- Typically when you're dimensioning a sketch in SolidWorks,
by default you're going to to use the Smart Dimension feature.
It's up here right next to the Exit Sketch button,
or New Sketch button.
If you click on the drop down,
you can see all of the other types of dimensioning
that are available to you,
and we're going to look through these in the future videos,
but right now we want to focus on smart dimensioning.
The thing you got to know about smart dimensioning
is it's basically automatic dimensioning.
What does that mean?
So I'm going to click on this line for example,
and just move out parallel to it.
So now you can see automatically
it's giving me horizontal dimension.
That's not quite what I want,
so I'm going to move over a little bit.
As I move around this body,
it adjusts what orientation the dimension is in.
Now I'm parallel to my line
giving me an actual length,
and you can keep moving around it.
Now I can get the height of it.
I can come down again,
go back to that parallel dimension,
back to that horizontal dimension,
and so on and so forth.
So just for this one line,
I can add various different dimensions
using the Smart Dimension,
and I can adjust it just by moving around the part.
To accept, we just single click.
By default, I have my settings set up
so that I have to enter the value every time I click.
You might have your setup so that it just
enters the value that it is
by default and adds the dimension.
I'm just going to round this out to three and click accept.
Now we can also do things like add angles,
so I can click on one piece.
You can see if I drag this around, we get the same effect.
But the second I click on another entity,
it gives me automatically that angle that I'm looking for.
Now if I drag it out outside,
I can get a vertical angle going through that way,
or I can get the complete angle on the exterior.
So the Smart Dimension will adjust based on
where your cursor is located
in relation to the entities that you're dimensioning,
and don't get hung up on where the leaders are necessarily,
but what the value is,
because you can always change leader positions
and where the dimension physically is after the fact,
by dragging it,
but you want to make sure that you pick up the dimension
that you want to pick up.
Same as for arcs and circles.
You can simply click on it, drag it out.
Typically, you're just going to get the diameter.
Sometimes you can pick up a radius instead.
So for example, if I just made a simple arc really quick,
and then went to dimension that.
You know I got the radius instead of the diameter
because it's an arc.
So pretty easy tool to use.
Smart Dimension is also available inside of your drawing,
so everything that you can do inside of a sketch
with Smart Dimension,
you can do inside of your drawings.
Sometimes it does get a little frustrating
with Smart Dimension though,
and you'll want to revert to these other dimensions
to make sure that you're actually getting
the correct orientation.
If it's hard to get it,
the position's a little bit hard to maneuver
with the cursor moving it around on your screen.
So that's how you use our Smart Dimension.