- Equation driven curves allow you to define
a function that will determine
the y-value based upon the x-value calculation.
To get started, let's go ahead
and start a sketch on the front plane
and come up here under the spline tool,
you can see the dropdown.
We have equation driven curve right over here,
and click on that.
And right over here, I have the equation itself,
so it's going to say y based upon x,
so I have to put something in here that is related to x.
So let's try x
squared.
Okay, and starting at 0,
and let's go up here to 5.
Alright, let's try that out,
and right there,
we can quickly see that we were able to create this curve,
on the screen,
that is that equation.
So it's x squared is equal to y
and that's the curve that you get.
Now, we can also change that.
We can say,
y is equal to the sin
of x,
for instance,
and right over here,
notice the curve does change.
Now I start getting a sin curve over here,
and if I just change this value over here to maybe like 20,
we get some waves of our sin curve,
so you can put anything you want in this equation,
all based upon x,
to create or calculate the y-value.
And notice these all start at the 0 point,
but of course you could
change
that value or that position,
by like adding something to it at the end.
So you say y is equal to sin of x plus 10,
which then would move that curve up here.
Now we can also switch over here to parametric.
Now parametric is basing the equation on a t-value,
so let's get rid of what we have in there right now.
And we can just say t,
a little t here,
and a t over there,
and you get a straight line,
or you could say this t here is going to be squared.
And see what happens there,
so now you can get a curve that looks like that.
And of course we don't go quite that high.
So you can use this a whole bunch.
So if you want to use an x and y, all based on t,
or
a y-value based on x,
you got a lot of control
over this equation driven curve inside of SOLIDWORKS.
And, you know, I actually have used this,
very recently, on creating a reflector for a light.
And we took,
an equation actually was given to me
from one of my other vendors,
and they said, hey, we'd like to create this in SOLIDWORKS,
how can we create it?
They were actually able to generate that equation
out of their software,
I plugged it directly in here,
and we created the shape, did a revolve,
and we had our reflector.
So it's a really powerful tool inside of SOLIDWORKS,
for working with equations
and bringing 'em in from other softwares,
or just creating something yourself.