- Like creating circles, creating arcs inside of
SolidWorks sketches is not a big ordeal,
but we do have a few different options
that we want to look at.
So, I'm going to go ahead and jump on my Front Plane again,
and create another sketch.
I'm going to go up here to my Arc Feature.
And you can see from the drop down
that we three different options.
Centerpoint Arc, Tangent Arc, and 3 Point Arc.
Typically I stick with the Centerpoint Arc.
So, I'm going to start with that.
As before, in the Property Tab,
we can see how each one is defined.
The first one is defined by selecting a center point,
defining the radius of the arc,
and then defining the chord length
by selecting the third point.
The Tangent Arc is defined by selecting
the first point on a line,
and then bringing it out and selecting the second point.
And then for a 3 Point Arc,
you simply select three points that make up
the perimeter as if you were doing a perimeter circle.
So, let's show the first one.
I'm going to select the origin as my center point,
drag out to define my radius,
which you can see is being told to me
up in the right next to my cursor.
Click on that, and now I'm going to define the chord length
or the angle of the circle in which I'm going to complete.
So, I'm going to make this a pretty big arc.
And there we go, that's a 3 Point Center arc.
So, now I'm going to do a Tangent Arc.
So, I'm going to start right here on the end of this line.
Drag out, and then select another point.
And you can see, it's already created,
I'm going to hit escape,
that tangent relation to the entity
that I started at.
If I did that by creating just a regular line,
and then did a Tangent Arc,
it would be tangent just to that line.
Pretty easy to use,
and automatically creates those relations,
like we were talking about.
Now I'm going to select our third option,
which is the 3 Point Arc.
Which simply has you select three points to define the arc.
The beginning point, the end of the arc the length,
so you're literally getting the length
away from the start point,
and then you're going to adjust the radius
or the angle and it gives you both at the same time.
To define this.
So, I'm going to click again,
and there we go, I've got a 3 Point Arc.
Now you notice, like a circle,
when I select these you can't see any difference
between the features, you can't tell
which one was a 3 Point Arc,
which one was a Tangent Arc,
the only giveaway might be the existence
of that tangent relation.
But it really doesn't matter, you've created an arc
and now they can all be adjusted the same way.
I can click and drag in, move them around,
I can move their center points if I want to.
I can also grab their extents and resize them.
So, that's creating arcs in sketches.
It's not very difficult,
and you do have a few different options here
with the Centerpoint Arc, the Tangent Arc,
and the 3 Point Arc.