- The Surface Revolve command works very, very
similar to your standard Revolves inside of SOLIDWORKS
with the exception that it doesn't need to create a volume,
it's only creating a flat, or curved surface.
To get started, let's go ahead and click on Sketch,
and start a sketch.
Now I'm gonna choose the front plane for that.
Notice it spins around so I'm looking
straight down at that sketch.
And go ahead and choose the Spline command.
I'm just gonna draw out a couple of
cool little spline shapes here,
and then I'm just gonna drag them around,
and make sure that I've got the shape I'm looking for.
I'm gonna create kind of like a little bit of a bowl shape,
so I wanna grab this one here,
I wanna bring this one down over here,
give it a little bit of hips, and there it is.
OK, now grab a center line, just like anything in Revolves,
we always need something to revolve them around.
I'm gonna go ahead and choose a center line,
click it on the origin here and make that it's vertical.
If it's not you can always go ahead and right-click on this
and say, "Make Vertical," right up here.
OK, once we have those two things that we need,
go ahead and click on Surfaces, and Revolve Surface,
and just that easy, we have this little bowl shape.
I can use the Blind, or any of the other
Up To Vertex surfaces, Offset From Surface,
or Midplane commands as well
if I didn't want to go all the way around in 360,
and I can also choose the angle I'm looking for.
I also have the option to go in direction two,
spin it around Up To Surfaces as well.
If I had multiple contours,
I could also choose them at this point.
When I'm ready, I've got the axis rotation already selected
but you could choose another axis at that point in time.
When everything looks good, go ahead
and click on the green check mark, and there it is.
Now this , again, has no volume.
It's only a flat or curved surface,
and therefore has no volume, and if I wanted to create
volume out of this I would have to continue
on adding surfaces to create an enclosed volume
which then I could turn into a solid.
That's the basic difference between Solid Revolves
and Surface Revolves.
There's no requirement for creating an enclosed volume,
and I can use just a basic curve or sketch
to revolve out that shape.
And even if it is an enclosed shape,
like a square or a circle,
it still will not create an enclosed volume
or a solid, it's just gonna create a tube
that's revolved around.
So that's the basics of the Revolved Surface command.