Finial Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Lesson 4: Blends and Patches Complex Blends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Stages in the Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Fill Surface Edge Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Smoothing Patches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Three Alternative Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Analysis Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Freeform Feature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Using the Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Undoing Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Boundary Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Exercise 11: Corner Blend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

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Exercise 12: Patches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

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Lesson 5: Master Model Techniques Introduction to Master Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Push and Pull type Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Workaround for Split Feature* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Summary of Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Surface Master Technique. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Working with a Solid Master Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Splitting the Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Modeling the Keypad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Reveal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Draft Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Fastening Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Saving the Bodies and Creating an Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Rapid Prototyping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Print3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Exercise 14: Solid Master Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Exercise 15: Surface Master Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

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Introduction

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

About This Course

The goal of this course is to teach you how to use surface features to build parts using SolidWorks software. Most of the case studies and exercises in this course are taken from consumer product design applications, and the lessons center around the combined use of solids and surfaces, with the goal always being to create a good solid.

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During this course we will learn industry standard surfacing terminology necessary to understand a ground-up surface modeling approach, as well as answer some of the “when” and “why” questions which are inevitable with the solids to surfaces paradigm shift. If your modeling experience to date has been completely in the solids realm, you may find that working in surfaces requires a different approach.

Prerequisites

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This course has several examples showing functions that do not ultimately create the intended geometry, necessitating an alternative approach. This is not to highlight shortcomings of the software, but rather to help you identify situations in which you need to try more than one method. Working with more complex models and shapes means you will run into more situations when you need to have at your disposal alternate methods for achieving particular shapes. Students attending this course are expected to have the following: Q

Course Design Philosophy

Using this Book

This course is designed around a process-based (or task-based) approach to training. Rather than focus on individual features and functions, a process-based training course emphasizes the processes and procedures you follow to complete a particular task. By utilizing case studies to illustrate these processes, you learn the necessary commands, options and menus in the context of completing a design task. This training manual is intended to be used in a classroom environment under the guidance of an experienced SolidWorks instructor. It is not intended to be a self-paced tutorial. The examples and case studies are designed to be demonstrated “live” by the instructor. Laboratory exercises give you the opportunity to apply and practice the material covered during the lecture/demonstration portion of the course. They are designed to represent typical design and modeling situations while being modest enough to be completed during class time. You should note that many students work at different paces. Therefore, we have included more lab exercises than you can reasonably expect to complete during the course. This ensures that even the fastest student will not run out of exercises.

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Laboratory Exercises

Completed the course Advanced Part Modeling.

A Note About Dimensions

About This Course

The drawings and dimensions given in the lab exercises are not intended to reflect any particular drafting standard. In fact, sometimes dimensions are given in a fashion that would never be considered acceptable in industry. The reason for this is the labs are designed to encourage you to apply the information covered in class and to employ and reinforce 3

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

certain techniques in modeling. As a result, the drawings and dimensions in the exercises are done in a way that compliments this objective. About the Training Files

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A complete set of the various files used throughout this course can be downloaded from the SolidWorks website, www.solidworks.com. Click on the link for Services, then Training and Certification. There you will see a link to the page where you can download the training file sets. The files are supplied as signed, self-extracting executables.

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The files are organized by lesson number. The Case Study folder within each lesson contains the files your instructor uses while presenting the lessons. The Exercises folder contains any files that are required for doing the laboratory exercises.

Conventions Used in this Book

The screen shots in this manual were made using SolidWorks 2007 running on Windows® XP. You may notice differences in the appearance of the menus and windows. These differences do not affect the performance of the software.

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Windows® XP

This manual uses the following typographic conventions: Convention

Bold Sans Serif

SolidWorks commands and options appear in this style. For example, Insert, Boss means choose the Boss option from the Insert menu.

Typewriter

Feature names and file names appear in this style. For example, Sketch1.

17 Do this step

Double lines precede and follow sections of the procedures. This provides separation between the steps of the procedure and large blocks of explanatory text. The steps themselves are numbered in sans serif bold.

The SolidWorks 2007 user interface makes extensive use of color to highlight selected geometry and to provide you with visual feedback. This greatly increases the intuitiveness and ease of use of SolidWorks 2007. To take maximum advantage of this, the training manuals are printed in full color.

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Use of Color

Meaning

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Also, in many cases, we have used additional color in the illustrations to communicate concepts, identify features, and otherwise convey important information. For example, we might show the result of an operation in a different color, even though by default, the SolidWorks software would not display the results in that way. About This Course

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Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

Upon successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to: Understand the differences and similarities between solids and surfaces

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Understand the properties of NURBS surfaces and iso parameter (U-V) lines

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Be familiar with common surface types

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Understand the

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Understand typical workflow scenarios

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Understand working with Master Models

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Lesson 1

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Introduction to Surfacing

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

What is solid?

The best way to begin understanding surfaces is to understand concepts underlying solids. If you have been working in SolidWorks for any amount of time, you should have a good intuition for solids already.

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Solid models attempt to describe real objects for manufacturing and documentation. Real objects have volume. There is always a boundary between the inside and the outside of the volume, and that boundary is always sealed, or watertight. At this point we are only concerned with the geometrical properties of solids, not the material properties such as density and modulus. Volume and boundary are the two main aspects of the real world that SolidWorks needs to represent in order to create solid models.

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The boundary around the solid is an infinitely thin skin. This infinitely thin boundary is what we know as a surface. So the solid is in fact defined by a surface (boundary) and a direction (inside vs. outside). This concept helps us understand the role of surfaces in defining solids, and is one of the basic concepts necessary to understanding how and why we work with surfaces.

Behind the Scenes

Now that we understand that solids are really just surfaces that follow special rules, it becomes obvious that there are some things going on behind the scenes when SolidWorks builds solid models. One way to get a better grasp of what is going on is to see what it takes to do the same tasks manually. We can use a simple cylinder as an example.

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Extrude a solid cylinder.

Open a new part using the Part_IN template. On the Top reference plane, draw a circle with a 1” diameter centered on the origin and extrude it 1”.

Three faces have been created, two planar end faces and the cylindrical face that connects them.

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Notice also how easy this was, a single step. Contrast this with the steps to come. Save this part as Solid.SLDPRT.

Extrude a cylindrical surface.

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Introducing: Extruded Surface Where to Find It

What is solid?

Extruded Surface works exactly like its solid counterpart except that it produces a surface instead of a solid, it does not cap the ends, and it does not require a closed loop sketch. Q Q

Click Extruded Surface on the Surfaces toolbar Or, click Insert, Surface, Extruded.

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Introduction to Surfacing

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Extrude a surface.

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Open a second new part with the Part_IN template. On the Top reference plane, draw a circle with a 1” diameter centered on the origin and extrude it 1.1” in the positive Y direction and .1” in direction 2. This is intentionally different from the solid example. Surfaces are frequently “overbuilt”, then trimmed back.

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Click Window, Tile Vertically to display the window with the solid and the window with the surface side by side.

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Save this part as Surface.SLDPRT. Introducing: Planar Surface

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Where to Find It

Planar Surfaces are created from a closed loop sketch. The sketch may have multiple closed loops or nested loops. Planar Surfaces can use loops formed by edges which are not closed loops. Q Q

Introducing: Knit Surface

Knit surface is in some ways similar to the Combine function for solids. It joins together separate surface bodies into a single surface body. There are several rules for knitting: Q Q

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Where to Find It

Click Planar Surface on the Surfaces toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Planar.

Q Q

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Surface bodies must touch edge to edge. Surface bodies must not intersect, touch either body at a point or any place that is not an edge (in the middle of a face for example). Disjoint bodies cannot be knit. Click Knit Surface on the Surfaces Toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Knit.

Create a planar surface.

On the Top reference plane, sketch a square centered on the Origin with a 2” long side.

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Click Planar Surface to create the surface.

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What is solid?

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

4

Copy the surface body. Use the Move/Copy Bodies

Where to Find It

The Trim Surface feature enables you to cut back a surface using either another surface, a plane or a sketch. There are two types of Trim feature, the Standard trim where one surface is used as the trimming tool, and the Mutual trim, where multiple surfaces trim one another. Mutual Trim also knits the resulting surfaces together while Standard trim leaves them as separate surface bodies.

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Introducing: Trim Surface

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tool to copy the planar surface to the other end of the cylinder using the dimensions shown.

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Working with Surface Bodies

Click Trim Surface on the Surfaces toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Trim.

Working with surface bodies is in many respects similar to working with solid bodies, but there are significant differences as well. Surface bodies are listed in the Surface Bodies folder at the top of the part FeatureManager just like solid bodies are listed in the Solid Bodies folder, and can be hidden or deleted from there. One of the major differences is that boolean type operations do not work on surfaces in the same way that they do on solids. With solids, if you want to add a boss to a body, you simply sketch it and extrude it, and SolidWorks automatically merges the new feature into the existing solid body.

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To add to a surface body, you must first create the geometry you want to add, and then use the Knit feature to knit the two separate bodies together into a single body. Other requirements also exist, such as the surfaces must touch edge to edge. An edge cannot knit to the middle of a face and bodies cannot touch only at a point. Also, as with solids, you cannot knit surfaces that do not touch at all.

Working with Surface Bodies

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Introduction to Surfacing

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Managing visibility of surface bodies can at times be a challenge. The Hide/ Show state of the body can be affected by rollback state and configurations. Using the Display Pane with the Surface Bodies folder expanded may be helpful.

Trim the surfaces. Click Trim Surface on the

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Many features in SolidWorks are limited to only working on one body at a time. This includes features such as fillet and draft. Keep this in mind as you plan your modeling strategy. If you have a design which requires many bodies, you may want to wait until the bodies are joined together to add draft and fillets.

Surfaces toolbar.

Select Mutual Trim.

Select all three surface bodies in the Trimming Surfaces box. Use the Keep selections setting.

Click inside the Pieces to Keep selection box to activate it. Select the sections of the surfaces that you want to keep.

In this simple example, selecting portions of faces that need to be kept is fairly easy and straight forward. However, as models become more complex, it may become difficult or even impossible to select the portions you need to select. In those cases it may be better to activate the Remove Selections option, and select the portions of the surface bodies which you wish to discard. Also, you might consider breaking the trim into multiple features, making it easier to visualize and select.

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Introducing: Thicken

Where to Find It Note 10

The Thicken feature has two functions. One is to add thickness to an open surface by offsetting the thickness, and the second is to solidify an enclosed volume made of surfaces. Q Q

Click Thicken on the Features toolbar. Or, click Insert, Boss/Base, Thicken.

The Thicken icon is not on the Features toolbar by default. If you want Working with Surface Bodies

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

to access this feature from the toolbar, you will need to add it using Tools, Customize. 6

Make the surface into a solid.

Click Insert, Boss/Base, Thicken.

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Click OK to accept the solid.

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Only when there is a closed surface selected does the check box Create solid from enclosed volume show up.

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Notice that the mutual trim results in a single surface body. If this had been done with the standard trim option, it would take four trim features to complete, and would result in three separate surface bodies.

The Merge Result box is only displayed when the feature is edited after it is initially created. It does is not displayed when the feature is created.

Checking for a Closed Surface

There are three ways to check a surface to see if it is closed. Q

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Thicken (the Create solid option only shows when a closed volume exists) Tools, Check will highlight open edges of a surface (Tools, Check is discussed in more detail in Lesson 2: Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling) In any display mode that displays model edges, look to see if any edges are shown in the color specified at Tools, Options, Color, Surfaces, Open edges color (Tools, Options, Display/ Selection, Show open edges of surfaces in different color must also be checked)

Compare the two parts.

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Make sure the windows showing the part created as a solid and the part created from surfaces are tiled so you can see both of them at the same time. Check the volume for each part. You should get .785 cubic inches.

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The parts look identical. They are in fact identical geometrically. We will examine both parts with one more method. Delete faces.

In the Advanced Part Modeling course, we used Delete Face to remove unwanted geometry from a solid model, which repaired itself with the underlying untrimmed surfaces. We will again use Delete Face to

Working with Surface Bodies

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Lesson 1

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction to Surfacing

explore the untrimmed surfaces, but in a different way this time. Editing Surface.SLDPRT, click Delete Face from the Surfaces toolbar. If it is not available on your toolbar, it is available in the menus at Insert, Face, Delete.

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Change to the Delete option.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

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Notice that the Solid Bodies folder is gone and the Surface Bodies folder has reappeared.

Where to Find It

The Face Curves function creates a series of 3D sketches forming a mesh on the selected face. This mesh represents the underlying parameterization of the face. The mesh density can be changed or you can limit the lines to one in each direction located at a point of your choosing. When you click OK, each line will become its own 3D sketch. These 3D sketches are often placed in folders for easier management.

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Introducing: Face Curves

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Click Face Curves from the Sketch toolbar. Or, click Tools, Sketch Tools, Face Curves.

The Face Curves icon is not on the Sketch toolbar by default. If you want to access this feature from the toolbar, you will need to add it using Tools, Customize. All surfaces in SolidWorks can either be constructed or described by a parameterized mesh of V=1 curves. These are called iso parameter or U-V curves. The curves along one side of a foursided surface are the U lines and in the perpendicular direction are the V=0 U=0 V lines. The parameter is the number representing the position along the length of the edge, between 0 and 1.

U=1

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Parameterization

Surface Types

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In SolidWorks, you can see the U-V mesh by using the Face Curves tool. Certain features also enable previews with mesh such as Dome, Shape, Fill surface, Boundary, Freeform and Loft. The mesh is helpful in troubleshooting feature failure or unexpected shapes. We will examine this in more detail in later lessons. Without talking about SolidWorks surface features, there are several types of surface geometry. There are others beyond those listed, but

Working with Surface Bodies

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

these are the major types. Algebraic surfaces can be described with simple algebraic expressions. These include surfaces that are flat, spherical, cylindrical, conical, toroidal, and so on. U-V lines on algebraic surfaces are straight lines, arcs or circles. Ruled surfaces are surfaces where every point on the surface has a straight line that passes through it and lies on the surface.

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One of the implications of having a mesh of perpendicular curves is that the surfaces created will tend to be four-sided.

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NURBS

Developable surfaces are a subset of ruled surfaces, and can be flattened without stretching the surface. These include planar, cylindrical and conical surfaces. This surface type is important because SolidWorks sheet metal functions can only flatten these shapes. Besides sheet metal, developable surfaces are widely applied in shipbuilding (for easily formed flat plates or sheets of fiberglass) and label application (labels will stretch or pucker on non-developable surfaces) among many others. NURBS (non-uniform rational bspline) is a surfacing technology widely used by CAD and computer graphics software. NURBS surfaces are defined by parameterized U-V curves where the curves are splines, and the surface is interpolated between the splines.

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Obviously, SolidWorks models can have surfaces that are not foursided. There are two ways for this to happen:

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Working with Surface Bodies

One or more of the sides is of zero length, and the curves in that direction intersect at a single point which is called a singularity. These surfaces are called degenerate surfaces and often (but not

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Lesson 1

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction to Surfacing

Computers and mathematics both have a difficult time with the number zero, which is why zero length sides cause problems. An initially four-sided surface is trimmed to the required shape.

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always) cause problems in filleting, shelling or offsetting..

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Apply Face Curves.

Select the remaining surface and click Tools, Sketch

Tools, Face Curves.

Exit the Face Curves using the red X to avoid creating the 3D sketches.

This surface has the appearance of a surface that was rectangular, and then trimmed to be circular. In fact, we know that was the case, since this face was built from a rectangular planar surface.

The Untrim feature reveals in part or in whole the underlying surface. A surface can be untrimmed even if the Trim feature has never been used on it because model faces are defined by a combination of the underlying surface and the trimmed boundary. Sometimes faces are used as-is, without a trimmed boundary. This holds true for solid and surface faces created either natively in SolidWorks or imported from another source.

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Introducing: Untrim

Where to Find It

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Feature History in an IGES File?

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Click Untrim from the Surfaces toolbar. Or, Click Insert, Surface, Untrim.

Before you get too excited, no, this course will not teach you how to extract feature history from an IGES file, but features like Untrim and Delete Face can help you remove faces from imported models like they were never there. The IGES file remembers two things for every face, the original surface and any boundaries used to trim the surface. The trim boundary can be removed, leaving just the original surface, which Working with Surface Bodies

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

is a huge benefit when removing fillets from an imported part for example.

10 Untrim the surface. Click Untrim from the Surface toolbar.

Select either the face or the edge of the surface.

11 Repeat the steps.

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The preview shows that the underlying surface is indeed rectangular.

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Untrim, along with other techniques such as Delete Face, Extend Surface and Delete Hole can be applied with equal effectiveness to both SolidWorks native and imported geometry.

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Repeat steps 8 through 11 but this time use Solid.SLDPRT. 12 The results are the same.

Regardless if the end faces of the cylinders were made from a rectangular planar surface or extruded from a circle as a solid, the underlying shape in both cases is four sided.

13 Save and close the parts.

Why did you come to an Advanced Surface Modeling class to learn to create simple cylinders? There are a couple of reasons: Q

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Solids are just surfaces which follow special rules. To make a solid, SolidWorks is going through the same steps behind the scenes which we went through manually to build the surface model. Understanding what is happening behind the scenes helps you troubleshoot and avoid problems better. Using surface modeling, it takes much more time to model the same geometry that can be done much more quickly using solids. However, not everything can be modeled in solids, so surfacing is a necessary evil. CAD-neutral surfacing terminology and concepts are essentially the same for all solid modelers. Applying these concepts will help you understand how surfaces and solids, imported and native geometry can be manipulated.

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Why use Surfaces?

Why use Surfaces?

Now that you know what surfaces are, we can build the case for why surfaces are used. There are several reasons.

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Lesson 1

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction to Surfacing

Some shapes can not be created with solids. You have probably noticed that solid features like lofts and sweeps tend to result in shapes that have one or more flat sides. Surfaces are frequently used to cap off flat ends, or to create geometry which has no flat ends. The part shown to the right is an example of this use of surface modeling. Surfaces build a shape face by face rather than all at once. Solid features build several sides of a shape at once, and the entire feature flows in a single direction, which sometimes makes it difficult or impossible to get all of the sides correct. Surface features build shapes one face at a time, so different techniques and different directions can be used for different faces. Surfaces can be used as reference geometry. Surfaces are not limited to complex geometry, they also include extruded and revolved shapes. Any type of surface feature can be used as reference geometry to assist construction or to modify solids. Surface features are sometimes more efficient than solid features. Solid features have a need to build a viable stand-alone solid body for every feature before it is merged with the rest of the solid. This often requires building a lot of extra geometry and knitting. From a rebuild time point of view, surfaces are often more efficient, enabling you to only build the faces that are necessary.

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When not to use Surfaces

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Working with surfaces is almost always more work than working with solids. If you have the option and the results will be equivalent, you should model with solids by default. Here are some situations when you should avoid surface features: Q

Use solids when the end result can be achieved more easily and more efficiently than with surfaces. Sometimes rebuild time is not

Why use Surfaces?

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

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the driving measure, and is overridden by actual modeling time. It is generally best practice to avoid leaving a model as an open surface. Surfaces are usually an intermediate step to a solid. There may be some valid reasons for leaving models as open surfaces, but these will be the exception rather than the norm. In Lesson 5: Master Model Techniques, we will leave a model as a surface model, but it is being used as reference geometry to create a solid later in the workflow. There are certain types of master model functions which are not available for surface features, but only for solids. There will be more detailed information on this topic in Lesson 5: Master Model Techniques.

SolidWorks enables you to combine the best advantages of solids with the best advantages of surfaces. Solid-surface hybrid modeling is often the best option. This generally entails using surfaces to modify solids or converting a solid model into a surface model to make changes, and then back to a solid. Techniques that fall into this category can include:

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Mixing Metaphors: Hybrid Modeling

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replace face cut with surface up to surface or up to body end conditions split using a surface body to cut the model

Hybrid modeling is mentioned here in the way of a general introduction. The topic will be covered in more detail in Lesson 2: Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling.

Workflow with Surfaces

By the time you start modeling a part with SolidWorks, you probably have some idea of what the part will look like. This idea may come from hand sketches or digital photos of an existing product or handmade model. 3D scan data from a physical model is another possible source of design data. If you have the option, an image is often a great place to start. Digital images can be used in SolidWorks as Sketch Pictures, which in turn can be used to trace over or as a visual reference. Sketch Pictures should be used early on in a part and the sketch they are connected to should have some sort of a special

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Working with Images

When working with surfaces, especially when starting a complex model as a surface model, there are some general workflow guidelines that may be useful.

Workflow with Surfaces

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Lesson 1

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction to Surfacing

name to indicate the presence of a Sketch Picture. Sketch Pictures were first introduced in the Advanced Part Modeling course. You may want to go back to the manual and review some of the properties of and methods for using Sketch Pictures. Layout Sketch

Note

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Sketch Picture sketches do not need to have any sketch geometry in them. Also, more than one sketch picture can be used in separate sketches on orthogonal planes or where ever sketch references may be needed. This is useful for example if you want to have sketch pictures to show front, top and side views.

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Layout sketches are often helpful when embarking on a complex part. You may want to sketch items such as key features or locations, an overall size, driving contours, or a size reference for a Sketch Picture.

Perspective can make it difficult to accurately get measurements from objects in a digital image. Perspective in photos can be minimized by moving the camera further away from the object. Flatbed document scanners can also help reduce perspective, but are only usable on parts that do not have much depth to them. Sharp corners are another issue to watch out for. You are modeling the sharp edges, but most real parts have rounded edges, so you may have to extrapolate past the rounded edges to the virtual sharp. High resolution digital images used as sketch pictures are often initially displayed very large when inserted. It is helpful if a ruler is placed in the photograph with the part to allow you to scale the image. Draw a line or circle in the sketch and dimension it to the largest visible dimension on the ruler, and then match the image size to the sketch.

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It is also a good idea to use digital images with very high contrast and good focus. The best example is a very sharp black and white image. If the image bleeds or fades from one color to Edges may be difficult another, it becomes to distinguish.

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Sharp, Clear Image

Workflow with Surfaces

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

difficult to distinguish edges with accuracy. Getting started on a complex shape with no flat faces to use as a datum or reference can be tricky. With prismatic parts, it is generally easy to visualize how to create the shape, with extrude or revolve features, but parts that do not sit flat on a table are a different matter.

Symmetry

One of the first and easiest things to look at is symmetry. Position any sketch pictures to center the part around the origin. The symmetry may not be complete, but take as much advantage of it as possible. This makes not only modeling easier, but also mating the part into an assembly later, and even setting up motion or FEA analysis models.

Identify Edges

Identifying and creating hard edges on the part can help you get a start on a tough model. Edges are fairly difficult to create with any accuracy as the result of intersecting faces, but are relatively easy to create as projected curves. An edge is traced from two orthogonal sketch pictures, and a projected curve is created from the two sketches.

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Identify Symmetry and Edges

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Less commonly, 3D edges can be created as 3D splines. Editing splines in 3D space requires some practice, but can be done effectively. One technique for editing 3D splines is to split the graphics window using the Four View tool on the Standard Views toolbar. Dragging 3D items in space always moves the item in a plane parallel to the screen unless there are other constraints on the item.

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Curves on the plane of symmetry can also be useful for establishing a starting point for a model. Even though these curves do not represent a hard edge, they represent a silhouette edge, which is also useful.

Workflow with Surfaces

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Lesson 1

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Introduction to Surfacing

Curve features cannot be mirrored directly, but surfaces can be. When you have the need to mirror a curve, make a surface from the curve, mirror the surface, and the mirrored edge can serve the same function as the mirrored curve. This is an example of using surfaces as construction geometry.

Identify Functional Faces

If the model you are working on has any functional faces, these are generally easy to identify and use for a starting location. Functional faces are items like a bottle neck, which must be circular, or a bottom which must be flat or have feet, or a face which mates to another part with a defined shape, or a face where a label will sit, which must be developable.

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Tip

In the part shown to the right, the functional surface is really the round area in back which will fit onto a door latch mechanism. The first sketch in the part acts as a layout sketch and sizes the outer face as well as the inner diameter which is not yet cut. The line shown above to the left side of the size reference sketch also establishes the length of the part.

Check your Models Frequently

Because surface models are created by humans, they are often not perfect, and may have defects which are not plainly visible. If you build important features on geometry with errors, the rest of the model may be compromised. Therefor, it is important to make sure after every important step to check the model for errors.

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The two tools used to check models are Tools, Check and Verification on Rebuild.

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Introducing: Verification on Rebuild

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Verification on Rebuild is a setting which enables SolidWorks to do more thorough checks on models. When the option is cleared, SolidWorks checks every model face against every adjacent face. When it is checked, this setting forces SolidWorks to check every model face against every other face in the model. This gives a more thorough check and also can create a large performance drain on your system. On complex parts, it is recommended to turn this setting on and

Workflow with Surfaces

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 1 Introduction to Surfacing

perform a forced rebuild (Ctrl+Q). There will be no special indication that the setting is turned on, but when it works, features will fail that previously did not fail, but allowed bad geometry to be created. Where to Find It Introducing: Tools, Check

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It is a recommended best practice to work with the Verification on Rebuild option cleared, but to turn it on and check the model every several features, and then turning it off again. At a minimum, all models, particularly complex ones should be checked with Verification on Rebuild before calling the model finished.

Folders in the FeatureManager

Working with surface models will often produce feature trees with hundreds of features. Because you are building parts one face at a time and there are so many steps, there can be many, many features. At times there will be many features related to a particular area of the part. It is good practice to put long lists of related features into a single folder for clearer organization and to assist other people who might have to edit the part after you are done with it. Often creating and naming a single folder eliminates the need to rename several individual features. It also makes the FeatureManager more navigable. Many modeling “housekeeping” practices fall into the personal preference range rather than best practice type topics. Clean-up is one of those topics.

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Clean-up

Click Check from the Tools toolbar. Click Tools, Check.

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Tools, Check is a checking utility that identifies geometry problems. Sometimes features will fail for seemingly no apparent reason, and a check will reveal that somewhere earlier in the tree a bad corner was created. Tools, Check also will help you find open surface edges that prevent a surface from knitting into a solid and short edges and minimum radius points that prevent a part from shelling.

Where to Find It

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Click Tools, Options, Performance, Verification on Rebuild.

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Workflow with Surfaces

At the end of a surface modeling project, you may find that you have many left over surface or solid bodies. Some SolidWorks users choose to delete all but the final target solid from the bodies folders using the Delete Bodies feature. A Delete Bodies feature remains in the FeatureManager and can be suppressed, edited or deleted later if access to some of the affected bodies is needed.

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Lesson 1

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Introduction to Surfacing

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Workflow with Surfaces

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Exercise 1: Trimming Surfaces

Create this part by following the steps as shown.

Moving, rotating and copying surface bodies

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Trimming surfaces

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Converting a surface into a solid.

Procedure

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This lab reinforces the following techniques:

Open an existing part named Trim_Exercise.SLDPRT. 1

Create an axis.

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Create a reference axis from the two corners of the surface nearest the Top reference plane. Make sure this is called Axis1.

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Rotate the surface body. Use the Move/Copy Body feature to rotate

(no copy) the body about Axis1 by 35 degrees as shown.

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Copy surface bodies.

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Create another reference axis using the intersection of the Front and the Right reference planes. This should be called Axis2.

Use the Move/Copy Body feature to Rotate and Copy the surface body about Axis2, making 2 copies at an angle of 120 degrees.

Exercise 1: Trimming Surfaces

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4

Create a new sketch.

On the Right reference plane, open a sketch, and dimension a point as shown. The dimensions go to the planes that are shown.

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Exit the sketch.

Create another axis.

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Copy surface body.

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Rotate and Copy the original surface body about Axis3 by 136 degrees.

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Create Axis3 using the Point and Plane definition, with the newly created sketch point and the Right reference plane.

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Trim the surfaces.

The display may look confusing, but use the Trim feature with the type set to Mutual Trim and select the Pieces to Keep, selecting purple pieces as shown. You should wind up with an enclosed volume and should have four faces selected.

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Thicken into a solid. The Create solid from enclosed volume option

will only be available if you have successfully created an enclosed volume.

Save and close the part.

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Exercise 1: Trimming Surfaces

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

Create this part by following the steps as shown.

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Projected curves

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Thickened surfaces

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Sharing sketches

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Units: millimeters

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Use and management of Sketch Pictures

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This lab reinforces the following techniques:

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Open a new part using the Part_MM template and name it Stapler.SLDPRT Insert sketch pictures.

Using the jpg images provided (StaplerCoverSide. jpg and StaplerCoverBottom .jpg), insert the pictures on the appropriate planes, then orient and size the images as appropriate.

The overall size of the side view image should be approximately 136 x 37.5 mm. (aspect ratio should be locked), with the sketch origin placed in the center of the arc at the rear of the cover. The bottom view should be approximately 53 mm x 130 mm.

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You may need to adjust the angle of the images as well. This process is not an exact one. You will need to make judgment calls and approximations, and work with data that is not perfect.

Exit the sketches and name them Side View and Bottom View as appropriate.

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Side profile sketch.

In the finished example part, all of the sketch entities were drawn in a single sketch, but you may split them into multiple sketches if that helps you keep track of things better. Multiple sketches could be put into a single folder to reflect the common function of the sketches.

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

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The bottom and top edge projections as well as the front and side silhouettes are in this sketch. You will use the sketch entities in this sketch to create two different projected curves and two different lofted surfaces.

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To assist in visualization, sometimes it is useful to hide the sketch picture once the edges have been traced. To do this, rightclick the sketch picture icon under the sketch in the FeatureManager and select Suppress. This controls the sketch picture independently from the overall sketch visibility.

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A shared sketch approach makes it easier to edit shapes all in one or two sketches, although it may look a little chaotic with sketch lines everywhere.

There is no way to show the sketch picture without showing sketch entities in the sketch. Foe this reason, Sketch Pictures are sometimes put into sketches with no sketch geometry, and a separate sketch feature is created to act as a layout sketch. Exit the sketch and rename it Side Sketch.

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Add sketch points at intersections.

Because we will want to reference the intersections later, add sketch points at the indicated intersections. For clarification, the intersection at the top is between the front silhouette line and the top edge projection, not the top silhouette.

Bottom profile sketch.

In the same way that you used a single sketch for multiple side view curves in the previous step, make a sketch that contains one side of the curves for the top and bottom edges, as shown. Remember that when sketching a spline which needs to be smooth across the plane of symmetry, apply constraints to the ends of the spline which are on the centerline.

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Notice also that the spline representing the top edge of the stapler cover seems to be misplaced. This is because the edge must be located where the sharp corner between the faces would exist if the fillet were

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

removed. Exit the sketch and rename it Bottom Sketch. 6

Create a projected curve.

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Using the sketch entities shown selected, create a projected curve that represents half of the lower edge around the cover.

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You will need to use Contour Selection to select individual open loops from the shared sketches. The Selection Manager works in loft, sweep and boundary surface features only.

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As a reminder, the Contour Selection is available from the right-click shortcut menu while editing the Projected Curve feature.

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Create a second projected curve.

Using the highlighted sketch splines, create a second projected curve representing half of the top edge of the cover.

The resulting pair of curves should look like the image to the right.

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Draw first loft profile.

The side face of the stapler cover will be created by a loft. There are possibly other techniques that may be equally or more valid, but for this example, we will use a loft.

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The easiest loft profile to set up for this side face is the silhouette at the front of the stapler. You have already drawn this once, so we will reuse that sketch. Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane.

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Make sure the Side Sketch is visible.

Use Convert Entities to capture the front silhouette line of Side Sketch. Split the converted spline twice with the Split Entities tool. Give the split points coincident relations with the intersection sketch points from Step 3. Convert the unneeded end pieces of the spline to construction

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

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geometry. Exit the sketch. 9

Create the second loft profile.

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Create a plane offset from the Front reference plane which is as far to the left in the image as possible such that both projected curves pierce it.

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The second loft profile is just a straight line. The rear of the stapler cover will be trimmed away to be semi-circular, but for now we will just create it straight.

Draw a line on this plane that is pierced at each end by a projected curve. Make sure the line and endpoints have no other sketch relations other than the pierce constraints.

Introducing: Lofted Surface

Lofted surfaces work much like their solid counterparts. The most obvious difference is that they will produce an open surface rather than a closed solid. Lofted surfaces also have options for loft profiles which are not available to solid lofts, including using open loop curves and sketches as profiles. You can still use closed loop profiles, but the surface feature will not cap the ends. The Selection Manager is used to select multiple edges or contours for profiles or guide curves. Click Lofted Surface on the Surfaces Toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Loft.

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Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

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10 Create the loft. Create a Lofted Surface using

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the converted and split spline from Step 7 and the line from Step 8. Use the two projected curves as guide curves. Apply end tangency to the spline, Normal to

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Set guide curve influence to 11 Mirror the loft. Mirror the lofted surface body

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about the Right reference plane.

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12 Create a new sketch.

On the plane used to draw the straight line for the lofted surface, draw an arc connecting the top corner of the lofted surface with the top corner of the mirrored surface.

The arc should have a slight curvature, with approximately a .25 mm bulge. as shown. Exit the sketch

13 Show the Side Sketch.

14 Create another new sketch.

Create another new sketch on the Right reference plane.

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Select the spline from the Side Sketch shown highlighted in the image to the right, and click Convert Entities.

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15 Split the converted spline. Using the Split Entities tool, place a

split point 15-20 mm from the limits of the new surface you are about to create. Convert the ends of the

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

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spline to construction geometry. Exit the sketch. Introducing: Fill Surface

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The Fill Surface feature is one of the most versatile surface tools you will find in SolidWorks. Fill requires a boundary of surface edges or sketch entities. It may even work without a closed loop. If surface edges are selected, boundary conditions such as Contact, Tangency to Face and Curvature to Face may be selected.

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The Fill surface can knit itself into the surrounding surface bodies, knit an enclosed volume into a solid or integrate itself directly into a solid body.

Where to Find It

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The Fill surface works by creating a four-sided patch and trimming it to fit the selected boundary. Q Q

Click Filled Surface on the Surfaces Toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Fill.

16 Create a Fill surface. Click Filled Surface.

As the boundary, select the top edge of the loft, the top edge of the mirrored surface and the arc drawn in Step 12. Select the spline from Step 15 as a constraint curve. All edges should be set to

Contact.

Click OK to accept the feature.

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17 Knit the surface bodies together.

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At this point you should have three surface bodies unless in the mirror feature you checked the Knit surfaces option. Knit them all together as a single surface body.

18 Create a split line feature.

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Open a sketch on the Top reference plane. Draw a line across the back of the top face of the stapler cover, and dimension it about 2.5 mm Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

above the sketch origin. Create a Split Line feature on the top face. 19 Delete face. Use the Delete Face feature to

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Notice the defects in the corners indicated by the red arrows. We will fix these in an upcoming step.

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Thicken the surface toward the inside by 1.75 mm.

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20 Thicken surface.

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delete the small face.

21 Full round fillets.

Apply full round fillets to the back thin wall faces.

22 Use Delete Face to get rid of the defects. In a Delete Face feature set to

the Delete and Patch option, select the small triangular faces created by the Thicken feature.

23 Inside fillet.

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Apply a fillet with a 1 mm radius to the inside edge of the stapler cover.

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24 Rear fillet.

Apply a fillet with a 2 mm radius to the trimmed edge as shown.

Exercise 2: Working from Sketch Pictures

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25 Outside fillet.

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Apply a fillet with a .75 mm radius to the remainder of the outer edges as shown.

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26 Apply final fillet.

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Select the two main edges around the outside of the cover, and apply a fillet with a 2 mm radius. Clear the Tangent Propagation option.

27 Extra Credit.

Apply the ribs and bosses as shown in the sketch pictures. Use the additional picture StaplerCoverAngle.jpg, which was photographed in the direction of draw for the placement.

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Save and exit the part.

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

Create this part by following the steps as shown.

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Using Symmetry

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Using Fill and Loft surface features

Units: inches Design Intent

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Defining edges of a surfaced part

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This lab uses techniques that should be familiar to you, and reinforces the following techniques:

The design intent for this part is as follows:

Procedure

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1. Part is symmetrical. 2. Surfaces are smooth. 3. All fillets and rounds are .06” radius with continuous curvature. Open a new part using the Part_IN template and name it Workflow.SLDPRT.

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Create a size reference sketch.

The sketch consists of three concentric circles and a vertical line. The outermost circle is offset from the 1.250” dia circle.

Exit the sketch and rename it Size Reference Sketch

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Sketch a spline for a projected curve.

Keep the spline close to the 1.250” dia circle, and use handles to give it some curvature at the ends using the spline handles.

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This sketch represents the only real edge in the part (shown in red to the right) as projected onto the Right reference plane. This will be the first sketch for a projected curve. The second sketch is made in the next step.

Exit the sketch and rename it to Side Profile.

Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

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Sketch second spline for projected curve.

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Where the spline touches the plane of symmetry, give the spline handle a Horizontal relation.

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This represents the edge around the part as projected onto the Top reference plane.

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The sketch is displayed from two different angles to show it in normal projection and also how it relates to the previous sketches.

Make sure that the other end of the spline is longer than the previous sketch so the projection works properly.

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Exit the sketch and rename it Top Profile.

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Create the Projected Curve.

Use the Top Profile and Side Profile sketches to create a projected curve, using the Sketch on Sketch option.

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Create center profile sketch.

On the Right reference plane, draw a spline that follows the offset circle from the Size Reference Sketch, and ends at the ends of the Side Profile sketch.

Again use spline handles to control the shape at the ends of the spline. This spline will be the shape of the surface at the plane of symmetry, the silhouette edge. Exit the sketch and name it Center Profile. Create a guide curve.

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Hide all of the sketches except the Center Profile. Make sure the projected curve is visible.

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Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane. Near the end with the loop (near the Origin), sketch a two point spline, and pierce the ends by the Center Profile sketch and the projected curve. At the end pierced by the Center Profile, give the spline handle a

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Horizontal relation.

Exit the sketch and rename it Guide Curve. 7

Create the lofted surface.

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Set tangency for the Center Profile to Normal to Profile.

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Use the Guide Curve sketch as a guide curve.

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The loft profiles for the lofted surface are the Center Profile and the projected curve.

Notice that the ends of the lofted surfaces come to a singularity point. In this case we will allow this to remain, although if you were shelling the part you would do better to trim off the ends and use the Fill surface to recreate better faces in these areas.

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Create a construction surface.

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Construction surfaces are sometimes used to help establish boundaries and tangency for model surfaces. In this case, you will use an extruded surface to close the gap at the end of the lofted surface, and create a way to achieve cross-symmetry tangency.

Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

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Create a series of arcs.

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Extrude the surface to the opposite side of the Right plane from the rest of the surfaces. The distance doesn’t matter since this is only a construction surface.

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On the Right reference plane, draw an arc as shown, constrained to the corners of the lofted surface.

The next step is to create a surface that seals up the side and front of the part. The shape of the face will make it difficult to do as a loft or sweep. .

The surface should bulge out slightly, carrying the curvature of the extruded construction surface around to the sides of the part. The best way to accomplish this will be to use constraint curves in the Fill surface. These constraint curves can be placed on planes parallel to the Front reference plane, not necessarily at any particular spacing. Since your shape will be slightly different from the one shown here, your model will have different requirements. In the example shown here, there are six curves with a bulge distance of approximately .050”.

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Without renaming individual features, group the planes and sketches into a new folder called Constraint Curves.

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Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

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Click OK to accept the feature. 11 Knit the surfaces.

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At this point, you will notice that there are three surface bodies. The loft, the fill and the extruded construction surface.

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Create a Fill surface that uses the outer edge of the lofted surface and the edge of the construction surface as the boundary. The Curvature Control setting should be Contact for the edge of the lofted surface and Tangent for the edge of the extruded surface. Put the series of arcs into the Constraint Curves selection box.

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10 Create a Fill surface.

Some operations cannot be done to or between multiple bodies. Fillets and draft are two examples. The next step is to make a fillet between the intersection of the fill surface and the loft surface, but this cannot be done until the surfaces are knit together into a single surface body. Select Knit from the Surfaces Toolbar and select the loft and fill surfaces. Click OK to accept and exit the feature.

Hide any other sketches and surface bodies.

If you feel the need to be exceptionally thorough, you may use the Delete Body feature to delete the construction surface.

12 Create a fillet.

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On the example part is a curvature continuous face fillet with a .080” radius. Depending on the minor differences between your spline sketching and that of the example model, you may not be able to apply a fillet with these settings. The main limiting factor is the vertical distance between the ends of the Side Profile sketch.

A curvature continuous fillet will make the edges of the part look smoother than a default constant radius fillet.

13 Mirror the body. Select the Mirror feature and mirror the single surface body. Check the option to Knit surfaces.

Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

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14 Thicken into a solid. Click Insert, Thicken and check the Create solid from enclosed volume option.

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15 Save and close the part.

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Alternatively, you could clear the Knit surfaces option in the Mirror and use a Knit feature, which will also give you the option to make a solid from the result of the Knit.

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Exercise 3: Workflow for a Surface Part

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Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

Upon successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to: Modify a solid using surface bodies.

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Interchange between solids and surfaces.

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Use surfaces as construction geometry.

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Repair and edit imported geometry using surfacing.

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Lesson 2

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

Hybrid Modeling

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Hybrid modeling, as the name implies, brings together two different modeling methods: solid modeling, which is best at prismatic shapes and shapes with flat ends, and surface modeling which is best at making shapes one face at a time. Often a hybrid approach is the best option because straight solids can be inefficient and awkward, and surfaces alone take far too long to model. Deciding which approach to use is about recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, and applying them as the situation requires.

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In the most general terms, hybrid modeling can be broken into several categories:

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Surface used to modify solid

This includes features such as Replace Face, Cut with Surface, and any of the Up to or Offset from Surface end conditions. The Fill surface also has the ability to integrate itself directly into an existing solid.

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Interchangeability between solids and surfaces

This includes Delete Face (changes solid to surface), Thicken enclosed volume (surface to solid), Knit and Offset.

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Surfaces as construction geometry

This category is limited mainly by your imagination, but can include techniques such as Intersection Curve, surfaces used to trim other surfaces, ruled skirts used to establish a draft tangency surface around the parting line, and others.

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Creating solids directly from surfaces

This includes techniques such as lofting surface bodies to create a solid, or Thicken an open surface body.

Follow these steps to learn several methods to create the part shown.

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Procedure

In this lesson we will use existing surface geometry to modify a solid body to create the shape of an electric guitar body. We will employ various methods that all have the same result. Complex modeling is often an exercise in multiple methods, and having several ways to accomplish any task is always a welcome insurance policy.

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Using Surfaces to Modify Solids

Hybrid Modeling

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Lesson 2

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

1

Open an existing file.

Open the file called guitar_body.SLDPRT.

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Notice that this part has two surface bodies that have already been created, along with a sketch of the overall outer shape of the guitar body. Extrude up to surface.

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The easiest and often the most efficient hybrid method is to extrude a solid up to a surface body. Note

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You may be familiar with the error message “The end face cannot terminate the extruded feature”, which translated into english means that the sketch is bigger than the surface and SolidWorks does not know what to do outside of the surface boundaries. One way to get around this limitation is to knit together several surfaces into a larger surface body, and then extrude up to the body rather than an individual face or feature.

Select the sketch named Guitar Body Outline, and create a solid Extrude feature using the Up to Body, and select the Top Surface Knit body from the Graphics Window or from the FeatureManager. Up to Surface will also work.

The Belly Scoop surface body has been hidden here for clarity. Notice that after you accept the feature, where the solid and surface faces coincide, the display appears mottled. This is due to the faces being in exactly the same location and having different colors. The way SolidWorks displays surfaces makes small approximations which make one or the other surface sit on top at any given point. To avoid this affect, you can hide the surface body.

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Note

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Edit the Extrude feature.

Edit the extrusion to make it Blind, 4” deep.

Using Surfaces to Modify Solids

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

4

Cut up to Surface.

Introducing: Cut with Surface

The Cut with Surface feature uses a surface body to cut a solid body. The surface must extend all the way through the solid, preferably with room to spare, meaning that the surface should extend past the solid visibly.

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Where to Find It

Suppress the extruded cut.

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Extrude the sketch up to the Top Surface Knit body.

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Open a sketch on the end face of the newly created extrude. With the face still selected, click on Convert Entities to convert the edges to sketch entities.

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Click Cut with Surface on the Features toolbar. Or, click Insert, Cut, With Surface.

Cut with Surface. Click Insert, Cut, With Surface.

Select the Top Surface Knit body. The direction of the arrow indicates the material that will be removed.

Again, it is no surprise, but the geometry looks exactly the same as the other methods.

Replace Face is perhaps one of the overlooked and underused gems in SolidWorks hybrid capabilities. It is one of the few functions that can actually add and/or remove material in a single step. Replace face can replace faces of solids or of surfaces, but the body replacing the face must be a surface body.

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Introducing: Replace Face

Where to Find It

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Click Replace Face

Using Surfaces to Modify Solids

on the Surfaces toolbar.

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

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Or, click Insert, Face, Replace.

Replace Face.

Suppress the Surface Cut feature.

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In the top box, Target faces for replacement, select the top face of the solid. The top box is for the old faces that will be removed.

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Click Replace Face on the Surfaces toolbar.

Interchanging between Solids and Surfaces

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In the lower box, Replacement surface, put the Top Surface Knit body. The lower box is for the new faces that will remain. The name that shows in the box may not match the actual name of the surface body, regardless if you select from the FeatureManager Bodies folder or the Graphics Window.

Working with solids can only take you so far, and sometimes you may need to shift gears and use a different approach for a while, then switch back. That is what temporarily changing a solid model into a surface model will do for you. On more complex projects you may want to plan your work so you do not wind up changing in and out of solids and surfaces and wasting a lot of rebuild time.

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Convert the solid body to a surface body. Using the Delete Face feature, with the Delete option, delete the face that was

replaced in the last step, which will convert the solid body into a surface body.

Trim the surfaces. Use the Trim Surface feature with the Mutual Trim type to trim both surfaces.

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10 Thicken into a solid.

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The surface body created by the mutual trim made an enclosed surface, but it did not make it back into a solid body. Click Insert, Boss/Base, Thicken. After you select the enclosed surface body, there should be a

Interchanging between Solids and Surfaces

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

check box for Create solid from enclosed volume. Make sure this box is checked. 11 Save and close the part.

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We have seen several techniques on this part. There will be situations in consumer product design where you will likely need each one of these techniques. As to which technique is better, there is no single answer that would be valid in all cases. As a homework assignment, you might try to go through these features and evaluate them with the Feature Statistics tool which can help you understand the performance cost of using various tools.

Interchanging between Solids and Surfaces

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

Surfaces as Construction Geometry

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One of the keys to any sweep operation is creating the required curves to use as the path or guides. In this example, a decorative piece of wrought iron is modeled by sweeping a circle along a curved path. The path is created by finding the intersection between two reference surfaces.

Thanks to Jason Pancoast at Computer-Aided Products, Inc. for submitting this example.

Stages in the Process

The major steps in this operation are:

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Create a revolved surface.

This will use a sketched spline.

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Create a helical surface.

This is done by sweeping a line along a straight path, with twist control.

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Generate intersection curve.

Find the intersection between the two reference surfaces. This is the path for the twisted sweep.

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Sweep one of the “spokes”.

A circular profile is swept along the intersection curve.

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Pattern the “spokes”.

Procedure

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A circular pattern of the swept feature completes the part. To save time, we will begin by opening an existing part.

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Open part.

Open the existing part named Wrought Iron. This represents the base of an ornamental object such as the base of a lamp. A sketch is also included. Hide solid.

Right-click the revolve feature, and select Hide Solid Body.

Surfaces as Construction Geometry

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

3

Edit an existing sketch.

Edit the sketch spline_grid.

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approximately the same as the one shown in the illustration at the right, attaching to lines and endpoints. The spline should have 7 interpolant points.

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Create spline. Click Spline and sketch a spline whose shape is

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Dimension.

Use ordinate dimensions to dimension the spline points. To maintain symmetry in the spline, you can use Link Values on the pairs of vertical ordinate dimensions.

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Vertical relation.

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Select the upper end spline handle (arrow) and add a Vertical relation.

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Repeat the procedure for the lower end spline handle.

Surfaces as Construction Geometry

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

7

Revolve surface.

Select the vertical centerline at the zero datum, and click on the Surfaces toolbar.

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Set the Angle to 360°.

Sketch the sweep path.

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Click OK.

Open a new sketch on the Front reference plane. Show the sketch of the revolved surface. Select the vertical centerline, and click Convert Entities to copy it into the sketch.

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Exit the sketch.

10 Sketch the sweep profile.

Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane. Sketch a line from the bottom end of the sweep path along the horizontal direction.

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11 Exit the sketch.

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Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

12 Sweep a surface.

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Sweep a surface using the path, section, and twist control settings as shown. No guide curve is required to create this helical sweep.

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13 Intersection curve. Open a new 3D Sketch. Hold down Ctrl and

select the two surfaces.

Click Intersection Curve

.

The system generates the intersection in a 3D sketch, and automatically puts you into Edit Sketch mode.

14 Exit the sketch.

Exit the 3D sketch and hide the two surface bodies.

15 Show the solid body.

Right-click Revolve1 and select Show Solid Body.

16 Sketch the sweep profile.

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Create a plane normal to the top end of the intersection curve, and sketch a 0.25” circle.

Surfaces as Construction Geometry

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

17 Sweep.

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When sweeping the boss, use the option Align with end faces and Merge result to ensure that the boss completely merges with the revolve feature.

18 Circular pattern.

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Create a circular pattern with six equally spaced instances.

19 Save and close the part.

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Surfaces as Construction Geometry

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Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

Short of getting a Parasolid file with a feature tree, there are options available for editing imported parts.

Open the STEP file.

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Check for errors.

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Errors on imported parts are spotted during import and a warning flag or error message may be displayed. This part should show a warning flag on the Imported feature.

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Open the file named baseframe.STP.

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Use Verification on Rebuild. Turn on Tools, Options, Performance, Verification on Rebuild and

press Ctrl+Q. This still does not reveal any errors. Make sure to turn this setting back off.

4

Tools, Check.

Click Tools, Check, and check the model. This shows that there are indeed two invalid faces on the model. Tools, Check will check a model, but by itself it cannot repair the model. Import Diagnosis is a tool that can both find and repair errors, so we will employ that now.

Import Diagnostics is a tool that helps locate and fix problems with imported geometry. In order for Import Diagnostics to work, the Imported feature must be the only feature in the tree.

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Introducing: Import Diagnostics Where to Find It

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Click Import Diagnostics on the Tools toolbar. Or, click Tools, Import Diagnostics. Or, right-click on the Imported feature in the FeatureManager and select Import Diagnosis.

Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

5

Import Diagnostics.

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The PropertyManager for this function has identified a third faulty face. Hovering the cursor over one of the fault symbols in the Import Diagnostics PropertyManager shows a tooltip of what is wrong with each face.

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Right-click on the Imported feature and select Import Diagnostics.

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Attempt to heal all. Click the Attempt to Heal All button. This

command may or may not solve 100% of the imported problems, but any manual work that it saves you is a benefit. Import Diagnostics comes back with two of the surfaces healed and one still faulty.

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Accept the diagnostics. Click OK to accept the results of the diagnostics.

Nothing that you do with Import Diagnosis can be undone except by reimporting the part. There is no feature history of what it has done behind the scenes.

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Manually repair the remaining faulty face.

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The remaining faulty face is a three-sided patch with a singularity point, which we have already identified in the previous lesson as often problematic.

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Note

52

Delete Face. Using a Delete Face feature and the Delete

option, we eliminate the face and turn the solid model into a surface. Notice how the open edges of the hole in the surface are shown in a different color. This is due to a setting in Tools, Options, Display/ Selection.

Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

Faulty faces can also be deleted from the Import Diagnostics window by right-clicking a faulty face from the list and selecting Delete Face.

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11 Loft the patch.

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The first choice for patching a gap like this should automatically be the Fill feature. In this case, however, the Fill surface gives us a poor quality face. Neither the Resolution Control slider nor the curvature/tangency option rescues the patch, so we need to look for another answer.

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10 Patch the hole.

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Lofting a patch will result in another surface with a singularity, but the only other alternative is a revolved surface which also has a singularity on it. In this case, the loft works perfectly, although it needs some coaxing. Be particularly careful about the Global guide curve influence setting.

12 Knit the surface body into a solid. Use a Knit feature to knit the loft into the rest of the surface body and

turn the resulting enclosed volume into a solid body.

This imported part has some features we would like to eliminate. There are no features in a tree that can be deleted to do this, and we will not do it by cutting and filling with solids. First, we will show an automated way of doing this, and then go back through and see how to do this with a little more manual control.

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Editing Imported Parts

Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

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Lesson 2

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

1

Remove boss and counterbored hole.

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Delete Face. Create a Delete Face feature that selects all the

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On this part, we want to remove the small boss, the through hole and the counterbore on the outside. The part in this area is a curved face.

faces of the affected features. There should be nine selected faces all together. Use the Delete and Patch option.

3

Results.

The Delete Face feature results in a perfectly smooth patch as if there had never been anything there at all.

4

Edit the Delete Face feature.

That was too easy, let us see it again in slow motion.

Edit the Delete Face feature to use the Delete option instead of the Delete and Patch.

Results.

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The result this time is a surface body instead of a solid, with gaps in the surfaces where the feature faces were. Notice again the color of the open edges of the surfaces.

Introducing: Delete Hole

The Delete Hole feature is like the Untrim feature we learned about in the first lesson, except that it only works on closed interior loops.

Where to Find It

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Select the edge of a closed interior loop on a single surface body Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 2 Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

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There is one more method to do this before moving on.

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Untrim surface.

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When you click OK, the hole is gone, again filled in as if it never existed.

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Delete Hole.

Select the edge of the hole and press Delete.

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from the Standard toolbar

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and press Delete on the keyboard. Or, select the edge and click Delete or Edit menu.

Rotate the part to see the hole left by removing the counterbore on the other side of the part.

Select the edge of the hole and click Untrim Surface from the Surface toolbar. Use the default settings, and click OK.

Save and close the part.

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Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

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Lesson 2

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Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling

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Repairing and Editing Imported Geometry

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Exercise 4: Using Import Surface and Replace Face

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Import Surface

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Move/Copy Bodies

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Replace Face

Open existing file.

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Delete Face

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Q

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This lab uses the following skills:

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This demonstrates some techniques for modifying imported models. The lab uses a surface imported from a Parasolid (x_t) file. The surface is moved to a new position and used to replace a face in the solid.

Open the existing Parasolid file named Button.x_t. It is found in the Replace Face folder.

Note

If you are prompted to select a template, choose Part_IN. The face to be replaced is highlighted in green.

2

Delete faces.

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Before we can replace the face, some fillets have to be deleted. Click Delete Face on the Surfaces toolbar. Select the faces shown.

Be sure to zoom in on the corners. There are some small faces there.

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Tip

Drag a selection box around the corners to be sure to select the small faces. Select the option Delete and Patch, and click OK.

Exercise 4: Using Import Surface and Replace Face

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3

Import surface.

Import a surface into the part using Insert, Features, Imported. Select the Parasolid file named New Surface.

Move the surface. Click Insert, Features, Move/Copy, or click Move/

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The surface color was changed for clarity.

Copy Bodies

on the

Surfaces toolbar.

Use the Translate option.

Enter 2.5” for Delta Y.

Click OK.

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Replace face.

Replace the top face of the part with the imported surface.

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Click Insert, Face, Replace, or click Replace Face on the Surfaces toolbar.

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Exercise 4: Using Import Surface and Replace

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

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Hide the surface.

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Fillet.

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Add a 0.025” fillet as shown.

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Right-click the surface, and select Hide Surface Body.

Save and close the part.

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Exercise 4: Using Import Surface and Replace Face

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SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Exercise 5: Using Surfaces to Create Solids

This lab uses the following skills: Lofting between surfaces

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Importing an IGES file

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Repairing missing surfaces

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Knitting surfaces

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Lofting Between Surfaces

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The first one creates a solid by lofting between two surfaces. The second uses the method of knitting surfaces to combine multiple bounding surfaces into a solid.

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This lab includes two small exercises in using surfaces to create solids.

Lofting can be accomplished using sketches, faces or surfaces. In this example, lofting is performed between two surfaces to form a solid.

1

Open the part.

Open the existing part named LOFT_SURF. The part consists of two imported surfaces.

2

Insert loft. Using Insert, Boss/ Base, Loft, select

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the two surfaces as the Profiles of the loft.

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Pick the surfaces near mating corners, like you would using sketches.

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The result is a single solid body.

Exercise 5: Using Surfaces to Create Solids

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

3

Fillets and shell.

4

Save and close the part.

Knit surface allows you to combine several surfaces into a single, larger surface or in some cases, a solid. For a solid, the surfaces must comprise a closed volume. If surfaces are missing from the imported data, the gaps must be filled.

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Repair and Knit Surface

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Add fillets of radius 0.5” and a shell of 0.125” to complete the body.

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Import an IGES file. Click File, Open, or click Open

. Set Files of type: to IGES Files (*.igs;*.iges). Select the file Surface Repair.IGS.

Click Options.

Verify that the option Try forming solid(s) is selected and click OK.

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Exercise 5: Using Surfaces to Create Solids

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3

Click Open from the Open dialog.

If you are prompted to select a template, choose Part_IN. 4

Results.

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The individual surface patches are knit into a single imported surface. However, there are some gaps.

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Click Filled Surface Set Edge settings to Tangent.

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Select the Apply to all edges check box.

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Select edges.

Right-click one of the edges of the opening, and select Select Open Loop.

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Select the Merge result check box.

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Click OK.

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Results.

A surface patch is created to fill in the opening. It is shown here in a different color for illustration purposes.

Repeat this process for the remaining three openings.

When doing the last opening, also select the option Try to form solid. This will thicken the resulting knit surface into a solid.

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Important!

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Repeat.

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Since the Merge result option was selected, the new patch has automatically been knit to the existing surface.

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Results.

Although the graphics look the same, a solid has been formed. Only by looking at the Solid Bodies folder can you tell the model is now a solid.

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10 Save and close the part.

Exercise 5: Using Surfaces to Create Solids

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Exercise 6: Finial Wrap

This lab uses the following skills: Wrap sketch onto a surface

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From a design point of view, a real part would not likely have such a cacophony of style elements, but bringing them together allows one part to serve as a showcase for several techniques.

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A finial is a decorative end cap, in this case intended for a curtain rod. This finial model has several features which will be completed over the course of several exercises. In this exercise, you will create the wrapped pattern around the lower band on the finial.

1

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Thicken surface

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Loft surface from solid edges

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Replace face

Open an existing file.

Open Finial_Wrap.SLDPRT.

Notice that there is existing solid geometry and two sketches. The sketches have been provided in order to get consistent results.

The Offset Surface feature creates a new surface body from an existing set of faces. The faces may be solid or surface faces. When Offset Surfaces fail, it is usually because the offset distance is greater than the smallest curvature on the face. In this way it is similar to offsetting a sketch.

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Introducing: Offset Surface

Offsets are sometimes made at a distance of zero to copy faces.

Where to Find It

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2

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Click Offset Surface on the Surfaces toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Offset.

Create two copies of surface. Using the Offset surface feature, create two separate copies of the

cylindrical face indicated by the red arrow. The offset distance should

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be zero. Two copies are needed because you will create two Wrap features, each of which consumes one surface body. 3

Hide bodies.

Initiate the Wrap feature. Click Insert, Features, Wrap.

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Hide the solid body and the all of the surface bodies except one of the offset surfaces.

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At the prompt, use the Fly Out FeatureManager to select the sketch Wrap1. Also select the face of the remaining shown surface.

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The long red rectangle represents the cylindrical surface flattened onto the sketch plane. Make sure the Scribe option is selected and click OK.

5

Delete face. Click Delete Face from the Surfaces toolbar

and select the cylindrical surface outside of the scribed pattern. Use the Delete option rather than the default Delete and Patch. Click OK.

6

Repeat the Wrap steps.

Show the second offset surface body, and repeat steps 4 and 5 using the surface that was just shown and sketch Wrap2.

7

Thicken the surface bodies. Click Insert, Boss/Base, Thicken.

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You will need to create two Thicken features. The first feature should be made from the surface scribed by the sketch Wrap1. Do not merge the first Thicken feature. The first Thicken should have a thickness of .050”

Exercise 6: Finial Wrap

On the second Thicken feature, use merge, but edit the Feature Scope to only include the other solid body created by the first Thicken feature. The second Thicken feature should have a thickness of .040”.

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8

Create a Split Line.

Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane, and draw a line approximately as shown.

Loft a surface.

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Create a split line on the outer face of the solid body.

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Loft a surface between the newly created split line and the edge at the intersection of the two bodies.

Introducing: Extend Surface

Where to Find It

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The loft should use Curvature to Face on both ends. Be careful at the edge indicated by the arrow because there are perpendicular faces that the face could select. If it selects the wrong face, use the Next Face button for that edge.

Extending a surface can be done by making the extension tangent to the existing body, or part of the same face of the existing body. The Same Face option attempts to extrapolate the changing curvature and continue that. This option is typically only useful for short distances, but it results in a seamless extension, where the tangent extension often creates a broken edge. Q Q

Click Extend Surface on the Surfaces toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Extend.

10 Extend the surface to one side.

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We are going to use this lofted surface to replace the face of the solid. In order to do that, the lofted surface needs to extend past the solid body.

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Extend the surface past the sides of the solid.

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11 Replace face.

Replace the face of the solid with the new surface body. Hide the remaining surface body.

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13 Merge the new bodies with the existing body.

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feature to make 9 total instances of the body around a Temporary Axis.

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12 Pattern the body. Use the Circular Pattern

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The surface color has been changed here for clarity.

Show the Revolve2 solid body.

Click Insert, Features, Combine.

Select all solid bodies either from the Solid Bodies folder or from the graphics window. Click OK to accept the feature.

14 Save and close the part.

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Additional exercises using this part are in the labs for Lesson 3: Surface Modeling.

Exercise 6: Finial Wrap

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Exercise 6: Finial Wrap

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

Upon successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to: Create extruded, ruled, lofted, and planar surfaces.

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Modify surfaces by trimming.

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Create filled surfaces for blending.

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Convert surfaces into solids.

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Use surface intersections to create 3D curves.

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Surface Modeling

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

Stages in the Process

Capture the design intent.

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Some of the key stages in the modeling process of this part are given in the following list:

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The industrial designer provided concept sketches of the remote control. These were scanned to create image files that can be inserted into a sketch. The sketch pictures will serve as a guide when modeling the remote control.

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Parting lines and draft angles.

As a general rule you should begin modeling by defining the parting line and setting up the draft angles using reference surfaces. With the vast majority of free-form parts, you must build draft in as you model. Generally you cannot add draft later as a local feature.

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Splines.

Consumer products are characterized by smooth, curvature continuous shapes that cannot be modeled using lines and arcs. Splines are the curves that in turn create the surfaces.

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Lofted and swept surfaces.

One portion of the remote control will be lofted using a series of profiles and guides. Another portion will be swept using guide curves.

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Blending surfaces to fill in gaps.

Not all the necessary surfaces can be created using loft or sweep. The remaining portion will be created as a filled surface.

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Knitting.

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Once the surface model is complete, the surfaces are knitted into a solid.

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Symmetry.

The knitted solid is mirrored.

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Associativity and design changes.

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After evaluating the model, we will change the underlying curves.

Using Sketch Picture to Capture Design Intent

Stages in the Process

We will start the modeling process with a couple of sketches of the design concept provided by the industrial designer. These will be used as guides as we create the basic curves.

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Surface Modeling

Procedure

Begin by opening a new part with units set to inches. 1

Side view sketch.

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Open a sketch on the Right reference plane.

Sketch picture. Click Tools, Sketch Tools, Sketch Picture.

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Sketch a horizontal line as shown. This reference line will be used in subsequent operations.

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In the Case Study folder for this lesson, browse to the Remote Control\Sketches from ID folder. Select the image Remote-side-view.tif and click Open.

The picture will come in very large. Note that the Width is over 42 inches.

3

Resize the picture. Make sure Lock aspect ratio is checked and scale the image to approximately the correct size by setting the Width to 5.75in.

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Fine tune the position of the picture by dragging and resizing it. The objective is to line the picture up with the sketched reference line.

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

4

Transparency. Expand the Transparency options. Select User defined and click the white background area of

the picture to define the transparent color. Set the Transparency slider to 1.00.

Top view sketch.

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This one will also come in large. And it is rotated.

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Click OK.

Rotate the image by setting the Angle to 90°.

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Make sure Lock aspect ratio is selected and scale the image to approximately the correct size by setting the Width to 5.75in.

Fine tune the position of the picture by dragging and resizing it. Line it up with the reference line in the first sketch.

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Set the Transparency to 1.00 and select the white background of the picture as the transparent color.

Stages in the Process

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Surface Modeling

6

Sketch the parting line.

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Use Convert Entities into the active sketch.

to copy the reference line from Sketch1

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Using tangent arcs and lines, sketch the parting line shown here in green for clarity.

7

Dimension the sketch.

Sketch1 is hidden for clarity. Do not worry about the values of the dimensions. Your values may vary. The goal right now is to constrain the sketch.

Note

The dimensions are shown in 6 decimal places just to illustrate that we are not worrying about the exact dimension values at this time.

8

Fit spline. Click Fit Spline

on the Spline Tools toolbar.

Clear the Closed spline check box.

Right-click the line and select Select Chain.

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The system creates a spline and converts the original sketch entities to construction geometry.

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The spline is related to the original sketch entities by a FitSpline relation as indicated by the symbol.

Stages in the Process

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

9

Change the dimensions.

10 Extrude a surface.

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Extrude the parting line sketch so that it extends beyond what will be the edge of the model. A distance of 1.5” works well.

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Fine tune the parting line geometry by editing the dimension values as shown below. Notice that the spline updates accordingly.

It is only necessary to extrude in a single direction because we are going to take advantage of the part’s symmetry and use mirroring.

11 Hide surface.

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In the graphics area, right-click the extruded surface and select Body, Hide from the shortcut menu. This will make it easier to see what we are sketching in the next step.

Stages in the Process

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12 Sketch a 4-point spline for top view of parting line. Make both ends Coincident to the ends of the reference line in

Sketch1.

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Make the tangent handles at both ends Perpendicular to the reference line in Sketch1.

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Turn on the curvature combs. Adjust the positions of the points and drag handles until you are satisfied with the spline and how it fits the sketch. When finished, exit the sketch.

13 Trim the parting surface. Click Trim Surface .

For Trim Type, click Standard.

For the Trim tool, select the sketch we just created in step 12. Click Keep selections and click in the selection list. Identify the portion of the parting surface that you want to keep. Click OK to complete the trimming operation. Portion of surface you want to keep

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Trim tool

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Lesson 3

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Surface Modeling

Introducing: Ruled Surface

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Ruled surfaces were defined in the Introduction to Surfacing lesson. In SolidWorks, they are created from selected solid or surface edges and may be created normal or tangent to the face, perpendicular or at some angle to a reference or as a sweep, which is parallel to a reference.

Where to Find It

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Ruled surfaces are frequently associated with creating drafted surfaces, and are often used as construction or reference surfaces.

Q Q

Click Ruled Surface on the Surfaces toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Ruled.

14 Ruled surface.

In this case we want to create a reference surface that follows the edge of the parting surface and that has 3° of draft with respect to the Top reference plane. We will use this surface in subsequent steps to help define the geometry of the part. For Type, select Tapered to Vector.

For Distance enter 0.5”. The distance is not critical. We just need something big enough to work with easily.

For the Reference Vector, select the Top reference plane and click Reverse Direction.

Set the Angle to 3.00°.

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For Edge Selection, select the edge of the trimmed surface.

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Verify that the ruled surface tapers outward. If it does not, click Alternate Side.

Stages in the Process

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15 Offset plane.

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Click OK.

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Surface Modeling

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Create a plane offset from the Top plane. This will be used for sketching the area around the keypad. In this case, the offset was 0.480”. Depending on how you scaled the sketch picture, your results may differ.

Note

The surface that will actually be part of the finished model is one half of the upper part of the housing. This will be a lofted surface and to create it, we need several profile and guide curves.

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Lofting Surfaces

From the looks of the sketch picture, it appears the upper face of the remote control is angled with respect to the Top plane. However, we checked with the industrial designer and were told that the two should indeed be parallel.

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16 Sketch a 3-point spline for outline of the keypad area. Make both ends Coincident to the ends of the reference line in

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Sketch1. Make the handles at both ends Perpendicular to the reference line in Sketch1.

Lofting Surfaces

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

Note

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Turn on the curvature combs. Adjust the positions of the points and drag handles until you are satisfied with the spline and how it fits the sketch. When finished, exit the sketch. This will be one of the guide curves.

Since the spline is not dimensioned, it is under defined and appears blue in the sketch.

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17 First profile curve.

Create a new sketch on the Right reference plane.

The profile is a 2-point spline. Creating this is a multistep process: 1. Sketch the spline. The ends are Coincident to the end of the guide curve (step 16) and the corner of the ruled surface. Note: For clarity, the sketch picture is not

shown.

2. Make the spline tangent to the edge of the ruled surface. This is necessary to maintain the 3° draft angle when we loft the surface.

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3. Sketch a construction line tangent to the other end of the spline. Create an angular dimension between it and the plane the guide curve is on (step 15).

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Set the angle to 2.00°.

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Surface Modeling

4. Display the curvature combs and show the sketch picture.

Tip

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5. Exit the sketch.

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The PropertyManager is very useful for making small adjustments to the length of the tangent handles.

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Adjust the lengths of the tangent handles until you are satisfied with the shape of the spline.

18 Second profile curve.

Repeat the preceding procedure for the profile curve on the front end of the remote control.

19 Offset plane.

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Create a plane offset 0.75” from the Front plane. This will be used for sketching a third profile curve.

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20 Third profile curve.

Create a new sketch on Plane2.

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Sketch two construction lines tangent to the spline and dimension their angles as shown.

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Sketch a 2-point spline. Add Pierce relations between the ends and the guide curve and the edge of the ruled surface.

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Switch to a Front view orientation.

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Display the curvature combs and adjust the lengths of the tangent handles until you are satisfied with the shape of the curve. In this case, the sketch pictures do not offer any guidance use your best judgement.

21 Loft the surface.

Select the three profile curves.

For Start/End Constraints, select Normal To Profile for both.

For Guide Curves, select Sketch6 (step 16) and the edge of the ruled surface.

For the edge tangency, select Tangency to Face. For Sketch6, select None. Click OK.

22 Evaluate the results. Use Display Curvature and Zebra Stripes to evaluate the results of the

loft.

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Sometimes it is also helpful to add another directional light to give more illumination to the side of the model, or use a reflective RealView material. Surface quality is evaluated subjectively by how the surface, and more often than not how the edge between surfaces, reflects light.

Lofting Surfaces

Looking at the Front view, the surface does not look rounded enough in the area indicated.

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Surface Modeling

23 Add a loft section.

Right-click the lofted surface, and select Add Loft Section from the shortcut menu.

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The system generates a section plane and a profile curve through the surface.

24 Use selected plane.

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You can move and rotate the plane by dragging it.

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In the PropertyManager, select the Use selected plane check box. Select the Front reference plane and click OK.

25 Show sketch.

In the next step we will edit the new loft section. Before we do that, show the sketches for the second profile and the guide curve.

26 Edit the new loft section.

View the sketch relations. If there are not already Pierce relations between the ends and the guide curve and the edge of the ruled surface, add them.

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Sketch construction lines tangent to each end of the spline. Add Parallel relations between them and the construction lines in the second profile.

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Display the curvature combs and adjust the spline until you are satisfied with the shape. Exit the sketch to rebuild the lofted surface.

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

Modeling the Lower Half

We will use a similar approach modeling the lower half as we did for the upper half. Namely, we will use the sketch picture as a guide to help establish the shape of the part. However, instead of lofting, we will use Sweep with Guide Curves and Fill Surface.

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27 Ruled surface.

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28 Spline.

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This will be used as a reference when modeling the lower half of the remote control.

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Create a second ruled surface also with 3° of draft. This time, it should extend upwards from the edge of the parting surface.

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Show the side view sketch picture.

Create a 5-point spline. You need Coincident relations between the endpoints and the corners of the ruled surface. Add Tangent relations between the spline and the edges of the ruled surface. Display the curvature combs and adjust the shape of the spline until you are satisfied. Then exit the sketch.

This is the second guide curve for the sweep.

29 Offset plane.

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Create a plane offset 1.750” from the Front plane. This will be used for sketching a the sweep profile.

Modeling the Lower Half

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30 Sketch the sweep path.

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Sketch a horizontal line through the origin.

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One end of the line is coincident with the end of the spline. The other end is coincident with Plane3. Exit the sketch. Introducing: Partial Ellipse

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Important!

Position the cursor where you want the center and drag the mouse to establish the length of the major axis. Then release the mouse button. Next, drag the outline of the ellipse to establish the length of the minor axis. Finally, click where you want the ellipse to start, and drag the mouse to establish the length of the circumference.

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Sketching a partial ellipse is similar to sketching a centerpoint arc:

To fully define an ellipse you must dimension or otherwise constrain the lengths of the major and minor axes. You must also constrain the orientation of one of the two axes. One way to do this is with a Horizontal relation between the ellipse center and the end of the major axis.

Where to Find It

Q Q

Click Tools, Sketch Entities, Partial Ellipse. Or, click Partial Ellipse on the Sketch toolbar.

31 Sketch the sweep profile.

Open a new sketch on Plane3.

The sweep profile is a partial ellipse. Sketching this is a multistep process:

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1. Click Partial Ellipse on the Sketch toolbar. Sketch a partial ellipse as shown. It should be approximately the lower-right quarter of a complete ellipse.

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It is good if the start point of the ellipse is below the end of the minor axis.

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Sketch it out in space so as not to inadvertently capture and unwanted relations.

Modeling the Lower Half

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

2. Add a Horizontal relation between the center and the point at the end of the minor axis. Note: Sketch relations have been turned on for

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illustration purposes.

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3. Sketch construction lines from the end of the minor axis to the center and then to the end point of the ellipse.

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Dimension the angle between them and set the value to 3.00°.

4. Add a Pierce relation between the end point of the ellipse and the bottom edge of the ruled surface.

5. Add a Coincident relation between the other end point of the ellipse and the end of the major axis.

Then add a Pierce relation between the end point of the ellipse and the sketched guide curve.

32 Sweep the surface.

Select the profile, path, and both guide curves to sweep the surface.

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An extra guide curve callout has been shown for illustration purposes.

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Filling in Gaps

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Filling in Gaps

There are situations where special tools are needed to fill in areas of a model with surfaces. For example: Blending shapes.

Sometimes the shape you need cannot easily be created using fillets, sweeps, or lofts.

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Surface Modeling

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Repairing gaps or incorrect geometry in imported surfaces.

Sometimes imported surfaces lack the completeness or precision to be knit into a solid. In these situations a tool is needed to fill in missing surface patches. Q

Closing holes in a part.

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In preparation for modeling a core and cavity mold, through holes in the part have to be closed off. Surfaces are used to do this. However, when the edges of the hole are not planar, creating a surface patch requires a special tool. Preparation for Using Filled Surface

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To properly blend the filled surface to its adjacent boundaries, you should not rely on using curves for boundaries. It is much better to use the edges of surfaces. This however, usually requires you to create reference surfaces prior to using the Filled Surface command. 33 Trim surface.

Trim the 3° draft reference surface using Plane3 as the trimming tool.

This will serve as one of the reference surfaces for the filled surface.

34 Extrude a surface for the second reference.

Keep this piece

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane.

Use Convert Entities to copy the sketched guide curve into the active sketch.

Sketch a vertical construction line, coincident to Plane3, and use it to trim the converted curve.

Extrude a surface 0.5” in the direction shown. Do not use draft.

35 Filled surfce. Click Filled Surface

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the Surfaces toolbar.

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For Edge settings, select Tangent. Select the edges of the three surfaces. Click OK.

36 Hide and show surfaces.

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Hide the reference surfaces and show the lofted surface.

Filling in Gaps

SolidWorks 2006 Training Manual

Lesson 3

37 Zebra stripes. Click Zebra Stripes

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on the View toolbar. Evaluate the quality and smoothness of the surfaces. Pay particular attention to the filled surface and how it blends with the swept surface.

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Surface Modeling

To review Zebra Stripes as well as other techniques for evaluating surface quality, refer to the Advanced Part Modeling course book.

Introducing: Curve Through Reference Points Where to Find It

Curve Through Reference Points creates a curve feature through

sketch points, vertices, or both. Q Q

Click Insert, Curve, Curve Through Reference Points. Or, click Curve Through Reference Points on the Curves toolbar.

38 Click Curve Through Reference Points

.

This would also work as a sketch line, but the Curve Through Reference Points is faster, particularly if the line does not lie on a plane.

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Select the two vertices shown, creating a straight spline.

Filling in Gaps

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Surface Modeling

39 Planar surface. Click Insert, Surface, Planar or click Planar Surface

on the Surfaces

toolbar.

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Select the curve you just created and the open edge of the lofted surface.

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Click OK.

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The resulting planar surface fits exactly across the opening of the lofted surface.

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40 Results.

41 Another planar surface. Click Planar Surface, then select the open edges of the surfaces which lie on the plane of symmetry. Click OK to accept the planar surface.

It’s Not a Solid – Yet

Although the collection of surfaces looks solid, it is not. It is an infinitely thin shell. To transform these surfaces into a solid, two more steps are required: 1. All the surfaces must be knit into a single surface body. 2. The resulting surface body must be filled to make a solid.

Creating a Knit Surface

Knit Surface is used to combine several surface bodies into a single

surface body. If the knit surface encloses a complete volume, with no gaps or overlaps, it can be filled to become a solid.

42 Knit surfaces. Click Insert, Surface, Knit or click Knit Surface

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on the Surfaces toolbar. Select all of the surface bodies surfaces by either clicking them in the graphics window or the FeatureManager design tree.

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Select the Try to form solid check box.

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Click OK.

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

43 Results.

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The resulting solid doesn’t look much different from the surfaces. However, the FeatureManager design tree indicates that a solid body now exists in the part.

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A Solid Bodies folder appears. 44 Mirror. Click Mirror

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on the Features toolbar. Select the planar face (step 41) as the Mirror Face/Plane. Expand the Bodies to Mirror list and select the solid body.

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Make sure Merge solids is selected and click OK.

Design Changes

Let’s evaluate the design so far. There are three areas that don’t look quite right. 1. The curves of the parting line and the edge of the area where the keypad goes do not compliment each other well. 2. Also, the front end of the remote control isn’t rounded enough. 3. The area where the keypad goes is boring – it is flat. 1

2

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Design Changes

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Dynamic Feature Editing

The curve that ultimately controls the outline of the remote control is the parting line and it is embedded under the trimmed surface.

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When you edit this sketch, the part is rolled back and all the geometry disappears. Fixing the overall shape of the remote control would take a long process of trial and error because you would be working blind.

Dynamic feature editing enables you to make changes to features and sketches without rolling back the part. This way you can see the effects of the changes as you make them.

Where to Find It

Move/Size Features enables you to dynamically edit features. When

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Introducing: Move/Size Features

you drag the entities of a sketch, either with or without opening the sketch itself, the preview updates when you release the mouse button after dragging. Q

1

Click Move/Size Features

Click Move/Size Features

on the Features toolbar.

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Expand the trimmed surface and show the underlying sketch. Adjust the shape of the spline by dragging the interpolant points. Before

Drag these two points

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After

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Lesson 3 Surface Modeling

2

Dynamically edit a sketch.

Expand the lofted surface feature and double-click the sketch that defines the edge of the flat area where the keypad will go. Tip

Use viewports to see the top and front views at the same time.

Tip

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After

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Before

If you decide to dimension the sketch, turn off Move/Size Features for improved performance. With Move/Size Features on, the model will rebuild each time you add a dimension.

3

Edit the other sketches.

Repeat this procedure as necessary to edit the other sketches that make up the lofted surface.

Note

This is an exercise in judgement and esthetics. There is no unique right or wrong solution.

Replacing a Face

We will create a new, concave face to replace the planar face.

Sketch an arc.

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4

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Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Sketch a 3 Point Arc and dimension it as shown.

The endpoints have Coincident relations with the vertices at the ends of the planar face. Exit the sketch.

Design Changes

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5

Create a plane.

Centerpoint of arc

6

Sketch a second arc.

First arc

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Sketch a Centerpoint Arc . The two endpoints have Pierce relations with the edges of the planar face.

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Create a new sketch on Plane4, the plane you just created.

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Create a reference plane parallel to the Front plane, passing through the centerpoint of the arc you just sketched in step 4.

Create a reference point on the arc. Relate it to the arc in the previous sketch with a Pierce relation. Add a Coincident relation between the arc’s centerpoint and the Right reference plane.

Exit the sketch.

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8

Filled surface. Click Filled Surface

on the

Surfaces toolbar. For Edge settings, select Contact.

Click OK.

Merge Result

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The planar face is replaced with the concave face.

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Under Options, select Merge result.

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Under Constraint Curves, select the two arcs.

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Select the two edges of the planar face.

The behavior for this option depends on the boundaries. When all the boundaries belong to the same solid body, you can use the filled surface to replace a face of the solid. This streamlines your work, eliminating the need to use the Replace Face command.

9

Sketch.

Open a sketch on the Right reference plane. Sketch a line tangent to the silhouette edge as shown.

Split the line and change the left-most portion to construction geometry. Adjust the angle of the line so it barely intersects the bottom of the front portion of the remote control.

10 Cut through all. Click Extruded Cut

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. Since this is an open profile, the end condition will be set to Through All automatically.

Design Changes

The goal is to create a small flat spot to the remote can be set on a table without falling onto its side. If the area of the cut is too big or too small, use Move/Size Features to adjust the sketch dynamically.

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11 Dome.

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Create a Dome feature about 0.065” deep. The exact depth is not critical.

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Exercise 7: Mouse Model

Q Q

The part is symmetrical. The bottom of the part is somewhat peanut-shaped. The top of the part is ellipse-shaped.

Procedure 1

Draw bounding box or layout sketch.

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Open a new part using the Part_IN template.

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Design Intent

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Use surface features to create a solid model. In this exercise you just create the shape. In a later exercise you will split out the individual parts.

On the Top reference plane, sketch a rectangle as shown. Convert the rectangle to construction lines.

Exit the sketch and rename it Size Reference.

This sketch will help you sketch the freeform splines approximately to correct size.

2

Sketch the bottom edge.

Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane, and sketch a spline as shown to represent the bottom edge of the mouse. Draw only half of the bottom, and make it somewhat peanut-shaped. Use Horizontal relations on the spline handles to create tangency across the line of symmetry. Make sure that the endpoints of the spline are Coincident with the corners of the Size Reference rectangle.

Partially constrain the spline.

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3

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To get the spline to be tangent to the rectangle, draw a short vertical construction line, and make it Tangent to the spline itself, not tangent to a handle or a spline point.

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Exercise 7: Mouse Model

Make the endpoint of the short construction line Coincident with the spline, and then with the rectangle. Making the spline directly tangent to the side of the rectangle will result in uncontrollable geometry.

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Exit the sketch and rename it Bottom Edge. Sketch parting line top profile.

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Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane. Sketch a spline which lies slightly outside of the Bottom Edge sketch. Notice the use of Inflection Point display on this spline to limit the area of slightly reversed convexity.

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Again, this spline should have Horizontal relations on the end handles. 5

Sketch the parting line side profile.

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Exit the sketch and rename it PL Top Profile.

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Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane and draw a spline as shown. The ends of the spline should have Vertical relations to the endpoints of the PL Top Profile sketch.

Put a Horizontal relation on the end of the spline furthest from the Origin.

Exit the sketch and rename it PL Side Profile.

6

Create projected curve. Create a Projected Curve, using the Sketch on Sketch option, using

the PL Side Profile and PL Top Profile sketches. Rename the projected curve PL Curve.

7

Create loft profile sketch.

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane, and sketch a pair of arcs as shown. The arc near the Origin should be tangent to a line 15 degrees from horizontal and the other arc should simply have a radius of 4”.

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Both arcs should be coincident to the ends of the Bottom Edge sketch and be pierced by the PL Curve.

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In the past it would have been best to have created separate sketches for these loft profiles, but with the introduction of the Selection Manager, multiple profiles in a single sketch is manageable and valid.

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8

Create third loft profile.

Create a new plane parallel to the Front reference plane through a spline point from the Bottom Edge sketch.

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Open a new sketch on the Mid Plane plane, and make an arc, on the bottom coincident with the point the plane was created from and on the top pierced by the PL Curve.

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Rename this plane Mid Plane.

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Draw a construction line between the endpoints of the arc. Using the Dimension tool, click on the construction line, and then hold down the Shift key and select the arc. This should give a dimension as if the Min arc condition in the dimension properties was used. Make this dimension roughly .050”.

9

Create the surface loft.

Use the Selection Manager to select open profiles at the ends. The sketch on the Mid Plane will not require the Selection Manager.

Use the PL Curve and Bottom Edge as guide curves.

Apply end tangency conditions of Normal to Profile for both ends so that it is smooth across the plane of symmetry.

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Click OK to accept the loft feature.

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10 Draw the top shape of the mouse.

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Open a sketch on the Right reference plane and sketch a partial ellipse at an angle. It may be useful to draw a construction line from the Origin to one of the axis endpoints to help create the angle. The endpoints of the ellipse should be pierced by the PL Curve or the equivalent edge of the lofted surface. If you find managing the ellipse too difficult, you can draw a spline instead with approximately equivalent shape.

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11 Extrude a surface.

For some surface functions, SolidWorks must work from an existing surface rather than a sketch. The Fill surface, in order to make a tangency at the top, must have a surface to be tangent to. For that reason, extrude the partial ellipse sketch away from the rest of the model. The distance doesn’t matter.

12 Create the top surface of the mouse.

There are several ways of creating the surface on the top of this mouse. The easiest is probably to loft from the edge of the extruded surface to the edge of the lofted surface. The image to the right shows that this is possible, and gives a reasonably nice shape, but notice the mesh lines at the ends. This creates a singularity point, and may cause problems in filletting, shelling, offsetting or even downstream in machining from this data. Degenerate surfaces should be avoided when possible. Although they “sometimes” function without errors, it is best practice to complete the task another way when possible. One possibility when working with degenerate surfaces is to trim off the singularity and use a fill surface to patch the trim. This is perfectly acceptable modeling practice as long as the edge between the two surfaces is acceptably smooth. Deviation Analysis is a great way to help you quantify what is meant by “acceptably smooth”.

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Note

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To complete this feature, use the Fill surface instead of the loft. Select the edge of the extruded surface and the edge of the lofted surface, with end conditions of Tangent for the extruded and Contact for the lofted.

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Notice that with Optimize Surface checked, the surface again becomes degenerate. If this option is checked, clear it, and you will get a better four-sided patch.

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13 Mirror the surface bodies.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

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Notice that even though the surface features were created edge-to-edge, they did not automatically knit in the way that solid features automatically merge. For some surface features there is a knit option, but you will find it better to rely on knit features rather than options within features because it is more predictable, and when it fails it will not affect the feature itself, as you will see shortly. Hide the extruded surface.

Click Mirror on the Features toolbar.

Select the Right reference plane as the mirror plane.

Activate the Bodies to Mirror list box and select the lofted and fill surfaces to be mirrored. Check the Knit Surfaces check box. We will see how this works, then come back and clear this setting. Click OK to accept the feature.

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Notice that with the Knit Surfaces option checked, the mirror feature still produces two separate surface bodies. The mirrored loft was knit to the original loft, and the mirrored fill was knit to the original fill, but the fill was not knit to the loft. For this reason, when mirroring multiple surface bodies it is recommended that you leave the Knit Surfaces box cleared and just manually knit the surfaces together, so there is no confusion about what will or will not be knit by the mirror feature.

14 Create a planar surface on the bottom.

Select the two edges of the lofted surface and mirrored loft on the

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bottom and create a planar surface. 15 Knit into solid.

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16 Save and exit the part.

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Create a knit feature, and knit the five surface bodies into a solid.

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Exercise 8: Halyard Guide

Use surface commands to model the halyard guide.

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Surface Trim

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Creating Planar Surfaces

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Knit Surface

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Surface Fillet

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Thicken Surface

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Surface Sweep

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Procedure

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This lab reinforces the following skills:

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Open a new part using the Part_IN template and name it Halyard Guide.

1

Sketch first guide curve.

Open a sketch on the Right reference plane, and create the sketch shown at the right.

2

Offset plane.

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Sketch second guide curve.

Create a plane offset 0.25" below the Top reference plane.

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Open a sketch on the offset plane (Plane1 in the illustration above), and create the sketch shown at the right.

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4

Sketch third guide curve.

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Sketch an arc tangent to the centerline.

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Sketch a second vertical centerline whose lowermost end is aligned with the Origin.

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Open another sketch on the offset plane, and sketch a vertical centerline from the Origin.

Add Symmetric relations between the arc in this sketch and the arc in the sketch of the second guide curve. Sketch the path.

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5

Open a sketch on the Top reference plane, and sketch a vertical line starting at the Origin. Add a relation so the length of the line is driven by the guide curve sketches.

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Sketch the sweep profile.

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Open a sketch on the Front reference plane, and sketch an arc centered on the Origin. Sketch two tangent lines as shown.

7

Add relations. Add Pierce relations between the

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ends of the tangent lines and the second and third guide curves.

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Add a Coincident relation between the arc and the end of the first guide curve. The sketch should be fully defined.

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8

Sweep a surface.

Using the profile, path, and three guide curves, sweep a surface. Use Path Tangent for the Start tangency type.

Trim the surface.

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Trim the swept surface using the Top reference plane as the trim tool. Keep the uppermost portion of the surface.

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Important!

10 Sketch.

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Open a sketch on the Top reference plane. Convert the edge of the trimmed surface, and complete the sketch using the dimensions given.

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11 Planar surface. Click Planar Surface

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Mirror the first planar surface to create the second one.

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12 Second planar surface.

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to create a planar surface using the active sketch.

13 Knit the surfaces and fillet the edges.

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Knit the three surfaces together, and then fillet the edges shown with a 5⁄32" radius fillet.

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14 Thicken.

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Create the first feature by thickening the surface 0.08". Check the preview to ensure the material is added to the correct side.

15 Mirror body. Use Insert, Pattern/ Mirror, Mirror to create

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the other half of the guide and Merge result.

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16 Countersunk hole.

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Use mirroring in the sketch to facilitate creating all four holes in one feature.

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Choose the settings for the description “ANSI #10 Flat Head Machine Screws (100)”.

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Add 4 countersunk holes. Select the flat face of the model and click .

17 Fillet the edges. Add a 0.020" radius fillet

to the edges of the part.

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18 Save and close the part.

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Exercise 9: Bar of Soap

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We have been faxed this drawing of the preliminary design for a bar of bath soap. Use surface modeling techniques to build a solid model of it for volumetric analysis and tooling design.

This lab reinforces the following skills: Splines

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Loft surface

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Fill surface

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Procedure

Exercise 9: Bar of Soap

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Sweep surface

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Trim surface

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Knit surface

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Symmetry

Open an existing part named 3.5 oz. Bar of Soap.SLDPRT. Take advantage of the symmetry in the part. Build one quarter and then mirror it.

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1

Initial sketches.

The two lines are tangent to the arcs in the front and side sketches. Create a spline to fit the curve in the Top Layout Sketch. Loft with guide curves.

Tangent to front sketch Spline

Tangent to side sketch

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Set up the sketches for lofting a surface.

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There are three sketches in the Layout Sketches folder. Given the way the customer’s drawing was dimensioned, the right-side sketch is under defined.

Loft a reference surface using the two lines as profiles and the spline as a guide curve.

4

Extrude a surface.

Create a spline to replicate the upper-right quadrant of the Front Layout Sketch. Extrude a reference surface a distance of about 0.5 inches.

5

Extrude another surface.

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Create a spline to replicate the upper left quadrant of the Side Layout Sketch.

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Extrude a reference surface a distance of about 0.5 inches.

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6

Fill Surface. Create a Fill Surface tangent to the

7

Hide the surfaces.

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three reference surfaces.

Hide all four surface bodies so it will be easier to work on the lower portion of the part. Reference surface.

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Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Use Convert Entities to copy geometry from the Side Layout Sketch.

Create the 0.323” radius fillet as shown in the drawing on page 107. Create a spline to fit the converted geometry and extrude a reference surface.

9

Reference surface.

Create a spline to replicate the lower-right quadrant of the Front Layout Sketch. Extrude a reference surface a distance of about 0.5 inches.

10 Loft a reference surface.

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Create two profile sketches as you did in step 2 on page 108.

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Use the edge of the fill surface as the guide curve.

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11 Sweep surface.

Open a sketch for the profile. Use Convert Entities to copy the edge of the reference surface into the active sketch.

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12 Trim surface.

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Likewise, convert the edge of the other extruded reference surface to create the sweep path.

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Drag the endpoint of the converted edge and add a Vertical relation between it and the centerpoint of the arc.

Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane.

Sketch a spline for the trim contour and trim the swept surface.

13 Split lines.

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Use split lines to split the two extruded reference surfaces. The split lines should line up exactly with the vertices of the trimmed surface.

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Since the reference surfaces are two separate surface bodies, it will take two operations to split the faces – one for each surface.

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14 Loft surface.

Loft a surface using the edges of the existing surfaces for profiles and guides as shown in the illustration at the right.

Guide #1

15 Trim surface.

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For Guide tangency type, use Tangency To Face.

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For Start/End Constraints, use Tangency To Face. For Guide curves influence, use To Next Guide.

Profile #1

Profile #2

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Experience has shown that the edge of the lofted surface is probably not planar. Therefore, it probably will not knit when mirrored. Trim the lofted surface using the Top reference plane as the trim tool.

16 Evaluate the results.

Hide the reference surfaces.

Show the fill surface, the trimmed surface, and the lofted surface.

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Show the Front Layout Sketch and the Side Layout Sketch.

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17 Mirror.

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18 Knit.

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Mirror the fill surface, the trimmed surface and the lofted surface, first with respect to the Right reference plane, and then with respect to the Front reference plane.

Knit all of the surface bodies (not including the reference surfaces) into a solid.

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19 Evaluate the section view.

Display a section view using the Right reference plane. Show the Side Layout Sketch. Verify that the results are consistent with the section view in the drawing the customer supplied.

20 Save and close the part.

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Exercise 10: Finial Scroll

In this exercise you will create the helical scroll decorative feature on the bottom of the finial part.

Lofted surface

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Swept surface

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Trim surface

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Fill surface

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Knit surface

Open an existing part.

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Variable pitch helix

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1

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The skills reinforced in this lab are:

Open the part named Finial_Scroll.SLDPRT.

2

Draw a circle.

Open a sketch on the bottom face and draw a circle centered on the axis of the part with a diameter of 4.25”. Exit the sketch.

3

Create a Variable Pitch Helix. Click Insert, Curve, Helix and use the Variable

Pitch option.

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Use the circle created in the previous step and the parameters shown.

4

Convert entities.

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Open a sketch on the Right reference plane.

Exercise 10: Finial Scroll

Select the Helix created in the previous step and use Convert Entities to project it into the sketch plane. Exit the sketch.

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5

Loft between sketch and helix.

Sketch a line.

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Create a lofted surface between the sketch and the helix. Use all default settings, although you may need to straighten the connector depending on where the entities were selected.

Sketch a line of approximately the length shown, with the outer end pierced by the helix.

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If the helix did not have a starting angle of 0 degrees, then this may work differently for you. Consider going back to change the starting angle.

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Open a new sketch on the same face as the circle for the helix.

7

Create a surface sweep.

Create the surface sweep using the straight line as the profile and the helix as the path. At this point you may want to hide the helix.

8

Create a planar surface.

Select the two edges shown to create a planar surface. SolidWorks will still make the surface even if the boundary is not closed, as long as the entities are coplanar.

Trim surface.

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Trimming the overlapping surfaces might be done more efficiently as a single Mutual Trim, but for visualization and simplicity, we will do them here as a series of standard trims. Use the swept surface as the trim tool, and trim the lofted surface.

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10 Knit the planar surface and trimmed loft. Click Knit Surface from the Surface

toolbar.

11 Trim swept surface.

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Keep pieces as shown.

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Use the surface just knit together as a trim tool to trim the swept surface.

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Select the planar surface and the trimmed lofted surface and click OK.

12 Trim lofted surface with swept surface.

In this image, all other bodies have been hidden for clarity.

The names of bodies as tracked in the Solid and Surface Bodies folders changes with each feature that affects the body. Here we will refer to the feature that first made the faces used for simplicity.

Create another Trimmed Surface using the swept surface as the tool and keeping the section of the lofted surface as shown. These bodies will be named for knit and trimmed features, so selecting from the graphics window may be the most intuitive way to achieve the correct results.

13 Knit surfaces. Knit together the two surface bodies used in the last step.

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If we had used a Mutual Trim, the finished trimmed surfaces would already be knit together for us, but visualizing all of the kept and removed pieces would be more difficult.

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14 Extrude a surface.

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15 Trim surfaces. Trim the new extruded surface and the scroll

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On the Right reference plane, sketch a circle concentric with the origin with a diameter of 2.35”. Extrude the surface 3”.

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surface with a Mutual Trim keeping the outside of the scroll and extrude surfaces as shown.

16 Fillet the edges between surfaces. Apply a .050” fillet to two helical edges as

shown.

The surfaces must be part of the same body to fillet the edge between them. If the surfaces in the last step had been trimmed with 2 separate Standard trims rather than Mutual trims, they would need to be knitted together separately, because the Mutual trim automatically knits the bodies.

17 Create planar caps. Create Planar surfaces on the top and

bottom openings.

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18 Create a Fill surface. Create a Fill surface using the edges around

the opening indicated. Use Contact for all edges.

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19 Knit together surface bodies.

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Knit together the scroll surface, two planar surfaces and the Fill surface. Check the Try to create solid option.

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20 Combine solids.

Use the Combine feature to combine the new scroll solid with the previous existing solid body.

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21 Save and close the part.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

Upon successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to: Blend smoothly between shapes.

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Use curvature continuity on Fill, Loft and Boundary surfaces.

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Repair areas of the model by trimming and recreating geometry.

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Use tangency weighting effectively.

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Use the Freeform feature.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

Complex Blends

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Complex blending is one of the most difficult things to achieve in working with surface models. Examples of complex blending include T, X, K or Y shaped intersections. In this Bicycle Frame case study you will learn how to make attractive blends.

Blends like this are not made with fillet features, but by trimming out an area of the bodies to be blended and using a combination of features to smooth the transition

T Blend

K Blend

Modified K Blend

These initial images were created with PhotoWorks primarily for the anti-aliasing capabilities and display of smooth shadows. The images in the remainder of this lesson and selected other lessons in this course were captured from the SolidWorks display using RealView. Highly reflective materials make it easier to detect flaws in surface smoothness and transitions. It has many of the effects of using Zebra Stripes, but is easier to look at while modeling. Quality of surface intersections is qualitatively measured using light reflection, and quantitatively measured with Deviation Analysis. Ideally you should not be able to see a disruption in the reflection at the seam between surfaces. Note that if the Image Quality setting in Tools, Options for a part is low, this has a definite affect on the perceived quality of the surface and transition. Also be aware that there is often a visible gap between

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Y Blend

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Blends and Patches

surface bodies that are not knit together. Display quality of a transition is best examined when adjacent surfaces are knit together. If for this training course you are using a computer which is incapable of using RealView, you can get some of the same benefits by adding lights with high specularity.

Stages in the Process

For this lesson, we will start with the frame with all of its tubes in place as separate bodies, but without connections between the tubes. Blends will be tackled in order of complexity, leaving some blends for exercises at the end of the lesson.

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Tip

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Trim the tubes back to accommodate the blend.

The first decision is how far back along each part should the blend begin and the shape of the target area. Transitions that are too short may pucker and be difficult to control. Transitions that are too long may add to much mass to the joint.

Q

Trim to create distinct edges on each entity.

The blend must be done in segments since it is not possible to blend all the entities together in one feature. This technique requires the trimmed edges to be left in segments, so it is not one continuous edge, but broken into pieces. Having edges broken up in this way is usually not seen as desirable, but in this case we do it intentionally for reasons you will see shortly. Loft to create an enclosed perimeter.

The segmented edges are used to create simple lofts which create an enclosed perimeter or boundary around a more complex patch. These simple lofts usually use two edges from adjacent tubes and curvature weighting, but in some cases it is necessary to use a guide curve or an intermediate profile to get the correct shape.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

Fill in the patch.

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Irregularly shaped patches like this one are the unique specialty of the Fill surface. The best patches result from the use of the Curvature edge setting. There are times when the Curvature setting will not work, and you must settle for Tangency. Use the evaluation and analysis techniques techniques discussed above to determine if tangency is “good enough”.

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Procedure

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Bear in mind that small differences in sketching underdefined freeform shapes may result in shape differences between the example model and your model. If you are having difficulty getting a particular step to work, use the built example file as a reference. 1

Open an existing file.

Open the Bike Frame.SLDPRT part.

For reference, the various parts of the frame are identified here: Top Tube Head Tube Seat Tube

Seat Stays

Down Tube

Dropouts

Bottom Bracket

Chain Stays

2

Trim the intersection between the Top and Seat tubes.

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This particular blend can be done in a single feature because there are only two bodies intersecting. This makes the trim much easier.

Draw sketch entities as shown to trim the tubes. In this case a partial ellipse and a straight line were used, but you can use any combination of entities that accomplishes something similar, such as a spline and an arc. Use Trim Surface and select the pieces to keep. Do not cut past the centerline of the Seat Tube.

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3

Create a loft.

Loft between the two open edges. Use Curvature to Face end constraint setting for both ends.

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You may have to drag the connector points to either the top or the bottom of the intersection to prevent the loft from twisting.

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Adjust the Tangent Length arrows either by dragging or by using the spin boxes.

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Alternately, you could add a connector, clear the Apply to all option, and control the curvature weighting separately.

The trouble spot to watch out for is in the area of the tightest curvature, under the Top tube and in front of the Seat tube. If you push the weighting too much in that area, you will see some puckering and bad seams appear. Click OK to accept the loft feature.

4

Trim the intersection between the Top, Down and Head tubes.

This intersection will be more challenging. Here we must use the technique of segmenting the edges created by the Trim feature. The way

points on to do this is to use Split Entities the sketch entities that create the trims. The arrows show where the Split Entities were placed.

no

This was created with a spline, two arcs and six Split Entities points.

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Use a Trim feature using the Standard option, and select pieces to keep.

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5

Begin lofting.

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Use Curvature to Face end constraints and adjust the weighting to your satisfaction. Watch the face and the mesh lines for signs of puckering, which will be a sign that the tangency weighting is too large.

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The next step is to begin lofting pairs of edges. If a loft twists, remember to use the connector to straighten it out.

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It is best if the edges being lofted are close to the same width. It is not easy to predict the resulting widths of the segmented edges when placing Split Entities points, but you can go back and edit them after the loft is created.

6

Continue lofting.

Loft two more features like the last one, one between the Top and Down tubes and another between the Down and Head tubes.

Tip

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Lofts like the one between the Top and Down tubes may tend to create a sharp V shape in the middle. You can control this in a way similar to the technique used in the Remote Control lesson, using Add Loft Section or by manually creating a plane and sketching a section, and adding it to the loft.

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7

Use Fill surface.

With the three lofted surfaces, you now have bounded an area with surfaces. In this situation, a Fill surface is the best choice.

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If the patches on both sides are symmetrical, you can mirror the fill surface body you just created to the other side of the frame.

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Mirror the fill.

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8

Fill Surface Edge Selection

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Some Fill surfaces may issue a friendly warning for surfaces which use either Tangency or Curvature edge settings. This message generally is displayed for Fill features which have sharp corners in the patch, or patch between nontangent edges, and use Tangency or Curvature on the edges of the sharp corners. Tangency in perpendicular directions at a sharp corner can be difficult to maintain. These messages do not constitute errors, but merely flags where you should inspect the resulting geometry more closely to make sure it is acceptable. You may notice that while you are selecting edges of the fill surface, the surface may appear before you have completed your selection. This is a characteristic you may be able to use on other designs when the boundary of the face is incomplete.

9

Trim all the tubes around the Bottom Bracket.

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Employing the same technique as above with the Split Entities points, trim the curved portion of the Seat Tube and the Down Tube.

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You may also choose to trim the Chain Stays at the same time just to get them out of the way while you work on the rest of the Bottom Bracket. You may also use Hide Body to temporarily remove the Chain Stays from the view. The Chain Stays will need to be trimmed later, however, so you may as well do it now.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

10 Trim the Bottom Bracket.

The Bottom Bracket is a more difficult item to trim. The method for trimming that we have been using projects a sketch from a plane to make the trim. On a cylinder, however, if the trim goes around more than 180 degrees, the projection method will not work.

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In this case, we will trim the Bottom Bracket cylinder using the Wrap feature with the Scribe option.

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Open a sketch on the Top reference plane. Sketch an ellipse positioned and dimensioned as shown. The centerpoint and one of the axis points are Coincident with the Right reference plane. The 3.000” dimension is from the temporary axis in the center of the Bottom Bracket.

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The Wrap feature requires a sketch on a plane parallel to a plane tangent to the surface on which the sketch will be wrapped, it does not require that the sketch plane itself is tangent to the surface.

Notice the four Split Entities points indicated by red arrows.

The rest of the bodies have been hidden for clarity

11 Wrap. Click Insert, Features, Wrap, select the Scribe option, the face

of the Bottom Bracket, and the sketch in the appropriate selection boxes.

You may have to tweak the 3.000” dimension to get the scribed curve in the correct location.

12 Delete face.

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Delete the face inside the scribed curve. Notice that the edges of the remaining surface are broken into segments.

Complex Blends

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Blends and Patches

13 Create lofts.

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15 Save and close the part.

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edge conditions.

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14 Fill the patches. Use Fill surface again to patch the hole, then mirror the other side. Use Curvature to Face

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In the same way that you created three lofts around the intersection between the Top, Down and Head tubes, do it again here at the intersection between the Seat, Down and Bottom Bracket tubes.

We will pick this part back up again for some of the exercises after this lesson, but for now we will move on to smoothing patches.

Often you will build a model and one area just will not transition as well as you need it to. Or you may receive an imported model which has some rough spots on it which need to be smoothed over. In situations like these, there are techniques which enable you to patch over the rough transitions, replacing them with smoother geometry.

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Smoothing Patches

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Three Alternative Approaches

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In this lesson we examine one such situation and repair an unacceptable transition between faces. We will try several approaches that do not work, and some that do work, but are not acceptable. The reason for trying several approaches is to get a comparative glimpse at functions that may seem equivalent on the surface, to see that tweaks and options may make a feature work which other wise would not, and to help round out your toolbox for real world modeling, which is more often than not an exercise in alternative approaches.

Smoothing Patches

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

Procedure 1

Open an existing file.

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A quick examination shows that the trouble spot is in front of the finger grip area.

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Examine the part.

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Open the file named PlasticPart.SLDPRT. This is a simplified part, with most of the finishing details removed.

Running a

Deviation Analysis

on the trouble spot helps us quantify just how bad the situation is. The maximum deviation of over 9 degrees is unacceptable.

3

Split out the affected area. Create a Split Line using the sketch in the part

called Split Sketch to split the faces as shown.

The faces to be removed have been colored red for clarity.

4

Delete faces. Use Delete Face to remove the faces inside the

split area.

Loft the patch shut.

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This is a four-sided patch, so we should be able to patch it loft with a lofted surface.

Smoothing Patches

All four sides are composed of multiple edges, so you will need to use the SelectionManager. Select the long sides as profiles and the short sides as guide curves. This is done because guide curves do not have the Curvature to Face edge option available,

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but profiles do. Set Curvature to Face for the profiles. ...That does not work.

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Editing the connectors can help smooth some of this ripple, but cannot eliminate it completely. The result is not good enough, we will try two more approaches.

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Try it again with Tangency to Face. That works, but it leaves a small ripple in the face.

Use Fill surface to fill the gap. Initiate a Fill Surface feature. Using Curvature on the long sides and Contact on

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the short sides gives this result. This result is not good enough either.

Using Tangent setting instead of Curvature fails outright. We have one option remaining.

Introducing: Boundary Surface

Where to Find It

Boundary surface is similar in some ways to a loft and similar in some ways to fill surface. Boundary is limited to four-sided patches which comprise a single face (a pair of rectangular patches end-to-end will not work). It uses selection of pairs of parallel edges in two directions. Most importantly, boundary curvature continuity and edge weighting can be set in both directions. Q

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Click Boundary Surface on the Surface toolbar. Or, click Insert, Surface, Boundary.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

7

Use a Boundary surface to fill the gap.

The gap that we need to fill is four-sided, so it fits the requirements for a Boundary surface.

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Selecting the edges for each direction in this example will require the SelectionManager..

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on the Surface

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Click Boundary Surface toolbar.

The Boundary Surface feature display may become bewildering with colors flashing and extra lines confusing the display. The iso parameter lines display curvature combs which is useful in some cases, but you do not need to use the setting as a default. You can turn off the display of the curvature combs by right-clicking and selecting Hide all curvature combs or by accessing the setting in the PropertyManager window for the feature.

Analysis Techniques

The finished feature visually looks good. Deviation Analysis looks good.

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The zebra stripe display appears to show some problems.

Remember that there are three situations zebra stripes can help you identify:

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Smoothing Patches

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Contact between faces at an edge (no tangency) - zebra stripes on each side of the edge do not align Tangency between faces at an edge - zebra stripes on each side of the edge touch but diverge at

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an angle Curvature Continuity between faces at an edge - zebra stripes flow smoothly across the edge

Edit the feature and change Dir 2 curves influence to To Next Curve.

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With this change, the zebra stripes now show curvature continuity across the edges.

9

Freeform Feature

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Change Dir 2 curves influence

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The situation shown in the previous image appears to show tangency, but no continuity.

Save and close the part.

The Freeform feature enables you to tug and pull points on a face. This is most commonly used on shapes that are very organic or that may be difficult to achieve using sketched feature types such as loft.

Introducing: Freeform Where to Find It

Freeform, like Boundary Surface, is limited to a single four-sided face. The face does not need to be rectangular. Freeform is a hybrid tool, it will operate on both solids and surfaces. Q

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Click Freeform from the Features toolbar. Or click Insert, Feature, Freeform or Insert, Surface, Freeform.

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

For this example, we return to the finial part we have worked with already. We have worked on the scroll at the bottom as well as the wrapped pattern that is just above it.

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For this example, we look at the leaf pattern on top of the finial.

1

Open existing file

Open the file named Finial_Leaf.SLDPRT.

2

Create a new sketch.

Open a new sketch on the Front reference plane.

Offset the existing Leaf Outline sketch to the outside by .100”.

Draw a line across the bottom to close the profile.

Draw a short line at the tip of the leaf as indicated by the red arrow in the image. Trim the sharp edge off of the splines. This short line is necessary because the Freeform surface only acts on four-sided faces. Making the shape similar to the final shape also creates a mesh that closely fits the final shape. It is easier to create shapes when the mesh is aligned with features you want to create.

3

Extrude a solid. Clear the Merge result box.

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Extrude the sketch with the offset splines .500” using the Mid Plane end

condition.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

Freeform Feature

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4

Initiate a Freeform feature. Click Insert, Features, Freeform.

Select the flat face of the solid to go in the Face to deform box.

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Place five curves roughly equally spaced across the width of the leaf as shown. A curve’s relative position in the mesh cannot be moved once created.

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The points that you can displace in a Freeform feature are placed along curves, and can be selected in groups of points from a single curve (groups of points cannot be selected from multiple curves).

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Add curves.

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If the curves are previewing perpendicular to the ones shown to the right, press Tab and they will change directions.

In this image, the mesh density was lowered to help make the light blue curves more visible.

6

Add points.

One easy way to switch from adding curves to adding points is to click the right mouse button after the last curve is placed. This automatically switches you to Add Point mode. Alternatively, you can click the Add Points button in the PropertyManager.

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Add three points to the first, third and fifth curves. Points can only be shown on one curve at a time.

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The second and fourth curves have been placed to anchor the face in between the other curves, which will be used to give the face some shape.

Freeform Feature

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Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

7

Select a point.

Using the Triad

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Move the point using the triad to get a feel for how it works.

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Select the center curve, and the points on that curve become available. Select one of the points on the curve. Notice the triad appears.

There are several ways to use the Freeform feature’s triad.

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Each arrow represents a direction, and if you pull on the arrow, the point will only move in that direction. This makes working in 3D much easier. Between each pair of arrows is a wing. If you select and drag the wing, you move the point in a plane parallel to the wing. If you select the dot at the vertex of the triad, you can move the point freely in 3D space. Multiple points can be dragged simultaneously by holding down Ctrl and selecting them. The orientation of the triad can be controlled in the Freeform feature’s PropertyManager. Global, Surface or Curve orientation options determine if the triad uses the part’s origin, the normal to the surface at the point or the normal to the curve at the point. When using Surface or Curve options, the triad will reorient after being moved. Triad follows selection means that the triad will either snap to the selected point (when checked), or remain in an arbitrary position (when cleared). The spin boxes also enable you to move triad by discreet amounts by keying in values, or using the spin arrows or sliders to change values.

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Freeform Feature

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After

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Before

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Be careful of “teeter tottering”. The Freeform surface works like a spline in that pulling a control point on one side of a fixed curve can cause the surface to dip on the other side of the fixed curve. Notice the dips where indicated by the red arrows.

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Note

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One tip to eliminate or minimize the effects of teeter tottering is to place another curve in the depressed area, and then delete or move some of the control points on it. (Deleting control points when a Symmetry option is active will also delete the symmetric points). New curves on already deformed faces are created with control points already in place, much like an intersection spline. Just as with splines, smoothness is the key to a good surface, and to get smoothness, it is best to use as few control points as you can get away with.

Undoing Changes

There are several ways to undo changes in the Freeform feature.

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Select multiple points.

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Use the Undo button at the top of the Freeform PropertyManager Select Reset Curve from the right mouse button menu. Delete points or curves that have been moved by selecting the point or curve and pressing Delete. Press Ctrl+Z. Ctrl+Y will redo an undone edit.

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Hold down Ctrl and select all the points on the center curve. The triad positions itself on the center point. Drag the arrow to move the points outward from the part. You may find you need to add points or remove points to keep the shape smooth.

Freeform Feature

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 4 Blends and Patches

9

Deform the first and fifth curves.

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Follow the same steps of adding points and moving them to deform the surface until you are satisfied with the shape. It is supposed to resemble a leaf.

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Currently there is no way to move a point’s position relative to the mesh once it has been placed. If you place a point at the middle of a curve (meaning the 50% position in the mesh), it will always remain in the middle of the curve regardless how it is moved with respect to the overall part. If you move the point to one end of the curve, you will notice that behind the moved point the mesh is spread out and infront of it the mesh is crowded in.

Boundary Conditions

The callout flags around the edges of the Freeform feature determine the relationship of the finished face to the original. Q

Contact means that the new faces touches

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the edge of the original face, with no other relation other than the fact that they touch.

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Tangent means the new face remains

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tangent to the existing face.

Freeform Feature

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Curvature means that the new faces

matches the curvature of the original face at the edge.

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Blends and Patches

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Moveable means that the edge can move

by extending or trimming back the adjacent surface. Q

Moveable/Tangent combines the

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properties of both conditions.

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Add three points along the outer edge of the leaf, and set the boundary condition to Moveable/ Tangent.

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10 Add another three points to the edge.

11 Adjust the points to give some shape to the edge.

The gap and overlap will be taken care of when the feature is finished.

12 Examine the results. Click OK to accept the

feature, and examine the results.

13 Trim the shape.

The outer shape of the leaf still has the artificial four-sided shape.

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Use the Leaf Shape sketch to cut the extrude. Use the Feature Scope to specify which solid to cut.

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14 Apply a fillet to the edges. Use a variable radius fillet to break the

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edges of the leaf and round out the stem slightly.

15 Arrange bodies. Move, rotate, mirror and copy bodies to

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arrange the leaves into a a bunch.

16 Combine all solid bodies.

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17 Save and exit the part.

Freeform Feature

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Blends and Patches

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Freeform Feature

Skills this lab reinforces: Fillets

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Delete Face

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There are situations where fillets become far too complex and will not work. The corner indicated by the red ring indicates a corner where four edges come together, and filleting becomes complex. Sometimes these situations can be handled using a blend technique.

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Exercise 11: Corner Blend

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1

Fill Surface

Open existing part.

Open Corner_Blend.SLDPRT.

2

Create a filleting strategy.

If you try to apply fillets, you will find that there are a couple of possible scenarios where you can get all of the edges around the boss and cut out filleted, but there is no way to make the fillet look particularly good, especially if the filleted edges use different sizes. If the fillets are applied one edge at a time, there is always an ugly intersection, and if they are all applied at once, they are limited to all being the same size. For this reason, we will make the intersection between all the fillets manually.

3

Remove the corners from the model.

The real problem here are the corners where all the edges come together. The corner can be removed, allowing you to apply the fillets. Then the hole where the corner was can be blended over.

Create a sketch.

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4

Open a sketch on the face of the boss. Sketch two arcs centered on the boss and a pair of radial straight lines, then mirror as shown.

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Exercise 11: Corner Blend

Create a cut. Create an Extruded Cut feature that cuts .300” into the model and Through All coming out of the part.

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The cuts should be large enough that the fillets will stop at the cut and not go around it. 6

Create a fillet feature. Create a Fillet feature of .100” radius on the

Create another fillet feature. Create another Fillet feature on the edge as shown. This radius should be .15”.

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edges shown.

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The fillets should stop at the cuts, if not, the cuts are not big enough or the fillets are too large. The smoothness of the blend in the end depends on making the cuts closely match the fillets, so do not make the cuts too big.

8

Delete faces. Use the Delete Face with the Delete option to

delete all the faces created by the cut features.

Note

Another equivalent way of doing this would be to use a Split Line feature, delete the faces inside the Split Line, then fillet the surface model. Results for the two procedures would be equivalent. A third method would be to create a Fill surface over the solid cut, and merge the fill. This would on the face of it be a more efficient method, but a surface method was chosen because of the relative ease of selecting an open loop as compared to selecting many edges, some of them small, and then needing to specify which side of the edge the curvature setting should apply to.

Create a Fill surface. Initiate a Fill Surface feature. To select the edges,

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right-click on one of the open edges of the hole in the surface and select Select open loop, which selects all of the edges around the hole.

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Set the Curvature Control setting to Curvature. Also select the Merge Result option. This knits together the new surface with the existing body.

10 Create another fill surface.

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Using the same procedure, create another fill surface on the hole in the other side.

Exercise 11: Corner Blend

SolidWorks 2006 Training Manual

Again, use the Merge Result option as well as the Try to form solid option. 11 Add a counter bored hole for a 1/4” socket head cap screw.

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Add the hole to the flat face of the boss.

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12 Shell the part to .060”, removing the bottom planar face.

13 Cut the part into 1/3.

Using a 120 degree sketch centered on the boss and hole, cut the model into 1/3.

14 Move face. Move the end face of the through hole to shorten the boss by 1.5”. Use the Offset option

to avoid specifying a direction.

15 Pattern the body.

Using the temporary axis through the center of the part, pattern the body to make 3 instances.

16 Combine the bodies.

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Use the Combine feature to join the three patterned bodies into a single solid body.

Exercise 11: Corner Blend

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17 Save and close the part.

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Exercise 12: Patches

In this part you will patch unwanted areas of a model and replace them with improved shapes.

Surface Trimming

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Delete Face

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Fill Surface

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Freeform Surface

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Knit Surface

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Split Lines

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Q

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Skills used in this lab exercise:

1

Open an existing model.

Open the file named Grip.SLDPRT.

2

Examine the part.

Notice that at the rounded end of the grip, on both sides there are small dimples indicated by the red ring created by the loft features which need to be smoothed over.

The bumps are in part because of a singularity due to the way in which the lofts that created the part were made. We will also want to add a thumb rest as shown in the image above.

3

Open a new sketch.

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On the Top reference plane, open a new sketch and draw a circle dimensioned as shown. The center has a Vertical relation with the Origin.

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Exercise 12: Patches

Create a Split Line feature. Using the circle, create a Split Line feature to

split both the top and bottom faces of the part. Be aware that the faces are split down the middle, so you will need to select four faces.

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5

Delete four faces.

Show two hidden surface bodies.

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Expand the Surface Bodies folder and select the Surface-Sweep1 surface body and the Mirror1[4] body. Right-click and select Show bodies.

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Select the four faces inside of the split line and make a Delete Face feature, using the Delete option.

7

Create an Offset Surface feature.

We will need to use part of the reference surfaces later for another task, so we need to make a copy.

Make an Offset Surface with a 0” offset. Rename this feature Top Skirt Copy, and hide the body.

8

Trim the surface.

Re-using the circle sketch from the Split Line feature, Trim the skirt surfaces leaving the pieces shown.

9

Create a Fill Surface feature.

Using the edges of the newly trimmed reference surface and the lower edges created by the Split Line feature, create a new Fill Surface feature using Curvature to Face for all four edges.

Notice in the preview that the Fill surface will get a nasty bump worse than what it replaced.

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Cancel the Fill Surface feature.

Expand Folder1 and Surface-Loft1, so you can see Sketch3.

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Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane, and use Convert Entities to copy Sketch3.

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Insert a Split Entity point on the converted spline and make it coincident with the model edge using a Pierce constraint. Turn the rest of the spline to construction geometry.

The surface is much cleaner.

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10 Create a Fill patch for the top using the same steps.

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Try the Fill Surface again, using the converted and split spline as a Constraint Curve.

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Exit the sketch

Hide the trimmed reference surfaces, and show Ruled Surface1 and Mirror1[3]. Trim Ruled Surface1 and Mirror1[3] with the circle sketch from the Split Line feature. Create the Filled Surface without a constraint curve. Hide the reference surfaces.

11 Open a new sketch.

On the Top reference plane, open a new sketch and draw the lines and arcs as shown with dimensions. The 4.000” dimension goes to the part Origin.

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12 Create a Split Line feature. Create a Split Line feature on

the top faces of the part, then Use Delete Face with the Delete option to remove the faces.

13 Use a Boundary surface to fill the newly created hole.

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Exercise 12: Patches

SolidWorks has two surface types which are limited to four-sided patches. They are Boundary and Freeform. In cutting this hole, we are

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preparing to use a Freeform surface, so since it is limited to four sides, we will match it with the Boundary surface. The Freeform surface does not create a surface from an edge selection, it modifies an existing face.

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Although the area inside the split line before the Delete Face could be seen as a four-sided patch, the Boundary suface in SolidWorks requires a single face with four sides, rather than multiple faces with a foursided boundary.

select Direction 1 curves as shown. Set edges to Curvature to Face.

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You may have to change the direction arrow to get the tangency to go the correct direction.

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Initiate a Boundary Surface feature, and

If all the visual feedback becomes confusing, you can turn off the Curvature Combs and mesh display from the right-click menu or the PropertyManager. Select the Direction 2 curves using the Selection Manager.

One thing to notice here is that at the sides and ends of the surface, the curvature combs spike. This indicates a match that is less than ideal.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

Suppress the Boundary feature. Since we put the effort into creating

it, we will keep it, although it is not a good enough patch for our needs.

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14 Create a Fill Surface.

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Right-click on one of the open edges and select Select Open Loop. With this selection made, initiate the Fill Surface, and use Curvature to Face for all edges.

Exercise 12: Patches

SolidWorks 2006 Training Manual

Click OK to accept the feature. 15 Initiate the Freeform. Click Insert, Features, Freeform.

Select the Fill surface that was just created from the Graphics Window.

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16 Set symmetry setting.

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Check the Direction 2 Symmetry option. This will keep the changes to the face symmetrical

Control Curves area, and place four curves approximately as shown. To create horizontal instead of vertical curves, press Tab.

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18 Add points.

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17 Add curves. Click the Add Curves button in the

When you are done adding curves, the mouse cursor will look as shown in the image to the right. Click OK using the right mouse button, and you will automatically be put into the Add Points mode. Place control points along the plane of symmetry. It will highlight when the point will be placed properly. Place a point on the symmetry plane for every curve.

19 Add more points.

Also add two pair of points to the sides for the center-most curve as shown. When a Symmetry option is selected, placing a control point to one side of the plane of symmetry will also place a symmetrical point on the other side of the plane as well.

20 Set edge constraints.

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The callout flags on each edge determine the tangency or continuity between the faces on either side of the edge. Set each one to Curvature.

Exercise 12: Patches

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21 Move points.

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Drag the green arrow up, then push the blue arrow slightly backward. We are trying to create a scooped shape for a thumbrest.

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Select the center-most curve, then hold down Ctrl and select the three control points on it. The Triad appears, allowing you to drag in specific directions.

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If you drag the web between two arrows, the point is constrained to the plane the web represents. When you are done, the Freeform surface should look approximately as shown to the right. When you are satisfied, click OK to accept the feature.

22 Knit into solid.

Knit all the surface bodies except the construction surfaces into a solid body.

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23 Save and exit the part.

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Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame

In this lab you will create blends between different tube arrangements.

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Lofting surfaces Using Fill surface Knitting surfaces

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1

Open an existing file.

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Trimming surfaces

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Skills used in this lab exercise:

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Open the file named Bicycle Frame ex13.SLDPRT.

2

Create simple blend using a loft.

Select the open edges of the surfaces on either side of the break in the Seat Tube as indicated. Create a Loft feature using Curvature to Face end conditions on both ends.

You may have to adjust the connector to straighten it out. Use the mesh display to make sure the loft is not twisting.

You may use the Tangent Length values to adjust the shape of the blend to your satisfaction. Clock OK to accept the feature.

3

Create sketch for Trim feature.

Open a new sketch on the Right reference plane. Create a sketch similar to that shown. A straight line and a partial ellipse are used here.

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Do not overlap the ellipse with the blend on the other side of the tube.

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Exit the sketch.

Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame

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4

Trim the surfaces with the sketch. Click Trim Surface from the Surfaces toolbar.

Select the sketch from the previous step if it is not already selected, and select the pieces to keep as shown.

select the trimmed edges as loft profiles.

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Set end conditions on both edges to Curvature to Face.

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Loft between the closed loop edges. Initiate a Loft feature and

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Click OK to accept the feature.

View the part from the Right view and zoom up on the area of the loft.

Adjust the connector so that it is on the plane of symmetry, and adjust the Tangency Lengths of both edges so the loft does not pucker or kink. Click OK to accept the loft.

6

Create the sketch the Trim the Seat Stays.

Open a new sketch on the Seat Stay Plane. You will need to expand the existing feature folder to access this plane. Sketch lines as shown. Use either Split Entities or colinear lines to achieve break points as indicated by the red arrows.

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The 27.000” dimension is attached to the part Origin.

The lines are symmetrical about the centerline.

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Exit the sketch.

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7

Trim the surfaces.

Select the pieces to keep as shown. 8

Create a lofted surface.

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Select the two edges as shown below, set constraints to Curvature to Face for both edges, and set the Tangency Length values symmetrically to make a nice arch.

9

Loft another surface.

Use the settings shown to Loft a surface to fill the side.

10 Mirror surface body.

Since the sides of the blend will be symmetrical, and the trim sketch was symmetrical, Mirror the lofted surface body using the Right reference plane. At this point the blend areas should be fully surrounded by trimmed tubes and lofted or mirrored surfaces.

11 Create a fill surface blend. Initiate a Fill Surface feature. Select

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all the edges around the patch, and set the edge conditions to Curvature for all edges. Fill surfaces like this one will sometimes get an unsightly bulge. This can be controlled by adding a sketch point as a constraint curve or changing the boundaries by moving the Split Entities points or changing the Tangency Length values for the surrounding lofts.

Once the surface is smooth and nicely shaped, click OK to accept the feature.

Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame

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12 Mirror the surface body.

The fill surface should be symmetrical. Mirror the body about the Seat Stay Plane.

13 Blend the Chain Stays to the Bottom Bracket.

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the edge of the Chain Stay nearest the Bottom Bracket.

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14 Create a Ruled surface. Click Insert, Surface, Ruled Surface. Select

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The Chain Stays have already been trimmed back for you, but you must next trim back the Bottom Bracket shell to blend into.

Use the Tangent to Surface type, and make it 1.5” long.

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Click OK to accept the feature. 15 Use Move Face to offset the surface.

The Offset surface creates a new surface body. Using the Move Face feature with Offset option simply alters an existing body. Click Insert, Face, Move Face. Select the Offset option, and set the distance to .150”

16 Trim the Bottom Bracket.

Use the body modified in the previous step to trim the Bottom Bracket. You will need to select three surface bodies to be trimmed: the Bottom Bracket, a loft from the Bottom Bracket to the curved Seat Tube, and the Fill surface.

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Hide or delete the trimming body. In this case the Ruled surface and the Move Face features were used as reference geometry, and can be hidden or deleted after the trim because they will no longer be needed.

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17 Loft between the end of the Chain Stay and the trimmed hole in the

Bottom Bracket. Try to use Curvature to Face end conditions, but if that does not work, use Tangency to Face. You will need to use the Selection Manager

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to select the edges on the Bottom Bracket. 18 Patch a poor quality surface.

ut rib

Next we will remove a portion of the neighboring face and the face marked in red, and fill the hole using a Boundary Surface.

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One of the faces created by the loft has a crease in the face. The rest of the loft is good, but you need to replace this particular face.

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Draw a Spline on Surface approximately as shown. Make sure the spline touches the edges on both sides of the surface.

19 Split the surface using Split Line. Initiate a Split Line feature, using the Spline on Surface to make an Intersection split. 20 Delete two faces. Using the Delete Face feature with the Delete

option, delete the two faces indicated.

21 Mirror two surface bodies.

Using the Right reference plane, mirror the portion of the lofted surface body left over after the split line and delete face operations above. Also mirror the body created by the Move Face feature.

The mirrored loft body will be used to transition the other Chain Stay into the Bottom Bracket, and the mirrored Move Face body will be used to trim the Bottom Bracket to allow the mirrored loft to fit.

22 Trim Bottom Bracket.

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Using the mirrored Move Faces body, trim the Bottom Bracket and surrounding faces in the same way as in Step 16. Hide the mirrored Move Faces body.

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23 Knit surfaces together.

The edges around the hole created by the delete face are not all of the correct length to be used to patch the hole. Knitting the surfaces together around the hole will create edges of the correct length. Knit all the surface bodies that have an edge on the

hole. There should be five selected bodies. Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame

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In the Direction 1 Curves selection box, select the edges indicated by red arrows. Try to apply curvature to these edges, or if that does not work, apply tangency.

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24 Create a Boundary Surface. Click Insert, Surface, Boundary Surface.

25 Mirror the boundary surface.

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In the Direction 2 Curves selection box, select the edges indicated by the light blue arrows. The edge at the top of the image is actually made of three individual edges, and you will need to use the Selection Manager to select these. Assign curvature to these edges.

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Using the Right reference plane, mirror the boundary surface body.

26 Create planar surface. With a single Planar Surface

feature, select the edges around the five openings in the frame shown in the image to the right. The single planar surface feature will create all of the planar surfaces even though they are not coplanar.

27 Knit and solidify the part.

There should be 38 surface bodies to select. An easy way to select them all is to go to the Surface Bodies folder and window-select the bodies in the list. The two construction surfaces used to trim the Bottom Bracket must not be knit into the rest of the bodies. Select the Try to form solid option.

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28 Shell the solid. Shell the frame at .050” thickness, deleting faces for the openings on

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the Head Tube, Seat Tube, and Bottom Bracket.

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29 Save and exit the part.

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Exercise 13: Bicycle Frame

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Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

Upon successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to: Create and drive changes from a surface master model

Q

Create and drive changes from a solid master model

Q

Add various features commonly associated with plastic consumer products

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Q

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Introduction to Master Models

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If you work with other experienced CAD users (not necessarily just SolidWorks users) who have been involved with complex model development for a while, you may have heard the term “master model”. Master model refers to a technique of driving many parts from a single part which contains overall size, location and gross geometry for an entire assembly. Geometry detail is generally found in the individual part files. Master model techniques can also be used in an in-context assembly scenario, but in this course we are focused on individual part techniques. There are many variations of the master model concept: Insert Part Insert into New Part Split Part Save Bodies In-context assemblies

Q Q

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Q Q Q

In this course we will talk about two methods in detail: Using the Split feature with a solid master Using Insert Part with a surface master

Q Q

A surface master model using Insert, Part

The entire parent model is brought into each child and the design for each component proceeds from there.

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Parent multibody part

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Master Model Techniques

A solid master model approach using Save Bodies

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Parent multibody part

Children created from the solid master model (each is an individual *.SLDPRT file)

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When using a Master Model, there are some techniques available for solid master models which are not available for surface master models. In particular these features are Split and Save Bodies. The techniques available for surface masters are Insert, Part and Insert into New Part, both of which are also available to solid masters. For Insert Part method, child components can inherit several entity types from their parents, including solid bodies, surface bodies, axes, planes and cosmetic threads. However they cannot inherit curve or sketch entities. One commonly used workaround for transmitting curve or sketch data from parent to child is to make a surface from the curve or sketch and to make sure that is transmitted to the child, similar to the workaround for mirroring 3D curves within a part.

Push and Pull type Operations

When using a master model to create child components, there are four basic techniques you can work with: Q Q Q Q

Split Save Bodies Insert, Part Insert into New Part

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In-context assemblies are covered in a different course, Advanced Assembly Modeling.

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These four techniques break into two groups, functions that push bodies from the parent to the child and functions that pull bodies into the child from the parent. Another distinction is that the push-type functions only work on solid bodies. Of these functions, only Insert, Part is invoked from the child document, the rest are invoked from the parent. The following chart lays out the properties of the various functions. This reiterates some of the information in a chart in the Advanced Part Introduction to Master Models

SolidWorks 2007 Training Manual

Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

Modeling course book, Lesson 1: Multibody Solids, but it has more information on usability and application to Master Model techniques.

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Table 1: Master Model Operations Pull Operation

Split

Save Bodies

Insert, Part

Works for:

solid bodies only

Solid Bodies folder only

all solid and/or surface bodies from a parent, axes, cos thread, planes

Solid and Surface Body Folders and individual bodies

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Creates feature in parent?

Insert into New Part

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Function Name

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Push Operation

yes

yes

no

no

yes, Stock

yes, Stock

yes, Part

yes, Stock

parent

parent

child

parent

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

no

no

yes

yes

yes

yes

no

no

yes

yes

yes

yes

no

no

yes

yes

yes

yes

Can you specify where in the feature history the part is saved out?

yes - a feature resides in tree where body is saved

yes - a feature resides in tree where body is saved

no configurations could be used to do this

no

Can configuration of parent be specified?

no

no

yes

no

Creates feature in child? Invoked from: Find parent from child document? Find child from parent document? Can broken links be repaired? Are links broken by renaming parent? Are links broken by renaming child?

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Table 1: Master Model Operations

Workaround for Split Feature*

Any Delete Body feature in the child which cannot find a parent body will fail until edited and closed. Some features (such as Rib) are sensitive to the presence of multiple bodies.

Any Delete Body feature in the child which cannot find a parent body will fail until edited and closed. Some features (such as Rib) are sensitive to the presence of multiple bodies.

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Either a new body simply remains as unsaved, or a removed body is ignored.

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If Split feature has to be edited and the number of bodies is reduced, it requires you to reassign file names and will overwrite all files. (See * for workaround)

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What happens when the number of bodies in the parent changes?

Pull Operation

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Push Operation

The workaround mentioned in the chart is to avoid the problem of the Split feature overwriting files which may include dependent features. When the number of bodies in the parent has been reduced, and the Split feature has been used to save out bodies, editing the Split feature will cause it to forget some or all of the file names previously entered for the individual part files. Reentering the missing names will cause the files to be overwritten, which is not a problem as long as there are no dependent features in any of the parts. If there are dependent features, they will be lost when overwritten.

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The workaround is to copy out the parts with dependent features, edit the Split feature and overwrite the parts, then move the copied parts back to the original locations, overwriting the overwritten parts. In this way, the child components should open with the updated reference and maintain its dependent features. Depending on the changes, some sketch relations may be lost or go dangling, but at that point the problems are not any more pronounced than they would be in a standard part.

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Summary of Recommendations

To summarize, the best choice of the four methods is Insert, Part because it offers the use of configurations, the most options for entities to bring forward, and it avoids some of the file management issues associated with using Split to save out bodies. Split is still appropriate to actually cut a solid model into multiple bodies, but you should avoid using it to create separate part files. In this case, Split can be used in conjunction with any of the other three options. The major disadvantages of using Insert, Part are: Q

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From the parent document, it is impossible to tell where the parent Introduction to Master Models

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Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

Surface Master Technique

Procedure

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In this example, we look at a simple application of the surface master model technique. This assembly is made of only two pieces, but the technique can be extended to models with many more parts and more parametric sophistication, including configurations for a family of sizes. Both parts here were created from the same master model, and then reassembled in an assembly.

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Q

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Q

has been used. If the parent is renamed, the link is broken. You cannot directly specify where in the parent tree the body comes from, although configurations would give you a way to accomplish the same thing.

1

Open and examine the master model.

Open the file SpeakerSurfaceMaster.SL DPRT. Notice that each feature of importance is named. This master model is meant to drive all major outside shape changes for the entire product from a single location.

2

Create a new part.

Using the Part_MM template, create a new part. Save it as SpeakerHousing.SLDPRT.

3

Insert the master model into the new part. Click Insert, Part, and browse for the

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SpeakerSurfaceMaster.SLDPRT. Make sure that the master model is inserted at the new part origin.

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4

Surface Master Technique

Delete unnecessary bodies.

For this part, we will only need three of the six surface bodies. Delete the bodies named Face of Baffle, Driver Mounts [1] and Driver Mounts [2].

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5

Extend the highlighted edges. Using Extend Surface features, extend the highlighted edges about 5 mm each.

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Remember that Extend Surface only works on a single surface body at a time, and these three edge are on two different surface bodies, so you will need to use two features to extend all the edges.

Tip

6

Trim the surfaces.

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Extending the surface edges helps with trimming surfaces that touch line-on-line. This is similar to the preference for overbuilt surfaces and splines.

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Although it may be tempting to use a Mutual Trim on this part, use three Standard trim features instead. You may find that the mutual trim fails after dimensions in the master model are changed.

7

Knit the surface bodies into a solid.

8

Shell the solid to a wall thickness of 3.5 mm.

9

Open another new part.

Create another new part from the Part_MM template, and again insert the master model at the part origin. Save this part as SpeakerBaffle.SLDPRT.

10 Extend the edges.

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Extend the same edges in this part as in the SpeakerHousing part. It is probably a good idea to have taken care of any operation you need to do to every part in the master model, to save some work and ensure that it is done the same way everywhere.

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11 Trim surfaces.

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12 Knit the surface into a solid.

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The surfaces on this part are much more difficult to trim than on the Housing part. Even if you use mutual trim, you will need to use two trim features because whether you use Keep or Remove selections, you cannot select all the faces you need to select at once (without using Select Other). However you choose to accomplish it, the end result should look like the image at the right. (Transparent surfaces are the ones that have been trimmed away, shown here for clarity).

13 Create a Ruled Surface.

Select the edges indicated in the image to the right, and create a Ruled Surface. The surface should taper in by 20 degrees, using the Front reference plane for the direction.

14 Extend the bottom and back of the ruled surface. Extend the edges as shown, about 3 mm.

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15 Move the ruled surface body.

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To allow a small edge around the part, Use the Move Bodies feature to move the ruled surface body 3 mm in the Z direction.

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16 Cut the solid with the extended ruled surface. Using the Cut with Surface feature, cut the

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solid with the surface. The arrow points to the material that will be removed.

17 Shell the model. Shell the model with a 4 mm thickness, removing

the back face of the baffle.

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18 Clean up the left over bodies.

Right-click on the Surface Bodies folder and select Delete Body. Rename the feature Clean Up.

19 Create an assembly of the two parts. Create a new assembly using the Make Assembly from Part

function. Place both parts at the assembly origin.

20 Make changes to the master model.

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Make changes to the master model and watch them propagate through the parts and into the assembly.

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Tile the windows (master model, housing, baffle and assembly), and make the following changes to the master model:

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Lesson 5

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Change the offset distance of the Housing Loft Top plane from 260 mm to 240 mm.

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In the sketch of the Face of Baffle revolved surface feature, change the 25 mm horizontal offset of the top of the arc to 50 mm. Click through the other windows to watch the parts update.

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Master Model Techniques

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Change the size and location of the driver mounts.

21 Save and close the parts and assembly.

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Save the parts.

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Working with a Solid Master Model

In this section we will:

Q Q Q

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Split the part into separate bodies, each representing major components of the remote control; Shell the part; Define the basic geometry and shape of the keypad; Create specialized features called fastening features; Save the individual bodies as part files.

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Splitting the Part

Splitting a part into multiple bodies was covered in the Advanced Part Modeling course, in the Multibody Solids lesson.

Open an existing model.

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1

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In this part we return to the Remote Control from Lesson 3: Surface Modeling. We will finish the part with all of its internal detail.

Open the file named Remote Control Master ModelLesson5.SLDPRT. The model should look like it did when we left off with Lesson 3: Surface Modeling.

2

Extrude the parting surface.

Reuse the original parting sketch

and Extrude a surface.

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Use Mid Plane as the end condition and set the Depth is such that it extends beyond the body of the part.

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3

Split the part. Click Split or click Insert, Features, Split.

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Select the parting surface as the trim tool.

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Click Cut Part. The system computes the intersection of the trim tool with the part and calculates the results.

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We want to create both bodies but we do not want to save them as separate part files at this time. Select the check boxes for both bodies but leave the file name set to .

For Resultant bodies state, clear Consume cut bodies. Click OK.

4

Hide the parting surface.

5

Rename the solid bodies.

Expand the Solid Bodies folder.

Upper Housing

Rename the bodies Upper Housing and Lower Housing.

Change the colors of the upper and lower housing bodies so it will be easier to tell them apart.

Hide the Lower Housing.

Lower Housing

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6

To save time we will use a library feature for the sketch of the holes for the keypad. The sketch is straightforward and creating it step-by-step contributes nothing to this case study about surfacing.

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Modeling the Keypad

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1

Reference plane.

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Library Feature.

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2

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Show the Top reference plane. This is the plane onto which we will insert the library features (sketch).

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Drag the library feature named Sketch for Keypad from the Design Library and drop it onto the Top reference plane.

Associate the external references to the target part’s Right reference plane and . Click OK.

3

Dissolve the library feature.

4

Extrude a cut. Extrude a cut Through All in both directions. Use 1.00° of draft.

Right-click the library feature and select Dissolve Library Feature from the shortcut menu. Draft inward

Draft outward

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A sliver face is left if the cut is not extruded in both directions.

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5

Shell.

Shell the Upper Housing using a Thickness of 0.080 inches. Reference plane.

The 0.240” dimension was obtained by adding 0.010” to the sum of 0.080” (the shell thickness) and 0.150” (the dimension on the arc in Sketch15).

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Note

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Create a reference plane offset 0.240” from Plane1 in the direction shown (the new plane is shown as Plane5). If the plane is not already named Plane5, rename it so that it is.

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6

7

Intersection curves.

Open a sketch on Plane5. Click Intersection Curve

on the Sketch toolbar.

Select the two faces as shown on the inside of the Upper Housing.

Turn off the Intersection Curve tool and hide Plane5.

Keypad.

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8

Change the two intersection curves to construction geometry and sketch the outline of the keypad as shown in the following image. Use an ellipse and a rectangle and trim as necessary.

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Note

The intersection curves are used as a guide to make sure the keypad doesn’t interfere with the inside of the housing.

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Planar surface. Click Planar Surface

on the

Surfaces toolbar.

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Create a planar surface using the active sketch.

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Master Model Techniques

10 Cut with surface. Click Cut With Surface on the Features toolbar. Under Surface Cut Parameters, select

the planar surface and the cutting surface.

Under Feature Scope, click Selected bodies and select the Auto-select check box. Click OK.

Question:

The advantage of using a surface rather than a plane is that the extent of the cut is limited by the boundaries of the surface. If we cut with the reference plane, the entire body would have been cut, not just the areas around the keypad holes.

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Answer:

Since the surface we are using is planar, why not just cut using the reference plane?

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11 Thicken. Click Thicken

on the Features toolbar.

Select the planar surface.

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Set the Thickness to 0.080 inches and clear the Merge result check box.

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Click OK.

Thicken in this direction

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Select either Thicken Side 1 or Thicken Side 2 as necessary so that the surface is thickened away from the solid body.

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Examine the preview.

12 Rename.

Name the solid body Keypad.

13 Offset the edges.

Open a new sketch on the uppermost face of the Keypad. This will be the sketch for the buttons.

Note

The Upper Housing is shown transparent for illustration purposes.

Tip

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Click Offset Entities . Offset the edges of the keypad holes 0.010”.

Press the Enter key to repeat the previous command.

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14 Extrude.

Extrude the sketch using Offset From Surface and an Offset Distance of 0.100”. Set the Draft Angle to 1.00° and make sure the draft is inward. Select Merge result and use the Feature Scope to select the Keypad.

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15 Dome.

Create a 0.050” dome on the top of the round button.

16 Fillet. Add 0.020” radius fillets to the

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The next step in the process is to sweep a cut to create an appearance gap or reveal between the upper and lower housings.

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Reveal

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edges of the keypad buttons, shown here in red for illustration purposes.

Reveals are often used in plastic parts to prevent an edge-to-edge joint between two parts. Edge-to-edge joints often emphasize any differences between the Reveal parts at the parting line. Reveals are also often used to call attention to an edge or separation between surfaces.

First we will create two 3D curves: Q Q

The sweep path The guide curve

Then we will sketch the sweep profile.

1

Hide the Keypad body.

2

3D sketch. Click 3D Sketch

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on the Sketch toolbar to open a new 3D sketch.

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3

Fit spline. Click Fit Spline

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Right-click the outermost edge of the Upper Housing and select Select Tangency from the shortcut menu.

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on the Spline Tools toolbar.

Click OK. This is the path for the sweep. Note

The resulting spline is shown here in red for illustration purposes only. It does not mean the spline is over defined. 4

Exit sketch.

5

Repeat.

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Note

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Tighten the Tolerance until the Actual Deviation is less than 0.001”.

Repeat steps 2 through 4, fitting a second spline to the inside edge of the Upper Housing. This is the guide curve for the sweep.

We could also have used Composite Curve for the path and guide.

6

Profile sketch.

Open a sketch on the Right reference plane.

Sketch a rectangle as shown. This is the profile for the swept cut feature.

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The uppermost line in the rectangle does not need to be fully defined.

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7

Sweep a cut. Select the Profile, Path, and Guide Curve as shown in the illustration.

Expand the Options listing.

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For Orientation/twist type, select Follow part and 1st guide curve.

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Click OK.

We could have built the required draft angle into the profile sketch. However, in this case we will add draft using the Draft feature.

Introducing: Draft

The Draft features tapers selected faces in the model by a specified angle with respect to the pull direction of a mold. You can add draft using a Neutral Plane or a Parting Line.

Where to Find It

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Draft

Q Q

1

Click Draft on the Features toolbar. Click Insert, Features, Draft.

Parting line draft. Click Draft on the Features toolbar.

For Type of Draft, select Parting Line. For the Draft Angle, enter 1.00°.

For Direction of Pull, select the Top reference plane. Click Reverse Direction.

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For Parting Lines, select the model edge shown and click OK.

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Draft Analysis

Q Q

Draft analysis. Click Draft Analysis

on the Mold Tools toolbar, or click Tools, Draft Analysis.

For Direction of Pull, select the Top reference plane.

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Click Reverse Direction.

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Click Draft Analysis on the Mold Tools toolbar. Or, click Tools, Draft Analysis....

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Where to Find It

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The Draft Analysis tool is useful in determining whether the part has sufficient draft to be removed from the mold based on a set draft angle.

Set the Draft Angle to 1.00°.

Select the Face classification check box. Click Calculate.

The green faces have positive draft with respect to the pull direction. The red faces have negative draft. Click Cancel.

3

Hide and show bodies.

Hide the Upper Housing. Show the Lower Housing.

4

Hole for fastener.

Open a sketch on the Top reference plane and sketch a 0.250” diameter circle as shown. The distance from the origin is not critical but it should be located near the rear of the remote.

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Add a Coincident relation between the circle’s center and the Right reference plane. Extrude a cut as follows:

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Q

Q Q Q Q

The From position is Offset 0.75” from the sketch plane. The End Condition is Through All. The Draft Angle is 1.00°. Select the Draft outward check box. For Feature Scope, select the Lower Housing.

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5

Shell.

Clearance hole. Click Hole Wizard Q Q Q

Standard = ANSI Inch Type = Screw Clearances Size = #4 Fit = Normal End Condition = Through All Feature Scope = Lower Housing

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on the Features toolbar.

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Shell the Lower Housing using a Thickness of 0.080 inches.

Q Q

Add a Concentric relation between the locating point and the edge of the cut feature.

Fastening Features

Fastening Features streamline creation of common features for plastic parts. You can create: Q Q Q Q

Where to Find It

Q

Click Mounting Boss , Snap Hook , Snap Hook Groove on the Fastening Features toolbar. , or Vent Click Insert, Fastening Feature, and select either Mounting Boss, Snap Hook, Snap Hook Groove, or Vent.

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Q

Mounting Boss Snap Hook Snap Hook Groove Vent (also useful in sheet metal parts)

1

Appearance.

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Show the Upper Housing.

180

Make the Lower Housing semi-transparent. A transparency of 0.75 works well.

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Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

2

Mounting boss. Click Insert, Fastening Feature, Mounting Boss. Creating a

mounting boss is a multistep process:

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1. Change to a bottom view orientation and select the inside face of the Upper Housing. One technique is to select the face through the fastener clearance hole.

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2. To define the direction of the mounting boss, select the Top reference plane and click Reverse Direction. This orients the mounting boss correctly with respect to the pull direction of the mold.

3. To position the mounting boss, select the edge of the clearance hole.

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4. To define the height of the mounting boss, select the planar face on the inside of the Lower Housing as shown.

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Set the Diameter to 0.350” and the Draft Angle to 2.00°.

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5. To orient the fins, select the Right reference plane. Set the other Fins options as follows:

Q Q

6. A mounting boss can have a pin or a hole. In this case we want a hole. Q Q Q

Pin

Select Hole Select Enter diameter Diameter = 0.086” Depth = 0.825” Draft Angle = 1.00°

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Q

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Q

Height = 0.375” Width = 0.060” Length = 0.3125” Draft Angle = 2.00° Number of fins = 4

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Q

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Q

Q

Hole

7. Click OK.

3

Results.

The mounting boss is added to the inside of the Upper Housing.

Note

The mounting boss is shown in red for illustration purposes.

4

Appearance.

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Hide the Upper Housing.

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Remove the transparency from the Lower Housing.

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Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

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Offset plane.

Show the sketch that was inserted as a library feature for the keypad cutout (step 2 on page 172).

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Insert two points. Make them Coincident with the inside edges of the Lower Housing and also coincident (On Surface) with the offset plane.

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3D sektch.

Open a new 3D sketch.

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Create a plane that is parallel to the Front reference plane and that passes through the point at the center of the circular keypad.

7

Snap hook. Click Insert, Fastening Feature, Snap Hook.

Select one of the points in the 3D sketch.

Select the Top reference plane to define the vertical direction of the snap hook.

Select the Right reference plane to define the direction of the hook. Set the Body height at 0.070”.

Enter the Snap Hook Data as shown.

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Click OK.

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8

Repeat.

Show solid body.

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9

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Create a second snap hook using the second point in the 3D sketch.

Show the Upper Housing.

10 Snap hook groove.

You must create a snap hook before you can create a snap hook groove. Click Insert, Fastening Feature, Snap Hook Groove. Select the Snap Hook1 feature.

Select the Upper Housing as the solid body that the groove will be applied to. Enter the dimension values as shown.

Note

The dimensions of the snap hook groove are driven by the snap hook. The values in the PropertyManager are offsets, or clearances, so you can make the groove slightly larger than the hook. Click OK.

11 Second snap hook groove.

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Repeat this process for Snap Hook2. The results are shown below.

Note

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Section View

The cut faces of the section view have been colored for clarity.

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Lesson 5 Master Model Techniques

Saving the Bodies and Creating an Assembly

Save Bodies allows you to save individual solid bodies as part files.

You can indicate which bodies you want to save. Optionally you can generate an assembly from the saved parts. To review Save Bodies and Create Assembly, see Advanced Part Modeling, Lesson 1: Multibody Solids.

Q Q Q

Upper Housing Lower Housing Keypad

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Save the three solid bodies as:

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Right-click the Solid Bodies folder and select Save Bodies from the shortcut menu.

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12 Save bodies.

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If you want to create an assembly do the following: In the Create Assembly group box, click Browse. The Save As dialog opens. 2 Browse to where you want to save the assembly. 3 Give the assembly a name and click Save. 1

13 Save and close all the files.

By using rapid prototypes early in the product development cycle, you can receive critical feedback early in the design process. Rapid prototyping is sometimes called 3D printing.

The 3D printing process often takes advantage of a rapid prototyping process known as stereolithography, or layered object manufacture. 3D printers come with special software that imports the CAD file and slices it into thin horizontal layers 0.003 inches to 0.01 inches thick. Each thin crosssection is sent to the 3D printer, which builds up the model, layer by layer, starting from the bottom of the part and moving upward. In a matter of minutes or hours, the model is complete.

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Rapid Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping

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Print3D

Print3D is a web portal linked to the SolidWorks software. Using Print3D, you can contact selected rapid part and prototype vendors to

request price quotes or place an order for rapid prototypes of the currently open part document. Some vendors provide instant price quotes; others will contact you via e-mail.

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Print3D automates the process of requesting a quote or ordering a

Where to Find It

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on the Standard toolbar.

You may have to use Tools, Customize to add the Print 3D icon to the Standard toolbar.

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Note

Click Print3D

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prototype, eliminating the need to search for reliable services, save parts as STL files, FTP the files to vendors, or perform other operations. Model data is encrypted prior to transmission, so your data is always secure.

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Exercise 14: Solid Master Model

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1

Open an existing model.

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Procedure

Use a solid model to drive the parts of an assembly, and then use file management techniques to change the names of the individual parts while maintaining associativity.

This is the continuation of the mouse model created in the Lesson 3: Surface Modeling lab exercises. Show sketch and construction surface.

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Open Mouse_Master_Model.SLDPRT.

Notice that there is a sketch named Top-Bottom Split Sketch and a construction surface named Wheel Mount Split Surface. Show both of these.

Note

The color of the surface body has been changed to clearly distinguish it from the solid geometry.

3

Plan the approach.

The part needs to be split into three pieces, the top cover, the bottom and the wheel mount. The wheel itself will be added as a separate part in the assembly. The split will be completed in two Split features, the first splitting the top and bottom, the second splitting the wheel mount from the top.

4

Split the top and the bottom.

Because the Wheel Mount Split Surface needs to split the top only and not the bottom, create the top-bottom split first.

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Click Insert, Features, Split.

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Use the Top-Bottom Split Sketch to split the top from the bottom. Check the boxes next to both bodies in the Resulting Bodies panel. Technically, the result will be the same if only one box is checked.

Do not enter a name for either body, and do not click Save All Bodies. These two actions would save the bodies out as separate files rather than

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just leaving them as bodies in the local part. Make sure Consume Bodies is cleared. Click OK to accept the feature. 5

Split the top into two pieces.

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Using the Wheel Mount Split Surface, split the top body into two.

Click OK to accept the feature. Hide the sketch and the surface body. Save bodies.

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Do not split all four bodies, but only the top two.

In the Master Model Techniques lesson, it was stated that the best method for creating separate parts from a master model was to use the Insert, Part technique. That technique will be used in the next exercise. The other methods are also valid, in order to give you hands on exposure to both push and pull master model methods, we will go through the Save Bodies technique in this exercise, since it is suited to solids and does not handle surfaces. Right-click on the Solid Bodies folder. (Verify that there are three solid bodies in the folder.) Select Save Bodies.

Name the files to correspond to Bottom, Top and WheelMount, or variations of those names.

Use the Create Assembly panel to assign the parts to an assembly, named appropriately.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

7

Open the assembly.

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The assembly should be open in a window in the background. Open it and examine the parts.

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8

Add features to individual parts.

The assembly is shown in section view here for clarity.

Open the Mouse_Master_ model.SLDPRT part.

Original Shape

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In the loft named Surface Loft1, there is a projected curve named PL Curve, which has a sketch under it named PL Top Profile.

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Make a change to the Master Model.

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Open each part individually and add a .050” Shell feature, removing appropriate faces, and color each part separately to aid identification.

Modified Shape

Edit PL Top Profile.

Holding down the Ctrl key, select the three spline points as shown and drag them all about 1/4”. You may also want to lengthen the arrow circled in the image to the right slightly just to keep the shape of the mouse nice. Exit the sketch and rebuild the part.

10 Open the assembly.

Open the assembly that you created from the split parts.

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Notice that the features have rebuild symbols, so rebuild the assembly by pressing Ctrl+Q. Watch all the parts update in shape.

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11 Save and close all the parts and assembly. 12 Rename the parent part.

Note

Using Windows Explorer, rename the parent part from Mouse_Master_Model.SLDPRT to include your name or initials. Renaming files in Windows Explorer is generally not considered good practice. We do it here to create a problem which we will then repair to demonstrate fixing file management problems.

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13 Set Tools, Options setting. Click Tools, Options, External References. Make sure the setting for Load Referenced Documents is set to All. This will cause the parent

part of a part created by a Save Bodies or Split feature to be automatically opened in the background.

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14 Open the assembly.

15 Rename the bottom part.

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Save and close the assembly and all parts.

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You should get a message that says “Unable to locate the file... Would you like to find it yourself?” to which you should answer Yes. Direct it to the renamed file.

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Use Windows Explorer to rename the MouseBottom part to include your name or initials. This time we are trying to break the link going in the other direction, and see if we can reestablish it.

16 Open the master model.

Open the file Mouse_Master_Model.SLDPRT that was renamed in a previous step.

17 Edit the Save Bodies feature.

This should again bring up the warning message that says it is unable to find the file. Redirect it to the new name for the file.

18 Use SolidWorks Explorer.

The above steps are meant to demonstrate the pain involved with doing file management operations the wrong way. Losing and reattaching references is risky (which is a good reason to do it in training class instead of with production data).

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Start SolidWorks Explorer.

19 Browse to Mouse_Master_Model.SLDPRT.

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In the left panel, browse to the Mouse_Master_Model.SLDPRT that has been renamed.

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20 Rename the part.

Select the Mouse_Master_Model part in the window to the left, and right click it or use the pop-up icon bar to select Rename. Rename the part, removing your name or initials to make it what it was originally.

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21 Rename MouseBottom part. 22 Close SolidWorks Explorer. 23 Open the assembly in SolidWorks.

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Also rename the MouseBottom part to its original name.

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24 Save and close the part.

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Open MouseMasterModelAssembly.SLDASM in SolidWorks and use File, Find References to check for the correct file names.

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Exercise 15: Surface Master Model

Open the part called Iron_Surface_Mas ter.SLDPRT.

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Open an existing model.

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This model of a laundry iron assembly will be created from a surface master model.

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Examine the part to see the various surface bodies. The model is incomplete and has several construction surfaces in it. Notice also that although the features are not named, the bodies are. The bodies will be transferred to other parts, but the features will not, so it is more important for the bodies to be named.

2

Create a new part.

Create a new part and save it as Iron_Housing.SLDPRT.

3

Insert part.

In the new part, click Insert, Part, and select the Iron_Surface_Master part to be inserted into the Iron_Housing. Make sure that the Surface transfer option is checked.

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You will use the same Origin for the parts as was used for the master model.

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Insert the part at the Origin by clicking the Origin with the part attached to the cursor.

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Trim the Main Body surface. Using a Standard Trim, trim

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This enables you to distinguish between surfaces that were brought in from possibly different sources and surface bodies that were created locally in the current part.

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When the named surface bodies come into the new part, they are shown in two different locations. First in the normal Surface Bodies folder at the top of the FeatureManager, and second in a folder under the inserted part feature.

the Main Body with the Handle Trim body as shown.

In a second trim feature, trim the Main Body again, this time using the Spray Trim body.

5

Delete bodies.

Select all but the last body and the body named Heel in the Surface Bodies folder, and press Delete on the keyboard. Click OK to delete the bodies.

Mirror the remaining bodies. Mirror the remaining two bodies

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about the Right reference plane. Check the Knit Surface Bodies option.

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Create a simple lofted surface between the back side of the Main Body and the Heel surface body. This is a straight loft with no end conditions applied. Use the SelectionManager to pick two edges for both profiles and make sure the connector is straight. 8

Knit surfaces together.

9

Apply a fillet. Apply a Fillet of radius .15” to the edge as

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Create a lofted surface.

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At this point there should be three surface bodies. Knit all three of them together.

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shown. Notice that this edge flips convexity, and the fillet also flips convexity, going though a singularity point at the red arrow. Keep this in mind because it may cause problems later.

10

Save the part and put into a new assembly.

Save the part and put it into a new assembly using the Make Assembly from Part/Assembly tool.

Match the part Origin to the assembly Origin. Save the assembly as Iron_Assembly.

11 Create another new part.

Create another new part and save it with the name Iron_Inside_Handle.SLDPRT.

Again insert the Iron_Surface_Master part into it.

12 Trim the Inside Handle.

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Use the Handle Trim surface body to trim the Main Body surface body. Keep the inside of the handle area of the Main Body.

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Use the Control2 surface body to trim the Main Body. The result should look as shown in the image to the right.

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13 Create a second trim feature.

one.

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14 Delete bodies. Delete all the bodies in the Surface Bodies folder except the last

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15 Add a fillet. Add a Variable Radius Fillet to the edge as shown. The outer edge of the fillet has a zero radius, and the inner edge radius is .110”. 16 Mirror the body. Mirror the body about the Right

reference plane. Check the option to Knit Surfaces.

17 Put the part into the assembly.

Save the part, tile the windows (using Window, Tile Vertically), and drag the part into the assembly, dropping it onto the Origin as with the Iron Housing part.

18 Create Spray Nozzle part.

Open a new part and insert the master model part at the Origin. Save the new part as Iron_Spray_Nozzle.

19 Trim the surface.

Use the Spray Trim surface to trim the Main Body, this time keeping the inside piece rather than the outside.

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20 Delete and mirror. Delete all of the bodies in the Surface Bodies folder except for the last one, then mirror the remaining surface body, using the Knit Surfaces option.

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21 Thicken the surface body. Thicken the Spray Nozzle surface body to the inside by .100”

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22 Create an extruded feature.

Open a new sketch on the Front reference plane.

23 Create the spray nozzle hole.

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Create a solid Extrude feature using a From Offset of 2.000” and an end condition of Up To Next. Also apply 5 degrees of draft, using the Draft Outward option.

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Draw a circle centered 2.200” vertically from the Origin with a diameter of .650”.

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Create a sketch on the flat end of the spray nozzle, and draw a circle with a .400” diameter. Create a Through All cut.

24 Chamfer the edge of the hole. Apply a Chamfer .150”x45 to the edge of the hole.

25 Create fillets. Create a Fillet around the top outside of the part with a .025” radius as shown.

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Create a .050” radius Fillet around the edge as shown.

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The final fillet for this part is a Face Fillet with a .040” radius.

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26 Save the part and place it in the assembly.

27 Create Controls part from the master model.

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Insert the Iron_Surface_Master into a new part using Insert, Part. Name the new part Controls.SLDPRT.

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Again tile the windows and drag and drop the part onto the assembly Origin.

28 Delete surface bodies. Delete all the surface bodies except for Controls 1 and Controls

2.

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29 Finish the Controls part. Cap with a Planar surface and Knit the bodies

together.

Apply a .050” fillet to the top edge.

30 Put the part into the assembly.

Save the part as Iron_Controls.SLDPRT and drag it into the assembly as before.

31 Create Base Plate part from the master model.

Create a new part, and save it as Iron_Base_Plate.SLDPRT. Insert the master model part into it, and delete all surface bodies except the Bottom.

32 Move the body.

The Bottom surface body represents the bottom of the plastic housings, not the actual heated plate, but you will need to create the actual heated plate from it. Move the Bottom surface body down by .050” using the Move/Copy

Bodies feature.

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33 Create a ruled surface. Create a Ruled Surface feature using the Taper to Vector option on

two sides of the planar surface as shown. The surface should taper out by 20 degrees, and be .25” long extending down (in the

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negative Y direction), using the Top reference plane as a reference Clear the boxes next to both Trim and Knit and Connecting Surface.

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34 Extend the ruled surfaces. In two separate Extend Surface features, extend the ends of the ruled 35 Trim the extended ruled surfaces. Using a Mutual Trim, trim the corner where the

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extended ruled surfaces overlap.

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surfaces so they can be trimmed nicely.

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Using a second trim feature, this time with the Standard Trim option, use the Right reference plane to trim the overhangs from the two extended ends as shown.

36 Mirror the surface bodies. Mirror the surface bodies about the Right reference plane, using the Knit Surfaces option.

This will leave you with a surface body of the ruled, extended and trimmed bodies as well as a planar surface body.

37 Create a planar surface.

Cap off the bottom of the part with a Planar surface.

Knit together the three surfaces, using the Try to form solid option.

38 Open a new sketch.

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On the Right reference plane, open a new sketch and draw a line in front of the pointed tip of the Base Plate dimensioned as shown. Exit the sketch.

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39 Use the Deform feature. Using the Deform feature, select the model edge as the Initial Curve, and the newly sketched line as the Target Curve.

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Also select the rear face of the plate, shown here in blue as a fixed face.

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Save the part, tile the windows and drag the part into the assembly, with the part Origin coincident with the assembly Origin.

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40 Place the part into the assembly.

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Click OK to accept the feature.

You may have too many windows to display all at once, so minimize a few until only the assembly and the Bottom part remain.

41 Create Heel part from the master model.

Create a new part, and save it as Iron_Heel.SLDPRT. Insert the master model part into it, and delete all surface bodies except the Heel.

42 Mirror and thicken the surface body. Mirror the surface body about the Right reference plane, using the Knit Surfaces option. Thicken the surface by .200” away from the part Origin.

43 Replace the face for the bottom of the Heel.

Open a new sketch on the Top reference plane.

Select the bottom face of the Heel and convert entities. Create a Planar surface from this sketch.

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Use a Replace Face feature to replace the existing face of the bottom of the solid with the new planar surface.

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44 Put the Heel into the assembly.

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Tile the windows and drag the Heel into the assembly, matching the part Origin to the assembly Origin. Note

45 Make changes to the master model.

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Breaking a master model into individual parts and reassembling it is just the beginning of the process. The rest of the process includes the detail features of the individual parts. Many of the parts are only surface models at this point and require substantial work to create a manufacturable solid, and may even need to be broken up further.

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As a final step and with the goal of testing the surface master concept, you will make some changes to the overall outer shape of the Iron and watch the changes propagate through the parts in the assembly. Open the Iron_Surface_Master.SLDPRT again. Edit Sketch1 under Loft1. Change the shape roughly as shown. The changed areas are shown circled.

Original

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Changed

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Move the sharp point and the spline handle leading out of it to give the front pillar of the Housing a bit of a V shape.

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46 Also edit the 3D sketch under the Split Line feature.

47 Update the assembly and parts.

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Save and close the assembly and all parts.

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entities convert 48

B base part 165 bodies move 167 body delete 165, 168 up to 42 boolean 9 boundary 7 boundary surface 130–131

F face delete 41, 54, 57, 129 replace 41, 43, 58 face curves 12 FeatureManager 9 FeatureManager design tree solid bodies folder 89 fill surface 41, 123, 126 folder 9 folders solid bodies 89 Freeform 132

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A add loft section 125 analysis deviation 129

M master model 161 mesh 12 mirrored curve 20 modeling hybrid 17 move bodies 167 move surface 58 move/copy bodies 9 multibody parts creating 7 mutual trim 10

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Numerics 3D curves 87 3D sketches 49

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Index

C configuration 10 construction surface 35 convert entities 43, 48 curvature comb 131 curve intersection 41, 49 mirrored 20 projected 19 curves face 12 through reference points 87 cut with surface 41, 43

I ids 7 import diagnostics 52 repair 52 import surface 58 insert ellipse, partial 84 partial ellipse 84 insert part 161, 165 intersection curve 41, 49 introduction to surfacing 7 K Knit 53 knit 9, 42 surface knit 41 knit surface 88

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D degenerate 13, 99 delete selected faces of a surface or solid 57 delete bodies 165, 168 delete face 11, 41, 54, 129 delete hole 54 derived part 165 developable 20 deviation analysis 129, 131 Display Pane 10

H hole, delete 54 hybrid 41–42 hybrid modeling 17

E ellipse, partial 84

Advanced Part Modeling

L layout sketch 18 loft 128 add section 125 surface 124 surfaces 60

O offset 41 overbuild 8, 166

P parameter 12 part base 165 derived 165 insert 165 partial ellipse 84 perspective 18 picture sketch 17 prismatic 19, 41 projected curve 19 R RealView 122 rebuild verification 20 repair import 52 replace face 41, 43, 58 rollback 10 S scribe 127 SelectionManager 129 sew surface, See knit surface singularity 13, 35, 53, 98 sketch 3D 49 convert entities 43, 48 layout 18 partial ellipse 84 split entities 127 sketch picture 17

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solid bodies folder 89 split 161 split entities 124, 127 surface 9 boundary 130 cut with 41, 43 degenerate 13, 99 developable 20 fill 41, 123, 126 knit 9, 42 loft 124, 128 offset 41 thicken 41 trim 10, 44, 123–124, 167 untrim 14, 55 up to 41–42 surface, extruded extrude 7 surface, planar 8 surfaces deleting a face 57 importing 58 knit 88 loft 60 moving 58 replacing a face 58 symmetry 19

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Index

T tangency 129 thicken 10, 41, 44 tools check 11 trim 10 trim 9 trim surface 44, 123–124, 167 U untrim 14 untrim surface 55 up to body 42 up to surface 41–42 u-v 12

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W-Z watertight. 7 wrap 127 zebra stripe 131

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V verification on rebuild 20

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