Page 328 - Mastering SolidWorks

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300 CHAPTER 9 PAtterning And Mirroring

If you are creative with the sketch relations you apply to a sketch, you can obtain some pretty
exotic results from patterns using the Vary Sketch option. Instances To Vary also is available in
the Circular Pattern, with comparable functionality to the Linear Pattern described earlier.
Using a Curve-Driven Pattern
The Curve Driven Pattern command does just what it sounds like: It drives a pattern along a
curve. The curve could be a line, an arc, or a spline. It can be an edge, a loop, a 2D or 3D sketch,
or even a real curve feature. An interesting thing about a curve-driven pattern is that it can have
a Direction 2—and Direction 2 can be a curve. This pattern type is one of the most interesting and
has many options.
For an entire sketch to be used as a curve, the sketch must not have any sharp corners: all the
entities must be tangent. This could mean using sketch fillets or a fit spline. The example shown
in Figure 9.19 was created using sketch fillets. This pattern uses the Equal Spacing option, which
spaces the number of instances evenly around the curve. It also uses the Offset Curve option,
which maintains the patterned feature’s relationship to the curve throughout the pattern, as if an
offset of the curve goes through the centroids of each patterned instance. The Align To Seed
option is also used, which keeps all the pattern instances aligned in the same direction.

Figure 9.19
A curve-driven pattern
using sketch fillets