- The boundary surface is one of the most powerful
and most complicated of all the surface entities.
But it's also one of the most useful.
So to get started what I have here
the rest of the mouse I've been completing.
And I've got a couple of boundary surfaces on the top.
And I have the lofted surface directly below in red.
Now I used the mirror command so that I have
this surface here mirrored over to the other side.
So I don't have to do the same amount of work twice
and create a bunch of extra sketches that I just don't need.
So first thing's first, let's go ahead
and roll this back so I'm not looking
at that mirrored surface.
And there it is.
Then let's go ahead and delete
the boundary surface that I've created.
And see how we created it.
Now I've got a couple of edges over here.
So I've got these surfaces here and here.
Which I'm hiding right now.
So let's go ahead and show those.
So I'm going to show this one and this one.
And I basically just created a line here and here.
And made an extrude surface for each.
It doesn't have to be a really big surface.
I'm just needing a surface there
so I can create a tangency relationship later
when I go ahead and create my boundary surface.
What that's going to allow me to do
is not have a little seam or edge
where the two surfaces come together.
It's going to have a nice smooth tangency
from surface to surface.
So let's go ahead and hide these for right now.
But let's go ahead and just make sure
we're seeing these sketches
that are directly below those.
And we're going to use those
to create the boundary surface.
Okay, now I've got the front and back curves.
I've got this curve over here which is a 3D sketch.
And I want to show you how to create that one.
So if you click on that one,
I'm going to actually hide it,
and we're going to go ahead
and recreate that one from the beginning.
So first thing's first, let's go and hide
a couple of these other sketches
just because they're going to be
a little bit distracting in seeing
what we're going to be creating here.
Now I know I have a right plane
which is right there in the middle of the mouse.
And that's a perfect place to create another guide curve.
So let's start a sketch.
And I'm just going to use basic center line.
In 3D, I'm just going to create a line from here to here
and not connect it to anything.
But I do want to show the right plane
so you can see where we're drawing.
So I'm drawing right there on that right plane.
But I'm not really connected to anything else.
Then let's go ahead and click on the end point.
Hold on Control and click on the line.
Then click on Pierce.
That just takes that point
and just connects it to that other line.
Do the same thing at the bottom.
Click on the line here.
Click on the point and click on Pierce.
Great.
Exit out.
Now I want to create another sketch.
This time it's going to be a 3D sketch.
And use those two end points as my references.
So go down to Sketch, 3D Sketch,
and I want to use a spline and connect the dots
from there to there.
Okay, and then hit Escape.
And now I just have a basic straight line.
But it's really not a basic straight line.
It's really a spline.
Now if I click on the spline itself,
I have the ability to grab it.
And I can grab these little control arms
and move it around to create the shape I'm looking for.
So very powerful.
And I want to point out a couple of cool things here.
One thing here is if you look at this
I've got a little sketch shown here
at the top of the surface.
I want to hide that for right now.
So I want to go down here
and look through what I'm looking here.
And this is the bottom edge.
Let's go ahead and just hide that for right now.
Now there's a really cool relationship
that's only available in 3D sketches.
And what that is, if you click on the line itself
click on the edge of a surface,
and then you click on the surface itself,
it gives you the option to add equal curvature
or make it tangent to a face.
So click on tangent to a face and what that does
it just makes it so it's coming up
at the exact same curvature or tangency
to the line it's connected to here.
So very cool.
And then you can also go up here and grab the top one.
And I can adjust that so I'm getting
the shape that I'm looking for.
One thing I do want to point out though
because this is a 3D sketch, it gives me the ability
to move the shape in all directions.
And that's not really what I want.
I want to make sure that when I look at this from the side,
like if I look at the front plane, click Normal to it,
these lines are actually lined up there
and they're totally not.
So to fix that, make sure you click on them.
And come down here.
And these parameters are what's going into creating that
is what's defining which direction we're using.
The direction I'm trying to go here
is actually negative 90 degrees.
So if I click on negative 90 and then click out of that box
it should straighten that side out.
And then the same thing down here at the bottom.
Click on this curvature arm
and come down here again to negative 90.
And as soon as I do that notice they line up on that line.
And it's purely a sketch here.
And a good way to actually control this
is just click on the right plane.
Click Normal to it so you're only operating in that plane.
Then you can move these around and you're only operating
just in the plane that you're dragging on.
So once it looks pretty good exit out.
And there are my shapes.
So I've got the front edge, the side edge,
and the back edge there.
And then I've got these two curves here and here
which are going to be my different directions.
Now I want to make sure I'm not choosing
the entire sketch around there.
So I want to point out what we're going to be using.
So the back line here, we're going to
be using the front line here.
And we're going to create this new 3D sketch we just chose.
As well as the top edge and the bottom edge.
That's what we're going to be using there.
So go ahead up to Surfaces, Boundary Surface.
My first direction, I'm going to choose it
either from the window here
or from just choosing original sketches.
So the bottom edge, let's go ahead and choose that one.
And let's go ahead and choose the top edge.
And notice if I choose those two
I get a nice boundary surface between the two
and that could be fine.
I could just say, "Hey this looks great.
"That's what I want to create".
But we really want to add some curvature
to the outside of it so that's
where we're going to go in direction two.
And add in some of these other lines
we're going to be using.
So the first thing I want to choose is that 3D sketch.
So as soon as I do that it just starts
bending the surface out that direction.
But it causes problems for us right over here.
So in that case I want to go under here,
make sure that I've got the front line chosen,
and the back line here.
And as soon as I do that notice what happens here.
My surface starts popping into action.
It looks great.
And it gives me this little pop-ups around there.
I can then go in here and I can say
how I want that to look.
So I can say tangency to face.
And that's going to make it tangent to the closest face.
Which one it's attached to.
Which is that one i created on the side here.
And do the same thing over here.
Tangency to face.
And I have that ability to control each one
of these lines in the same manner.
So it's a very powerful way to create that surface.
When you're happy with it go ahead and click okay.
There's my surface.
Looks pretty good.
And then I want to mirror that over.
So I'll go to Features.
I want to go to Mirror.
And this happens to be a body now.
This is a body entity.
So I make sure that I'm choosing the correct plane
so I can mirror that over.
Which is going to be the front plane.
And then go down and choose the boundary under Body.
Make sure you're choosing a body, not a feature.
Click the body or just choose it right here.
Click OK.
And there's my continued shape.
And if you look at it, it's got a nice smooth curvature
from one to the other side.
And there it is folks.
That is the boundary surface.
Very very powerful.
There's a lot that goes into it.
There's a lot of different things to add in
as far as different line constraints and curvatures.
3D sketches, 2D sketches.
So a lot of time you're going to be
spending a lot of time going ahead
and creating all these individual sketches and planes
to create one surface at the end of the day.
And if you need to you can always
delete the boundary surface you created.
Add a few extra sketches to define it a little bit further.
And then recreate it.
Any time you delete a boundary surface
it does not delete the underlying sketches.
So you always can go back and recreate it if you need to.
And again, once you get into that boundary surface
you have a lot of control as far as
if you want to be tangency or you want to add
other controls to the adjoining faces and surfaces.
So very very powerful command.
The boundary surface is definitely one of the work horses
of the surface modeling tools inside of Solidworks.