- [Instructor] Now, before we actually start modeling
our bike frame, we've got one very important thing left
to figure out, what do we actually want to build?
What kind of frame geometry do we want?
There's many different styles of frame,
and these will affect things like bike handling and comfort.
At this early stage, we're going to plan out
a virtual 2D layout for the frame to be based on.
And there's a few different ways you
can figure out what kind of geometry you want.
You might already have something in mind yourself,
but don't worry if not,
you can just follow along with the layout that I've chosen,
which is fairly standard.
That layout looks something like this.
So, we've basically got a diagram of our bike frame
with loads of dimensions and angles on it
that completely define the frame.
As I mentioned, you can follow along with this layout.
Or if you like, you can try looking
on your favorite bike manufacturer's website.
Often, they will provide something like this for each
of their bike models.
So a diagram, or a table with all of those sizes.
And you can use this to create your own similar design.
You can also try searching online.
There's loads of bike forums where people
will share their own designs with notes.
There's a really great resource called BikeCAD,
and this contains a massive library of bikes that people
have already made.
And you can use it to find all the dimensions
that you need to build the frame.
Some of the diagrams might look
like they don't have every tube dimension on them.
If you recreate them as a 2D sketch in SOLIDWORKS,
like this, and putting all the numbers that you do have,
then you should be able to measure
the numbers that you don't have.
So this is quite typical frame layout
of something like a touring bike.
And as you can see,
it doesn't have the length of the down tube
or the seat stays.
But I've put in all the numbers that I do have.
And then I can use Smart Dimension,
and I can directly measure, for example,
the length of the seat stay there
because it's driven by all of these other dimensions.
In the next section,
we'll start building the first part of the frame.
And we'll use this geometry sketch
in an assembly to build up the rest of the frame.