- Before attempting to follow along
with this modeling series, if you've not
already done so I would recommend watching
the SolidWorks 2014 Essentials training series
presented by Gabriel Corbett,
found here at Lynda.com.
It'll greatly assist you in keeping up with me
during our modeling process since I will not be
explaining every detail about how to
use certain tools or tasks that are
considered to be basic and already
covered during the Essentials course.
Now as a refresher to what you would
have learned during the SolidWorks Essential series
and since during the modeling process I will be
referring to different dialogs, windows, and tabs
within the user interface of SolidWorks,
let's quickly review those user interface terms
I will often be referring to during the series
so you can more easily follow along.
At the top of the screen we have the menu bar
which has a number of frequently
used menu command icons.
If you hover over the SolidWorks logo at the top left
corner of the screen, the menu bar will expand
to the right showing us the relevant menus
with their pull downs.
When you move your mouse away, the expanded
menu will again collapse.
I prefer to keep this expanded so my
familiarity with the available menus
continuously improve and I can save a bit
of time when I need to activate
a command from them.
The expanding and collapsing of the menu
can be toggled with this keep visible icon.
Just below the menu we have the
command manager (ribbon) where we find most
of the common commands for easy access.
From the default available tabs we will
mainly be using the features and sketch tab.
Remember where they are
so you can get to them speedily.
Below the command bar, on the left of our screen
and in the first tab of this window,
we have the feature manager where all
the features we create are listed.
The second tab is the property manager tab
which we use to make command property
adjustments of sketch lines and feature commands.
In the center of our screen,
where we do our modeling,
we have the graphics area.
At the top of the graphics area we have
the heads up view toolbar
and of particular interest to us is the
displays styles flyout and the
hide/show items flyout
since we will be using them frequently as well.
To the right of the graphics area we have
the task pane which is collapsed
by default and will fold out if you
click on one of the task pane tabs.
Note that here too you again have a
keep physical icon to toggle the pane's visibility.
As discussed in the exercise file video
you can easily access the exercise files
from the design library location found here.
Now take a few minutes to familiarize yourself
with these user interface terminologies
so you know where to find them instantly
as I refer to them during the modeling process.