- There are multiple ways for creating slots
inside of SolidWorks.
To get into and learn about them,
let's go ahead and create a sketch,
which I've already done.
Head up here to the sketch toolbar
and right over here you can see I've got the straight slot.
And if you click on the little tool down here
I've got the straight slot.
I've got the centerpoint straight slot.
I've got the 3 point arc slot
as well as the centerpoint arc slot.
So let's start with the very first one here,
pretty straight forward.
Click where you want to start,
click where you want to end,
and then define what the radius is,
or the size or width of the slot.
And notice over here on the left,
you can see the different slot types right over here.
And if you hit the "a" key,
you can switch between the different styles of those
and how you'd like to add dimensions, right?
So over here, you can automatically add these in.
Click where you want to go,
click where you want to end,
type it in.
And by default it automatically added those dimensions
because I clicked on it over there.
And if you want to change those of course,
just click on them.
3.0, change that one here.
Let's change this one to one inch.
So I'm just double clicking on them and opening them up.
And that allows me to define the size of the slot.
So there's the first one.
All right the next guy, let's go over here.
And say the centerpoint straight slot.
Start where you want the center to be.
Drag out your line whatever angle you want,
click once and then click again to define the size.
And notice we're still getting those dimensions.
If I didn't want that go ahead and turn that off
right over here.
Now I can switch to another style.
Over here is the 3 point arc slot.
So click where you want to start,
click where you want to end,
define the radius here,
and then define the size of the slot.
All right.
And then the very last one here is the 3 point.
Click here,
and then define how much of a circle you'd like to have.
Click again and then define that shape.
I also want to cover one more very sneaky way
and cool way to create a slot.
And that is just using a regular line command.
So here's my line command.
I've got a line and we haven't really covered this yet
but soon we're going to be learning about offset entities.
So if you click on offset entities,
you can click on that line right there.
Notice its offsetting it to one direction
and you can actually choose to go by directional.
So both sides and click on cap ends.
And now we have something
that looks exactly like a regular slot.
I can define the size,
and then I can make that base geometry,
construction geometry.
Click okay,
and there you have yet another slot.
So a couple different ways to do that.
And again, it's pretty powerful tool,
inside the SolidWorks,
multiple different to create them.
Always follow those good design practices
of tying everything back into the origin,
and making sure your sketches are fully defined.
But now you have several different ways
for creating slots in SolidWorks.