- [Instructor] If you're going to try to create
any complex geometry inside of Solidworks,
you're probably going to run across the Spline feature.
Now, splines are not too hard to use,
you just have to keep a few things in mind.
If we look at the dropdown here,
we've got a couple kinds of splines
we can create in Solidworks.
We've got a regular Spline, a Style Spline,
and then an Equation Driven Curve.
We're not going to do the Equation Driven Curve
because that's pretty self-explanatory.
You basically just put in an equation
and it generates a curve for you.
We're going to focus on these two types of splines:
the Spline and the Style Spline.
So, I'm going to click on Spline,
go over to my sketch here, and just start sketching.
Every point that I click is going to give me
a control point on this spline.
So, I'm going to stop there, and to stop making the spline
I just hit Escape and it snaps back.
Now, you can see here when I click on the spline
all of my control arms become visible.
When I'm off of them I can't see them.
I can just see the points.
Now, I can select a point individually
and focus on its control arm if I want to
control the magnitude of the spline
or the direction, for example,
or I can click on all of them
and see what's going on in general.
We can grab these handles and change the angle
of the spline, we can also grab the endpoint
and change the magnitude of the spline.
There's also some more controls down here
with the different angles at different points,
the position of that point if you
want to set it specifically.
You can also reset the handle back to its original position,
or reset all the handles back to its original position
if you make edits you don't like,
and you can see here it just generates a very smooth curve.
Now, let's say for example I had a straight line over here.
I do have the ability to add relations to splines,
so I can make a tangent to that, for example.
Get a nice, smooth curve here heading out,
and at this side, for example, I can make a circle,
drag it onto this, (clicks) and then add
tangents to here as well. (clicks)
So, you can see the spline is very flexible
and really gives you those nice features
and shapes that you want to use.
Now, if we go down and do a Style Spline,
that works a little bit differently.
This uses a specific style of spline.
It's set to a certain number of degrees,
and basically, what you're doing is setting
the geometry for the spline to fall inside,
and it moves with a certain type of arc.
So, you can see here, instead of having
my control arms on the spline itself,
I used geometry to pull it in every single direction
and basically fit it inside of these curves,
so to speak, but not a true fit.
It's just tangent to my endpoints, and then
each one of these gives me a magnitude to pull at.
So, it's really kind of a little bit art,
a little bit science when it comes to splines,
but you're going to want to be able to
use them when making complex geometry.
In the future videos in this course
we're going to talk about the different options
that you have and tools that are available
related specifically to splines.