- [Instructor] Blocks are non-solving sketch entities
that can be used throughout your design.
Now, before you can actually have a block,
we need to create a block.
And right here on my screen,
you can see I've got a fairly complicated sketch
which is a cutout for a motherboard.
Now, I want to take all these sketch entities here
and turn them into a block that I can then cut
out of a piece of sheet metal
that I'm going to use somewhere else in my design.
To do that, we need to make sure
we have the Block toolbar turned on.
Now, right over here,
I have it docked to the right-hand side of my screen.
If you don't have that turned on,
right-click anywhere up here, come over here to Toolbars,
and come down here to Block
to make sure you do turn on the Block toolbar.
Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to window over
all these sketch entities here,
and then come over here to the very top icon
which is Make Block, click on that one there.
It's going to grab all those entities,
put 'em in this list over here.
We have the option below that to choose a insertion point.
You can put that pretty much anywhere you want,
but I'm going to grab that little point right there.
I'm going to put it right in the center of that first circle,
and then go ahead and click on OK.
All right, now notice everything turns gray,
which means it's not being calculated inside of SolidWorks
to figure out what and where the sketch entities are.
It's just one big block that can be used as a whole.
Now, what I want to do is I want to save that block
so I can use it somewhere else.
So click on the block over here.
Right click and say Save Block.
I'm going to go ahead and save that
into my exercise files chapter 10, and we're at 10.2.
And here I've already saved the block out one time,
so let's go ahead and just override it.
So there's my block, and click on Save,
and yes, I do want to replace it.
So now I have a block saved out to my file system.
I can go ahead and start a new part and bring it in.
Now, I already have that other part opened up.
Here it is, so it's just a basic piece of sheet metal.
I'm going to click on that top surface and start a sketch.
And now what I want to do is I want to bring in
or insert a block.
So that icon is right here called Insert Block.
And I'm going to go ahead and browse to where that block is.
Again, it's on the Desktop,
exercise files chapter 10, 10.2, and there's my block.
Click on OK, and now that block just attaches itself
to wherever my cursor happens to be.
And I can just click anywhere I want to place that block.
In fact, I can place that block as many times as I'd like.
When you're done, hit the Escape key,
which will turn that off.
And now what I need to do is I need to associate this
or dimension this block to my piece of sheet metal.
So I'm going to go ahead and add a couple of dimensions
from the edge of the sheet metal to that first hole.
And let's type in a value there,
as well as that hole down to the bottom,
and we're going to type in 1.5 there.
So now we've located the block.
And now if you click on the block itself,
you'll get the window that pops up
so you could edit the block if you wanted to.
You can scale the block, you can rotate the block,
or you can lock the block so it does not rotate.
And you can also add relationships
like horizontal or vertical, and so on.
Once you have the block looking the way you want,
go ahead and click on the green check mark,
and now we're ready to extrude, cut this into our sheet.
Go ahead up here to Features, Extruded Cut.
And let's go ahead and just say Through All is fine.
Click OK, and just that easily,
we were able to take a sketch that was fairly complicated,
turn the entire sketch into a block,
save it out to our file system,
and then open up a brand new part,
import that block in, and then use it for a cut.
Now, anytime I change that original block,
this cut will automatically change, as well.
So if you want to use one cutout across your design,
it's a great way to keep and reuse that geometry.
And if you ever need to go back and modify the block,
everything will automatically update, as well.