- [Narrator] When working in SolidWorks
specifically to define belts and chains
or other entities that might be described by a path,
using the path length dimension can be super handy.
Here in this really rudimentary example,
I've just got two splines that I created
just random splines connected by their end points
and I want to know how long this whole length is.
So if I go up here to my smart dimension, drop down
and click on path length dimension,
I can select the two entities,
they pop up over here and you can select multiple entities
if your chain is longer.
But another cool trick, I'm going to clear this out is
if you right click, you can say select chain
and anything that's connected
will automatically be selected.
Go ahead and click the green okay
and now I've automatically got
this path length dimension given to me.
Now what's cool is if I double click on this,
I can actually change that value
and it will scale up the geometry to match whatever I have.
So let's say for example
you're trying to work on a specific size belt
and you want to match your design to it,
you can adjust that value here
so I can create a 25 inch path instead.
Now, if I switch over to this second drawing
this illustrates that a little bit better.
You can imagine that I've got three pulleys here
and I'm working on a set pulley length.
Well, I can come here
and find tool nut to be exactly 20 inches
and you can see how my pulleys might change in position
so it does a little bit of a balance
but you can go in and do things like fix these
with other dimensions, fix these relationships
and then it'll adjust in different ways,
maybe change the position instead of the size of the circle.
So just an interesting way to
first of all get that path dimension
and then also be able to adjust it.
I will know that once you create that path,
I'm going to switch back over to my other drawing.
This becomes an actual entity.
It becomes a path.
I'm going to leave my dialogue here
and oop, and I've accidentally turn this down to five.
I'm going to turn it back to around 20
so it goes back to scale.
If I select to this path,
right click and say delete,
I've now deleted the path that was created
but I'm back to just my sketch entities
that were originally there.
Once you give it that path dimension,
it locks it in as a block to be its own entity.
So a little bit different than other dimensional annotations
that you add into your drawing views,
but can be super powerful again
specifically when you're trying to design or tweak designs
of belts and chains and other systems like that.