Page 53 - Mastering SolidWorks

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edItIng deSIgn Intent 21

Best Practice
It is widely considered best practice to fully define all sketches to control how the sketch reacts to
potential changes.

Parametric relations within a sketch control how the sketch reacts to changes from dimensions
or relations within the sketch or by some other factor from outside the sketch. Other factors can
drive the sketch as well, such as equations, other model geometry that is external to the sketch,
and even geometry from another part in an assembly, as you’ll see later.

Understanding Design Intent

Design intent is a phrase that you will hear often among SolidWorks users. I like to think of it as
“design for change.” Design intent means that when you put the parametric sketch relations and
dimensions together with the feature intelligence, you can build models that react to change in
predictable ways. This gives you a great deal of control over changes.
An example of design intent could be a statement that describes general aspects that help
define the design of a part, such as “This part is symmetrical, with holes that line up with Part A
and thick enough to be flush with Part B.” From this description, and the surrounding parts, it is
possible to re-create the part in such a way that if Part A or Part B changes, the part being
described updates to match.
Some types of changes can cause features to fail or sketch relations to conflict. In most
situations, SolidWorks has ample tools for troubleshooting and editing that you can use to repair
or change the model. In these situations, it is often the design intent itself that is changing.

Best Practice
It is considered best practice to edit existing entities rather than delete. deleting often causes prob-
lems with items that have relations to the entities deleted. many users find it tempting to delete
anything that has an error on it, but you should avoid this practice.

Editing Design Intent
One of the most prominent aspects of design in general is change. I have often heard it said that
you may design something once, but you will change it a dozen times. You will find this to be
true with both sketching and 3D modeling. Design intent is sometimes thought of as a static
concept that controls changing geometry. However, design intent itself often changes, thus
requiring the way in which the model reacts to geometric changes to also change. Fortunately,
SolidWorks has many tools to help you deal with changing requirements.