Lynda Course Details

SolidWorks is the world leader in 3D software for product development and design. Start creating manufacturing-ready parts and assemblies, as well as detailed drawings and bills of materials. In this course, author Gabriel Corbett shows how to create 2D sketches that will become the basis for your 3D models. You'll use the Extrude and Revolve tools to turn 2D sketches into 3D parts, then create more complex geometry with sweep and lofts. Then learn how to use the cut features to remove material and shape parts, and use mirroring, patterning, and scaling to modify parts. Next, you'll combine parts into movable assemblies and subassemblies. Finally, you'll create accurately annotated drawings, complete with itemized bills of materials that relate the final parts and assemblies to a manufacturer.

Topics include: Creating your first part Starting a new sketch Adding and removing relationships and dimensions Sketching polygons Creating offset geometry Moving, copying, and rotating elements Working with planes, axes, and the coordinate system Using Revolve and Loft to create 3D objects Trimming with the Revolve, Loft, and Sweep cuts Creating smooth and angled corners with fillets and chamfers Designing with sketch blocks Working with subassemblies Creating threaded parts Integrating Excel to manage design tables Adding dimension notations to a drawing Rendering an image of a part or assembly

WelcomeHi, I'm Gabriel Corbett and welcome to SolidWorks 2014 Essential Training. SolidWorks is the world leader in 3D modeling software, used for product design and development. In this course, we'll look at the methods and tools for creating manufacturing ready parts and assemblies alongwith detailed drawings and bills of materials. We'll start with the basic sketch

tools to create twodimensional sketches, that will become the foundation of 3D objects. Next we'll look at modelling3D features by extruding or evolving sketches into 3D parts.

Followed by creating more complex objects using the Sweep and Loft Tools. Next we'll cover cut features, holes, and the Hole Wizard, to create uniform standard hole sizes, and that's just the beginning. We'll explore more advanced modeling techniques by using the Patterning, Mirror, and Equation Tools. Then we'll cover the best practice for putting parts together into assemblies and building robust structures. Finally, we'll see how to create drawings that relate the final parts andassemblies to a manufacturer, complete with an itemized bill of materials and drawing notes.Now, let's get started with SolidWorks 2014 Essential Training.Using the exercise filesIf you're a premium member of the lynda.com library you have access to the exercise files used throughout this course. These files can be found on the exercise files tab, of the main course page. You can go ahead and download those files to the desktop. Go ahead and open up that folder, and you can see we have all the different exercise files arranged per chapter. If you open up one of the chapters you can see inside of there each movie corresponds to the exercise file we're going to be using. And if it's a finished version I'm going to end it with a .fin. If we go to a different chapter, if we have more than a few files for each one of those movies.I'll go ahead and put them in a corresponding folder with that same movie title. If you don't have access to the exercise files, you can follow along from scratch or with your own assets. Now let's get started.Launching SolidWorks for the first timeSolidworks is the world leader in 3D solid modelling. Solidworks is a history and feature based parametric modelling program. The software uses a simple set of tools and commands to assist you in designing the next great product. Let's first go over opening the software and then we'll tour the interface. Under desktop, you should see an icon that says, Solidworks 2014 and you can either have the 64-bit or the 32-bit edition depending on the software you have installed.If you don't see it on the desktop you can go to the Start menu, and I have it as the first icon here. Go ahead and click on that and that should launch the program.To get started, first I'm going to come up here to the Solidworks logo and directly next to that is a little arrow. If I click on that arrow, notice there's a little File menu that pops up, and if I go to the very end of that, if I click on the pushpin. It will stay up. I like to sometimes get into these File menus

and actually open files from there, so it makes it really easy. To get started, the easiest way is actually to click on this blank sheet of paper called New. When this dialog box opens up, notice we've got three options. We've got a part, an assembly, or a drawing. And those are three different modes that SolidWorks can actually operate in.Most of the time you're going to start with parts and you're going to take those parts, you're going to assemble those together and then we can make drawings of either parts or assemblies. Let's choose Part, click on OK, and launch the program. Now we have the full interface available. On the top, you can see we have what's called the ribbon bar. And the ribbon bar has all these different tabs. You can click through the different tabs to get the various tools that are available in different modes. We're primarily going to be using Features and Sketch. Directly below that is the Feature Manager. The Feature Manager is going to control all the different features we go through when we build an assembly or part and they'll build one ontop of each other directly in this area here.Also in these tabs, which you're not going to use quite as much, is the Property Manager, Configuration Manager. Dimension Expert and the Display Manager. We're really not going to use those too much, but I just wanted to point out what they are and where they are. Let's go back to the Features Manager, which we're going to be using all the time. Over here one the right, you can see, we have what's called the flyout bars. And if I click on one of them, notice, this whole little drawer pops up here and it has various tools available to us. Over here I can open a new document, I can view tutorials, I can even connect with local user groups.There's a lot of nice resources that are avilable from that tab. Directly below that is the Design Library. And this is where I can store commonly used parts, or assemblies, or drawings, or annotations, or just about anything in the library and I can drag and drop those into my designs as needed. Below that is the standard file explorer. And, again, I can open recent documents or open things maybe on the desktop. And, I've got a couple other options here. I've got the Appearances tab, and I have the Custom Properties tab. And we'll be getting into those later.But, for right now, I just wanted to point out where they're located.If you come down to the lower right hand corner of the screen, you can see an IPS icon down here. If you click on that, you'll notice it shows inch, pound, second, and these are your basic units you're going to be using in the software. The most common are millimeters or inches, soyou can either switch between metric or imperial units. In this course here we are primarily going to be using inches but just in case you are working on design and the

feature, it happens to be in millimeters. You can quickly switch between the two. If you need a little more inter-kit control over the units and the size as in things like that. You can click on the Edit Document units and you can really change anything you want there.And last thing I want to point out is, these little icons here on the top of the screen. So if you have a model open, allows you to zoom to fit, this one allows you to zoom to area. You can look at your previous view. You can section the model. You can look at all the various viewer orientations. You can change the way you look at the model from shaded with edges all the way to wireframe. You can change the appearances. You can change the backgrounds. And you can change the way the graphics are presented on the screen. A lot of these really don't make a lot of sense quite yet because we don't have a model to actually look at. But I just want to point out again where these are located on the screen and how we can find them in the future.You should now understand where most of the tools and options are located in the software.And how to navigate in a 3D environment.Understanding the 3D worldSketches are the fundamental building blocks in all Solidwork features. Features build upon each other to create your model. You can think of features like Legos. Each one has a size, shape, and location. Those features can be combined together to create anything you can imagine. However, it all starts with a sketch, and sketching is the most important skill in Solidworks. Before we can start sketching, let's learn about the drawing environment. First we'll start by navigating and working in the 3D space. You can see here I've got several of the planes turned on. Over here on the left, you can see we have three fundamental planes and that's ourfundamental building block where we're going to start our very first sketch to start building our model.I have them all turned on and I can turn them on or off by clicking on with my left mouse button.And I get this little in context window that pops up. So I can either start a sketch. I can hide or show the plane. In this case here, I'm just going to hide it. And I can do the same thing for all of those by clicking with my left mouse button, and click on the Goggles. And just hide all those.And we have a blank work space. A lot of times when you're first getting started in Solidworks,it's kind of hard to visualize, so it's better to kind of turn those on or at least turn one or two of them on, so you can see where you're actually going to be drawing. And starting with when you first get started.

The other thing it can show is the origin. The origin's really important. That's kind of the center of our world. We gotta make sure we're tying into the origin because that's the only place that Solidwoks really knows where it is at this point in time. So make sure you are showing the origin or at least using the origin, or you can hide if you need to and go back and forth. The other thing is up here under the View tab, notice here's all the things I can see in my world. So if I hide planes, I don't see anything at all. So just in case you're looking at your environment and you're not seeing the planes, make sure you go up to View, and make sure you're showing planes, make sure you're also showing origins.When you're ready to get started, you're going to choose one of these planes, for instance, the right plane or the front plane. Click on it, and you can come up here to start a sketch here, or you can come up here to the Sketch tab, click on Sketch, or you can even click on one of those planes here, and the very first icon is Sketch. If you do that, it spins it around so you're looking straight at that plane, and now you're in the sketch mode. You know you're in the sketch mode because over here on the right hand upper corner, you see you have two icons.One here is called Exit Sketch, and the other one's called Cancel. Most of the time you're going to be using the Exit Sketch button when you're done with you sketch, you want to get back into the environment.Click on that. If you want to cancel everything you did, go ahead and click on the red -X. Let's go back to the environment and spin it around. And if things get a little bit wakky, you couldalways click on this first icon here to zoom to fit. Which puts it right in the center of the screen.So you could straighten your model and you're ready to start building. You should now understand how to interact with the drawing environment and the relevance and the origin in the three fundamental planes.