- [Instructor] The circular pattern tool works very similar
to the linear pattern tool;
however, we need an access to rotate around.
So let me head up here under features, come over here
to where linear pattern is and click on a little dropdown,
you can see here, we've got a circular pattern
directly below that, go ahead and choose that one here.
My direction or my access of rotation has to be right here.
So two things I can do here.
One is, I can come up here to the view
and I can turn on view temporary axis.
As soon as I do that, notice this little,
right in here, I get this axis.
So if you didn't have an edge there,
you could choose that axis,
but we have an edge, so we can use either one.
Let's go ahead and choose that little line right there.
And as far as the angle, I can define the angle here,
as well as the quantity.
And the next thing I need to do is choose the feature
or body that I'd like to pattern.
So let's go ahead and start with features;
and the feature I'd like to pattern
is going to be this little counter sunk screw hole.
So there it is.
And notice automatically I get one more right over here.
And of course I can add more and more and more
as I go around that part.
And if you wanted to, you could say equal spacing
but in that case, we've got a bunch of holes
that are not going to be actually on the part.
So it's probably not the right choice for this design,
but you could easily make them all equal spaced
if you did have a full bolt circle
that you were trying to create.
Let's go ahead and change that back to instant spacing,
as you can see there, click okay,
and there you have it, very simple and easy to use
that we are able to create all that geometry that quickly.
Now I want to point out one of the things.
So this is a regular circular pattern of a feature.
What if you wanted a pattern, this entire part, like a body?
How could we do that?
Well, let me show you how to do it.
So first thing we need to do is create ourselves a line
or an axis, and I'm going to choose this face right here,
and I'm going to start a sketch on it,
and I'm going to just going to draw a random line out here, right?
That's all we need is a line to create something
that we can rotate around.
So here's my part.
Now let's go back over here to features
and let's come down here to circular pattern.
What do I want to rotate around?
Well, I want to rotate around that line
right there that you created.
And what do I want to pattern?
Oh, I want to choose a body this time.
I'm going to choose this entire body.
Wow, check that out!
Right, so now instead of instant spacing,
let's go over here to equal spacing.
And we don't want 12 because we want them to touch
but we can get these pretty close,
and we can easily pattern all those things around there.
Think about making like a cool logo or a cool cutout
in laser cutting and just taking a simple shape
like this little Pac-Man shape and rotating it around.
And next thing you know,
you've got all this cool shape that quickly.
You can use it for creating shapes like this
but you can also use it for cuts, right,
we can pattern a cut or rotate a cut around.
So a lot of things you can do with circular patterns
and it's definitely a really cool thing,
and you can create some really neat, intricate geometry
by using a simple shape and just patterning it around.
So definitely take a look at this tool.
It's a great tool inside of SolidWorks.