- The Surface Extend feature allows you
to take an existing surface and add material
in one or multiple directions.
To get started we ought to make sure first
that we have a surface.
As you can see here I've got a surface highlighted in blue.
I can jump up here to the Extend Surface tool
and as soon as I do it's looking
for either edges or faces.
Now if I choose this first edge here,
you can see I'm just going to add some material,
I can just drag that out.
I can drag that as far as I want.
I can type in an exact value here
or up to another surface.
Now I can choose other edges as well
and it's going to continue that on.
It's going to go in both directions,
filling in this quadrant right here
between the two surfaces.
It's really just extending that existing surface.
And if that's not what you want to do,
you can choose the entire surface itself.
It's going to extend that distance in all directions.
Once you have what you want go ahead and click on Ok.
And you've just expanded the surface
that you've already started with.
Now if you don't have a surface,
I'm going to jump over to this part here,
I want to use the top of this piece here,
and I want to extend a surface out from it.
I can go ahead up here and say Offset surface
and just type in a 0 value here.
That way I'm copying the surface itself.
Now what I can use is Extend Surface,
choose the entire surface, and you can see
it just creates a little dome over this piece here.
I don't have to go quite that far
so let's just reel that in a little bit,
let's say 2.0, just so we're covering
over the existing piece.
Now what I want to do is I want to make an extend from here
and extrude up to the surface,
and if I didn't have the surface going out this way,
it wouldn't really allow me to do that.
Click Ok.
There's my surface, and I can go ahead and hide it.
Okay, now what I want to do is I want to click
on this face here, I'm going to start a sketch,
and I'm going to click on this Convert Entities.
It's going to use the outside edge there,
and convert it over, and then I'm going ahead
and do the exact same thing with that inside edge
and say Convert Entities.
And then I'm going to go ahead and say Features, Extrude.
Now I can extrude that up a blind distance
but I can also use surfaces.
So I just chose and built that other surface,
so here it is right here.
Let me spin it around, so surface bodies
and what's hidden is right there.
It's also right down here.
So I can choose that one in Up To Surface,
choose that surface and click Ok.
So it's a great way to use the Surface Extend
or Surface tools with SOLIDWORKS tools
or solid modeling tools to do
Extend Up To Surface or Offset From Surface.
So that's the Surface Extend tool.