Page 233 - Mastering SolidWorks

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204 CHAPTER 6 GettinG More froM Your SketcheS

Using Planar Path Segments
Some path segments that are allowed in 3D sketches can be used only if they are sketched on a
plane. These entities include circles and arcs and can include splines, although splines are not
required to be on a plane. I’ve already mentioned that to sketch on a 3D plane (a plane created
within the 3D sketch), you can simply double-click the plane.
To sketch on a standard plane or reference geometry plane, you can double-click the plane or
Ctrl+click the border of the plane with the Sketch Entity icon active. The space handle moves,
indicating that newly created sketch entities will lie in the selected plane.

Defining Dimensions
Dimensions in 2D sketches can represent the distance between two points, or they can represent
the horizontal or vertical distance between objects. In 3D sketches, dimensions between points
are always the straight-line distance. If you want to get a dimension that is horizontal or vertical,
you should create the dimension between a plane and a point (the dimension is always measured
normal to the plane) or between a line and a point (the dimension is always measured perpen-
dicular to the line). For this reason, reference sketch geometry is often used freely in 3D sketches,
in part to support dimensioning.

Using 3D Sketch Summary
Three-dimensional sketches are extremely powerful for many different applications. The problem
is that they are also limited in some of their capabilities, and they do not work exactly like 2D
sketches. You will benefit from knowing how to use 3D sketches at some point, even if it isn’t
every day.

Tutorial: Editing and Copying

This tutorial guides you through some common sketch-relation editing scenarios and using some
of the Copy, Move, and Derive tools. Follow these steps to learn about editing and copy-
ing sketches:

1. Open the part named Chapter6 Tutorial1.sldprt from the download materials for
Chapter 6. This part has several error flags on sketches. In cases where there are many
errors, it is best to roll the part back and go through the errors one by one.
2. Right-click the name of the file at the top of the FeatureManager, click the Tree Display
option, and select Show Flat Tree (Ctrl+T). This is a function that allows you to show the
features in a straight history list, without features consuming sketches.

3. Drag the Rollback bar from just after the last fillet feature to just after Sketch3. Figure 6.22
shows before and after views for the rollback.