- [Instructor] As we continue our journey
through our Sketch tools inside of SOLIDWORKS.
The next thing on our list is the Rectangle tool.
Now I already have a sketch opened up here
and up here in the Ribbon bar,
you can see I've got a corner rectangle.
And if you'll click on the little dropdown,
you can see we've got a whole bunch of types of rectangles
we can create.
So clicking on corner rectangle here.
Choose the Front Plane.
If I click once where I want to start,
I can click again where I want to end.
And it just creates a simple rectangle.
Now notice how SOLIDWORKS is doing this for us.
It creates four basic lines
and then it just adds a vertical relationship here,
here and a horizontal there and there.
So what that means is I can never take that rectangle
and rotate it around, right?
Because this line is always going to be horizontal.
This one's always going to be vertical.
So if you did want to try to modify this,
you might have to delete one of these relationships
and then I can move this line over here like that
and modify the shape by removing a relationship.
Now, if you did want to rotate it around,
a better way way to create that rectangle
might be the second option down here.
So over here I have a center rectangle
or a three point rectangle.
So center rectangle, you're going to click in the center
where you want it to be and then click again
where you want it to end.
Now, in this case, we have the same conditions, right?
We have this line and this line are both vertical
and these are horizontal.
And then we've got a couple of construction lines
going back and forth
and we're snapping to that midpoint.
So I can't really rotate that one either.
So let's go take a look at the next option here
which is the three point corner rectangle.
This time, I'm going to click where I want to start,
define where that first leg is going to be
and then define where the other leg is going to be.
So this one, it's still a rectangle
but notice how SOLIDWORKS created this rectangle.
It's a little different, right?
You're saying, these two lines are parallel
and this line here is perpendicular with this other one.
So these two purple lines and same thing over here.
So it's creating the rectangle in a different manner.
Now, if I click on one of these points here, I can say,
hey, I'd like to anchor that or fix that point.
And then what I can do is I can grab another point
and I can slide it around
or you could even create something like a dimension.
So I want to make a dimension from here,
over to here and change that to like 30.
And notice the rectangle rotates around.
So that's at 30 degrees.
So we have a little bit more control
and power using that dimensioning tool
and by choosing the correct type of rectangle
that you want to create.
Okay, now, there's nothing saying that we actually
have to use the rectangle tool at all, right?
I could just grab the regular line command,
draw the line here, snap to vertical, snap to horizontal,
come up here, snap to vertical and again,
snap back over there.
And again, we've got a nice rectangle right?
Here it is.
So why use the rectangle command?
Well, basically just because it gives you
a little bit less work to do, right?
It's creating a lot of that for you
and it generally works pretty well.
Let's go ahead and take a look
at a couple of different rectangles here.
The next one's going to be that three point center rectangle.
This time I'm going to choose where I want to start the rectangle
to find the first angle.
And notice a little heads up display.
It's saying the distance or the D and as well as the angle.
Click there and then drag it out.
There's that one.
Pretty straightforward.
And over here, when you're creating rectangles by the way,
is you have the ability to switch
between the different styles.
How do you want to define from the corners
or from the midpoints, right?
You can define how things are created here.
You can add some relationships,
you can switch it to construction, right?
And then you can define the parameters
that's all available here
while you're creating that rectangle as well.
And then let's take a look
at the very last type of rectangle
which is really not a rectangle at all.
It is a parallelogram.
So in this case, click over here,
define the first leg and then define what that angle is
to create the parallelogram.
And there he is.
So a bunch of different ways to create rectangles.
Again, a rectangle is only four lines
with some relationships between them
to define what that rectangle is.
So you can use the rectangle command
but if you're doing something special,
you can always just use that regular line command
and add some relationships on your own.