- [Instructor] In this first video
we're going to begin by simply looking at lines,
rectangles, and parallelograms as used
in the sketch features in SolidWorks.
So I'm going to go ahead and open a new part
and on my front plain I'm going to start a new sketch.
Now you'll notice all I did was click on that front plane.
I'm going to do it again, I'm going to exit out of the sketch.
You can select a plane and if you go up to the fly out
toolbar up on the right you can click on
the new sketch button.
I can also click new sketch and select the front plane.
So here are the features that we're
going to look at right now so this is the line feature,
here is the rectangle feature,
and then if we go to the drop down
we also have parallelogram down here.
So going back up to the line feature
we hover over it or if you click on the dropdown arrow
you can see that we have three options.
Line, center line, and midpoint line.
Now typically in the past we think of
a center line as a construction line.
If you're used to using AutoCAD 2D
that's the kind of line that we're talking about here.
It's a broken edge if you will.
Then there's the midpoint line.
So if I go ahead and click on line,
go over into the plane, now here in the property tab
we have a few options.
You can select horizontal or vertical
if you want to start the orientation of the sketched line
or angle and you can kind of plug all those
parameters in here.
You can also say for construction, infinite length,
a midpoint line, or add dimensions.
These are basically the same options that you had
in the dropdown up here but they're just given to you
in a different way.
Typically you're going to leave as sketched.
Start by clicking on one point and drag the line
out into space and click another point.
Now as I click you'll notice that another line
comes out of the first line.
It will continue as you single click
to just keep generating lines until you
double click on one point out in space and then it stops.
So again I'm going to single click on the left mouse button,
drag out, single click again, create a line,
drag out and single click.
You can see that I have automatic relations on
so it wants to snap in positions horizontal
or lining up with other parts that I have
inside of here already, or other sketch features rather.
And then when I want to stop
the line I'm going to double click.
So that's just drawing a simple line.
Now if I want to hit for construction
I can come in here and draw a construction line.
And you can see that's different because
it's got a broken pattern line.
I'm going to go ahead and hit escape and leave this function.
You can also select a line and change it
for construction after the fact.
Now this is useful when you're using
let's say a single sketch to describe
multiple features or if you just want lines in there
as references and not to be used as part
of an open or closed contour to create a feature.
So I'm going to go ahead and click okay on that.
And that's how we draw a basic line.
Now if I go back up to this drop point
I can do a center line as well
and that basically creates a construction line.
Using the same features I'm just single clicking,
it continues to draw lines until I double click
somewhere out in space and then it'll stop.
As you can see it gives you the same menus
in the property tab over here.
It just already has the for construction option selected.
Now let's go ahead and hit escape and change some of these
other options.
So let's say we want to, and I've selected this line
right here, code for infinite length.
This is a reference line that we want to be visible
throughout the part.
I can click on that and now the part, or the line rather,
is infinite length.
So I've deselected off of it,
now if I zoom out you can see that that line
indeed does go on infinitely inside of the view
that we're able to see.
So I'm going to zoom back in, I'm going to select that line,
and now I'm going to delete it.
Because it's already become infinite length I can't
undo that change so I have to just delete this line
and I'm just going to hit delete after selecting the line.
Now one more drop down is our midpoint line
and that's pretty self explanatory.
Instead of starting on the edge and moving to the end
of the line you start at the midpoint, drag,
and bring it out to the extent on one side
making an equal length line on each side of the midpoint.
And it only does it for the first line.
So if I do this again I'm going to go midpoint line
I'm going to click, drag, and click again
but this time I'm not, as you can see,
making a midpoint line.
As I drag it back and touch I can swap between the straight
line that I had, the arc, a different direction arc,
I'm just going to hit escape real quick.
So you can see it won't keep continuing the midpoint line.
And just to show that trick again that I just did,
if you create a line, so I'm going to go ahead
and make a line, end it, start another line,
and if you bring that line back to the point
where you started it now creates an arc.
So that's a SolidWorks shortcut.
It can be pretty handy when you're trying to make
full contours for example and you want to just add
some radii real quick.
And then you can see once I click it goes back
to a regular line.
I can bring it back again, make another arc,
make a line, drag out, come back, make another arc,
so on and so forth.
I'm just going to hit escape to leave that.
So now we've used all of the line features
in the drop down.
Let's take a look at some of the rectangles.
Now typically I like to use the corner rectangle.
You just simply start by selecting one corner point
and dragging out until you create the other corner point.
You can bring this up, down, anywhere in between.
You'll notice here on the sides in the property tab
just like you have with the lines it gives you
the different options to change between
a center rectangle, a three point rectangle,
a three point center rectangle, and a regular parallelogram.
And we're going to show what each of these looks like.
So this is the first rectangle, just corner to corner.
I clicked here, clicked here, and now we've got
our rectangle defined.
I'm going to go ahead and hit escape, go to the drop down
and click center rectangle.
What this is going to do is have us select
our center point first and then drag out,
automatically creating construction lines.
And then select the end point extent
or the corner of that rectangle.
So you can see here I've got a midpoint,
I can grab this and drag it around
and it maintains the relations by having
these construction lines created automatically inside of it.
I now can show how to do a three point corner rectangle,
so I'm going to go ahead and select my first point
which is going to be my first corner,
my second point which is going to be my horizontal corner,
if you will, and then my third point
which will be the height.
So pretty easy, I'm going to do that one more time.
So starting point, width, and then clicking again
the height of the rectangle.
So that's one way to do it if you're working with
specific points.
The last way to do it is by creating a parallelogram.
So all I did was click on this rectangle box
while I still had the rectangle tool open
and I'm going to define the three points as shown here.
So my first point, my width point,
and then a point at some angle that determines my height.
You can see that I'm given the preview here
as I move my mouse back and forth.
And I also am given a quick dimension and an angle
up to the top right as you can see there as well.
So that's my distance and my angle.
Go ahead and click and it creates the parallelogram
which you can then adjust by grabbing one of the points
and moving it accordingly.
You can see it fixes the other horizontal.
You can also grab and drag it out.
Same with all these, you can adjust all the sizes
of the rectangles once you've made them
before you add any dimensions to them.
So just to recap we've gone through line,
center line, midpoint.
We also took a look at all of the rectangle options
which include corner rectangle, center rectangle,
three point corner rectangle, three point center rectangle,
and parallelogram.