- The freeform surface tool inside of SOLIDWORKS
allows you to take a solid model,
grab one of the faces and start manipulating it around,
and creating a real freeform surface.
To get started, let's go ahead and click on
the surfacing toolbar and click on freeform.
The first thing it's asking for
is a face to deform, and I'm going to choose the top
of this rectangular block,
and as soon as I do that, it gives me a little grid,
and it shows me on all four corners,
that I have a contact connection.
So I can also click on any of these,
and look at the other options here,
but we'll get to that later.
The next thing I wanna do, is I want to add
some symmetry, you can do this if you want to,
it's not required, but if I add symmetry in direction one,
that means anything I do on the right-hand side here
shows up on the left-hand side.
Same here with direction two, anything on the right,
same thing on the left.
I don't wanna turn on direction two though,
I'm gonna turn that one off.
Now it's asking me how do I control this curve?
And how do I adjust this?
So I can do it either through points
or through a controlled polygon,
much like you're defining a spline.
So let's just leave it as points for right now.
And then I can go ahead and add in some curves.
My curves are what I'm gonna allow me to define and pull
on this shape to deform it.
So notice as soon as I click in the window here,
I get these little green lines going across
the top of the surface there,
and they're symmetrical because I chose
that directional line symmetry.
Go ahead and choose one of those,
and then I can also go down here to flip direction.
If I do that, then it gives me the option
to add some curves in this direction as well.
So I can go ahead and let's just add three of those,
one here, one in the middle, and one down here.
Okay, once I have the curves that I can control,
now I need to add some points on top of those
so I can drag them around.
Let's go down to add points,
and let's just go ahead and add
a couple points on top of here.
And notice any corners here, or these intersection points,
it automatically gives me a little heads up
that I could choose that point if I wanted to.
But let's just go ahead and add one in between that,
and let's go ahead and add one right on top there.
Okay, then I can also go ahead and add points
in other directions as well.
Like maybe in the top here, or on this one here,
right on the center, add up as many points
as you want to control this shape.
When you're done, go ahead and turn that add points off.
Now it gives me the ability to drag these points around.
So if I click on this here, it gives me a triad,
and as I pull it up, you can see what happens.
I'm actually creating and deforming that surface
all the way around.
If I choose another line, I can grab the points on it.
And again, start pulling it around.
I can use any one of these control triads
to start adjusting what's happening here in the surface.
Alright, so spin that around.
And sometimes, it will freeze for a second
as it's trying to calculate what you're trying to really do
as you're pulling on those individual little triads here.
So there it is, I can drag it a little bit,
and slowly you'll see it's starting
to deform the surface in the direction that I'm looking for.
Okay once you've got that, notice that the right-hand side
and the left-hand side look the same.
That's because we have that symmetry plane turned on.
Now you can continue adding curves and points
and really maneuver this thing any way you want.
So it's a pretty powerful tool you can use.
But I do wanna point out the corners here.
So right now it's giving a contact
on every one of the corners.
I can change that to maybe something like
a movable tangency, and I can choose that surface there,
grappling these control points, and move that up.
So actually it changes the edge.
So it's not all straight-edge anymore,
now it's kind of brought up.
I can also do the same thing with just a movable,
same type of thing.
And contact, we've already looked at.
The tangency, it's just going to make it
to that surface tangent coming straight in,
and then curvature is pretty much what we had
in the beginning there.
So curvature and contact are very similar.
But the one I want to use is that movable, tangent one,
drag it up a little bit, so I can kind of lift up
the back of this thing and then when everything
looks good, I can go back and double-check some things.
So I can come over here, and I can look at
some zebra stripes, if I wanna take a look
at what the curvatures look like before I approve it.
I can turn that off or on.
Same thing with the curvature combs.
I can turn those on, and I should be getting some combs
as I click on different surfaces here.
Make sure that those are turned on,
make sure we turn the directions on,
and I can see what's going on here.
This is getting a little bit wild
when you look at it, so you can adjust
how much they stick out with their scale.
So you can bring that down or up.
So not quite overly bearing as they were before.
And kind of look at how that shape
is going to finally end up being.
You can also control the density of them.
So make it more or less if you need to.
Once everything looks the right away,
go ahead and click on the green check mark.
And there's my brand new, freeform surface
I was able to control.
If ever you wanna go back and change it,
you can always go back over here to the tree,
right-click on it, edit the feature,
and I can go back and make any other adjustments
I might need to, the same thing
with the transparency, I can go ahead and look and see
if I want to look through the part, for instance,
I can change this so I can see through it.
Give me a little better understanding
of what's going on on the bottom surface,
sort of inside...
Whatever you want, you can really control
quite a bit of things with this tool.
Again, it's the freeform surface,
it's very, very powerful.
It's also very easy to get yourself lost,
or screwed up when making a surface,
because there are so many controls,
and there's so many variances you can pull on,
so definitely be careful with it.
Only add a few points at first,
don't get overly ambitious with all the curves and lines
until you really know what's going on here.
But definitely add a few lines, a few points,
drag it around, you really will end up
with some pretty cool surfaces.
So that's the freeform surface tool.