- [Instructor] In SOLIDWORKS, we aren't simply limited
by sketching in 2D.
We can also make 3D sketches.
Now these can be very useful when creating Weldments,
or different frames or structures,
or when you simply have geometry in 3D
that you want to reference
across various planes or surfaces.
I use them a lot when creating lattices, if you will,
to pin complex surfaces onto,
for guide curves and things like that.
So, if we go up here to the Sketch tool bar,
and it will drop down.
Now typically, we right click on a plane,
and we hit Sketch, or we go up here, and we select Sketch,
and that creates our new sketch, but this time
we want to select from the dropdown and go to 3D Sketch.
Now you'll notice that it did not prompt me
to select a plane.
That's because we can work in any plane,
I mean in any direction,
and it's all based on where we start.
Naturally, we want to try to start at the origin
just so we can know where we are and have a good basis.
You'll notice when I clicked on the line feature,
automatically I have this XY notation next to my cursor.
That's telling me what plane I'm working in.
So let's see how this works.
I'm going to click on the origin and start dragging up,
and just start making a simple shape.
Now, I'm going to rotate my view right now,
and you can see that I've got this sketch in one plane.
It's in the XY plane and, if you see down here,
I've got Y and X.
Now, if I hit the Tab button on my keyboard,
that XY is going to switch to the YZ.
And what I've done is,
I've toggled through the different planes in spaces.
So. you'll notice that, while we're 3D sketching,
it does typically keep you on a plane.
You can also sketch across planes,
but you need different references to know where to go.
So, I'm just going to make up a simple frame here.
You'll notice that that's closed.
I'm going to rotate this again,
and now I'm going to start another sketch over here,
and this time I'm going to hit the Tab button one more time,
and now I'm in the Z and X plane, moving out.
So down here that's Z and X,
and I'm going to pull this back across, hit Tab again.
I'm back in the XY,
and you can see I can navigate my way
around 3D space and connect this frame up.
Now, if I want to go from, like let's say, this corner
all the way down to this corner, I can do that.
I can create a line, select that point,
then drag over and select that point.
Now it says XY plane,
but that's really just where it's starting from.
You can see that in the window it's created this 3D box
and some hidden lines in yellow.
And that's showing three-dimensionally
how I'm moving across the screen.
So as I adjust, you can see,
you get it planarly right now,
but once I snapped to that, it forms a cube.
And that's showing me that I'm going across 3D space
and not staying in a single plane.
So I'm going to click that to complete the line,
and you can see now as I rotate,
that line connects those two corners
and isn't stuck on any particular plane.
I can also go in here and add features to that.
I can add arcs, but again they typically stay
in a certain plane unless you have geometry
across different features that it can grab.
So, for example, I could start another line here,
and then drag it out to this point, and you can see
it makes this arc along that line now,
not in any particular plane,
but the plane is created in reference with that line
and the points that I've selected.
So, 3D sketching is very powerful.
This is just the most basic way that we can do it.
We're going to get into some of the other features
in this course like splines
and other specific geometry that we can use,
but you can also still leverage all the other features
you had in 2D sketching, like trimming.
I can go in here and trim lines out.
You can't do the power trim.
You don't have all those options available to you
in this trim.
You can only trim whole entities.
So that is one caveat
but, if things cut through one another,
it will end at the tangent points, for example.
So, if I added another line in here and then selected Trim,
it could trim away just that section and not the whole line.
But it does need to basically trim
between two points on an entity.
Other than that, all the other features work
almost identically the same.
And as you can see, this is very powerful
for where and how you can sketch in 3D space.