- [Instructor] When modeling new part files in SolidWorks,
there is some good practices to follow
to help increase your performance
and not drag down later assemblies
or part files as they get larger and larger.
Let's go through some of these tips.
So I'm going to start a new part file,
and a good thing to do is always start with good templates.
So you can see here, I've just got the stock templates
and some of the tutorial templates,
but you can set up as many templates as you want
for as many scenarios as you want.
If you're going to be doing full scale DXFs
or 3D printed parts or maybe you start
with the stock boss, stock part file, stock size.
You can have all of those templates set up here.
Another good thing to do is try to
limit the strain you're putting on yourself.
I like to always change my backdrop to studio room
and make sure that my templates have that
or something darker.
It's just going to be easier on your eyes.
That's part of the shift that SolidWorks took
to darkening all of the icons and
changing it to simpler primary colors.
This is going to help people with color blindness
and also reduce the strain on the
user's eyes after a long time.
So first thing we want to do when modeling
is always try to model the complete
outer limits first and then cut away
and also try to do that symmetrically about the origin.
So what do I mean?
So I'm going to model up a piece of stock right here.
I'm going to convert this line to a construction line.
And then select all of these parts and mirror them.
So you can see here, I'm centered about the origin.
I've got a center line about the origin,
and all of my parts have symmetric mates.
So as I change them, it'll change on the other side
which is going to reduce the amount of time
that I'm going to need to take changing dimensions
and moving any of these around when I want to make edits.
Now also I only have to dimension
one side of this sketch now
as opposed to doing both sides of the sketch.
I can also make the dimensions relative to each side,
or, if I want to, I can just go it from the center line.
Either or. Whatever works.
Now as you can see here I'm also fully defining this sketch.
This is also going to help limit issues in the future.
So using the instant 3D feature,
which we'll talk about a little bit later,
but I'm just going to go ahead and make this a boss.
Not a big deal.
Another thing we want to do is make sure that
when we're adding filets, we do this last.
So you know, I'll add my filets as the last features
for this little key and keep
my feature tree nice and simple.
Now when you have more complex geometry,
let's say you're modeling up a piece of hardware,
I've got to download a piece of hardware here
off McMaster car.
You can go into crazy detail and put all of these threads in
but if you look at your performance evaluation,
it takes up a lot of time.
So we've got eight features in 0.25 seconds of rebuild.
If I just suppress that cut, I still have
all the geometry that I need for this piece of hardware,
but all of my processing time goes down to nothing.
So imagine making a very large assembly
and having lots of these parts in there.
You want to make sure that you simplify these
as much as you can.
It's also going to help if you want
to make edits really quick but this one is constrained by
a sketch so it's a little bit more difficult.
I'm going to save that back in our main one.
So yeah, remember to always model about the origin.
Try to be symmetric when you can.
Add filets and chamfers later in the feature tree.
And start with bosses that cut away at the mid-planes.
So what that means, instead of going blind,
again, go a mid-plane extrusion
and that's going to make you symmetric.
One more thing to look at at this other example
that I have here, this 3D logo that I made.
Now you can see that took a minute to load up
and that's 'cause I got the real view graphic assonance,
it's rebuilt, but try to make complex geometry
using the least amount of features possible.
You can see here that I started with
some of the small text and easier features first
and then just started cutting away
the things that I needed as I went along
and then did some of the more complex geometry
towards the end and then used Boolean operations
to bring it all back together.
So try to use combine and body delete when you can
instead of using other cut operations
that will be more complex.
So it's a fine balance to it,
but try to limit your feature tree,
especially when you're doing complex operations like this
and rely on reference geometry to lead how your
3D sketches and other things are put into place.