- [Instructor] SolidWorks is the world leader
in 3D solid modeling software.
SolidWorks is both a history
and feature-based parametric modeling program.
The software uses a simple set of tools and commands
to help you design parts, assemblies and drawings.
On your screen you should see an icon that looks like this,
double click on that and that should fire up SolidWorks.
Give that a second to load.
You may see a splash screen at this point in time,
if not that's okay.
And then the SolidWorks program
or interface should load up here in a second.
And we can start looking at the individual components
that make up the software.
Now there's actually three different modes
inside of SolidWorks.
The first one is the part mode,
we have the assembly mode as well as the drawing mode.
So this is the kind of the little home screen here,
If you can click on this little home icon here,
that'll bring that up.
This allows us to start a brand new part
or take a look at some of the recent documents
we have down here.
We can take a look at some of the recent folders
and as well as some other resources
like what's new in my SolidWorks and things like that.
And notice that I am signed in right up here
and you can sign into your account
and have access to some of the resources there as well.
You also have tabs for recent learn and alerts up there.
And notice these are the basic parts.
And so everything inside of SolidWorks
starts with a template.
So there's a basic template that loads with SolidWorks
but you can create your own templates
that is defined for maybe the company you work for
or specific presets.
So like if it's in-the-inch system
or maybe the metric system.
So you can set up as many templates as you'd like
for either the part, assembly or drawing environments.
But if you just click on this part environment here
it just fires up the default template
and let me jump into the environment
with the default tools.
Now because SolidWorks is configurable
your environment might not look identical to mine,
'cause I have customized it or I have done some things
and you can customize it
or maybe even the company you work for
has a standard environment that has been customized for you.
So if you don't see everything exactly the same way
I'm seeing it, it's because I've customized a few things
but let me cover some of the basics of the environment.
So up here at the top is your standard file, edit menus
which are very similar on almost all programs.
So inside of there, you'll see,
you know save, open and things like that
and the other things.
And if you don't see this,
you can click on this little pin at the very end here,
which will pin that out.
Sometimes it'll just collapse over like this
and then you'll see that little, we'll see it going,
see that little tiny little fly out.
If you go over that it flies out
and you can pin it out if you want to keep it out.
I like to keep that out.
Next you have this little welcome screen
or I call it the home icon, which we just looked at.
You've got the new document.
You've got the open document, save, print and so on.
Over here is rebuild, you've got file properties
as well as some options.
Directly below that is what we call the ribbon.
So everything in here is called the ribbon
and if you click on these tabs
and notice that ribbon changes.
And notice we only have these three tabs here at the bottom
you can actually add as many tabs as you'd like
with the different tool sets we have available.
So don't confuse yourself by adding too many in there
but if you wanted to you could right click
on any one of those tabs,
come down here to tabs and you can see here
the available different tool bars you can turn on.
So if I wanted to turn on surfaces, for instance,
turn that on.
You can get a brand new tab called surfaces
and you've got all the tools inside of there.
If you've got one you don't want to see,
right click on it, go back to tabs
and go ahead and just turn that right off.
And same thing in that menu there under tabs or tool bars,
you can turn on individual tool bars.
Notice over here on the right hand side here
I've got some of these different tools, right?
That is a tools toolbar or the task plane or view.
So these are all things you can turn on or off
just by clicking on the tabs
and if you want to play some on the screen.
I like to add this one over here on the right
because I like to use the measure command a lot.
And a few of the other tools happen to be in there.
And depending on what I'm doing,
I might turn on like the blocks toolbar.
So I have easy access to those tools.
You can still find 'em from up here
or search form up here under search commands,
but sometimes it's nice to have a nice little icon.
Now over here on the left hand side of the screen
is the feature manager.
That is kind of the bin where we're going to keep everything
that builds our model, right?
So I told you, this is a history based modeler.
So as you build features
they're going to happen one after another.
And you can roll the history bar back to go back in time
and see how that model is created
and it's all going to start here.
So you have three fundamental planes in SolidWorks
you have the front plane, the top plane and the right plane
and everything in SolidWorks
has to start on one of those planes.
So you have to start a sketch, draw some shape out
let's say it's a rectangle
and then you're going to extrude that or revolve that
or sweep that to turn that into a solid.
And once you have that solid,
now we're going to start either on
one of those three fundamental planes
or one of the planes of the part you just created.
So if you have a block, I can choose any of the faces
on the block, or I can go back to one of these planes.
And again these planes are the fundamental planes
that are always there.
And as you start creating features,
they'll show up directly below here in this list.
And this list can get really long
with a lot of things you can build.
We're going to be getting into that
as we go through the course.
Now up here at the top of the screen
is a lot of your view controls.
So you have this like zoom to fit,
you have zoom to area, previous view.
And it's a little hard to show these right now
because we don't really have thing to zoom into
but they're available right here at the top of the screen
same thing with section view.
And we'll be learning these tools
as we go through the course,
same thing with your view orientations
and things like that if you want to look at wire frame
or shaded, those are all right here at the top of the screen
I can also do colors, backgrounds,
all kinds of things right up here at the top of the screen.
And of course we're going to be going through
and using those as we go through the course.
Over here on the right,
notice I did tell you about,
I have a couple tool bars just turned on here,
and if you want to grab those
you can actually just move those around.
So here's my tools, toolbar and if you don't really like it,
you can just close it out, no problem.
And if it doesn't show up in your instance,
that's okay, because again, I had it loaded up
and if you don't, that's okay, you can always add it back in
and then move it wherever you'd like.
Same thing with the ribbon bar,
you can move the ribbon and over to the right
or the left or the bottom.
It's configurable environment,
so things might look a little different
on your environment.
But these little tabs over here,
so I have SolidWorks resources,
I have the design library, I've got file explorer
and I have drawings, all kinds of things you can get
to over here that are just nice resources.
So this library one is the most important one
that I like to use.
And you can actually store things in the design library.
That means like sketches or parts or assemblies.
You can just drag and drop those into the design library
and you have those available to you
anytime you're working in a design.
Something like a piece of a hardware
like a screw or a nut you're using all the time,
throw it in the design library,
you're building assembly,
you need to screw things together, grab that screw
pull into the assembly and made it all together
and you should be good to go.
So those are your kind of three main environments
as far as the ribbon, the feature manager
and the library tools over here on the right.
And then down here at the bottom,
you had a couple of things like this IPS.
That happens to be the system that we're working in.
So that's inch, pound, second.
If you click on this little fly out right here
you can easily switch from millimeter, gram, second
to inch, pound, second, or any of these other things
and if that's not what you're looking for,
you can always click on edit document units
and that will open up this dialogue box
which gives you all kinds of options here
which is the same thing as you get up here under options
at this little gear eye kind of the right top
and you can switch your units from inches to millimeters
or whatever you want
if you want to modify how many decimal places
you're looking at those are all available here.
I don't want to get too far into that right now.
I just want to show you the main work environment
that we're looking at here.
And again, this is just the part environment.
We also have an assembly environment,
as well as a drawing environment,
which all look pretty similar.
They'll have a ribbon bar
and they'll have a feature manager
but they're going to have different things
in that feature manager for instance
because we're going to be focusing on assembling things
together in assembly and then the drawing of course
will be working on making drawings.
But overall these are the main components
that you're going to see in all the environments.
Let's go ahead and start creating our first part.