Page 120 - Mastering SolidWorks

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inferencing in Sketch 89

The Add Relations tool is for those times when you have to manually add relations to sketch
elements. It is generally better to use the Automatic Sketch Relations tool; but when you’re
editing, this is not always possible. (See Figure 3.34.) Select the sketch entity and pick
the relation.

Figure 3.34
manually adding sketch
relations to
selected entities

Automatic Relations is a setting that is turned on by default. When you are sketching, it
displays relations that are suggested by the sketch (such as tangent or coincident) as small yellow
icons attached to the cursor (inferences are separate and are covered in the next section of this
chapter) and adds those relations to the current sketch entity. Some relations displayed as small
icons on the cursor do not have the yellow background, and they are not added as relations to
the sketch. Figure 3.32 shows examples of automatic relations being added as sketch entities
are created.
The Scan Equal tool searches an active drawing sketch for entities of equal length or radius. It
will then set Equal sketch relations for those entities.
Again, the Isolate Changed Dimensions tool is used only in drawings. This identifies any
dimensions that have changed since the drawing was last saved. This will be covered in a
later chapter.

Inferencing in Sketch

Inferencing refers to the blue dotted lines that display in Sketch mode when the cursor aligns with
endpoints, centerpoints, or the origin. Inferencing creates sketch relations only when the symbol
shown on the sketch cursor has a yellow background.