Read My Latest #SOLIDWORKS Modeling Blog

As published on SolidNotes:

We haven’t heard from Sol and Sal since last month. I wonder what they’re up to?

“Get a load of this, Sol!”

Sol arched an eyebrow and glanced toward his sidekick Sal with the usual dose of trepidation. “Yes?”

“This guy Cody Pendzich is amazing. Did you see his “How It’s Made” blog post on designing a cell phone case?”

“I did see that, Sal! His methods for offsetting surfaces are powerful techniques that everyone using a hybrid modeler like SOLIDWORKS should know. But his method for moving faces to create a chamfer not otherwise calculable just blew me away!”

“That’s not easy to do, Sol!” said Sal.

“What, using the Move Face command? Why, it’s not that….”

“No, Sol, for someone to teach you something you don’t already know about SOLIDWORKS!”

“We can always learn something new, can’t we? In fact, I’d like to show you how I modeled that very same part!”

Sal pulled up a chair.

“Well the approach I took was to shell the part out, but I knew it might be a little trial and error deciding on the right faces to remove. So, to avoid repetition, I saved a selection set out of the topmost faces and the earphone and USB jack faces.”

“Ooh! How do you do that, Sol?”

“Well, it’s exceedingly simple, Sal. After windowing the surfaces, I right-clicked and selected ‘Save Selection’ like you see below.”

“Down below, Sol?”

“Yes, in Figure 1, Sal.”

FIG 1

“I see,” said Sol.

“And then, from here on out, I simply select the entire set from the Feature Manager, like you see below. And by that I mean, Figure 2, Sal.”

FIG 2

“Wow, that is a major PROTIP, Sol!”

“Glad you think so, little buddy.”

“I still haven’t quite figured out how you’re going to do this with a Shell command, Sol.”

“Here’s the secret, Sal. You can create outward shells in SOLIDWORKS. You can see the option in Figure 3.”

FIG 3

“GET OUT!” squealed Sal. “And so your result would be a lot like Cody’s approach of offsetting and then thickening a surface!”

“And what would you do next, Sal?”

“Um, look down at Figure 4?”

FIG 4

“Well, I was thinking you’d finish up the model kind of like Cody did.”

“Oh, yeah. Remind me again, Sol, where you learn all these great tips and ideas?”

“Why, Graphics Systems’ SolidNotes blog, Sal. Graphics Systems’ SolidNotes.”

You can see several more of Sam’s somewhat serious series of Sol and Sal’s serial spree of SOLIDWORKS shenanigans here and here and here and here….

By: Sam Hochberg, CSWE, Applications Engineer