Part I: SolidWorks Basics
FIGURE 4.11Placing the centerpoints of holes
Cutting a slot .................................................................................................
The Hole Wizard does not specifically enable you to cut slots. However, SolidWorks has Slot
sketch entities or you can use one of the following methods to cut a slot:l Use one of the Slot sketch tools. SolidWorks has straight and arc slot options on the
sketch toolbar.
l Explicitly drawing the slot. Draw a line, press A to switch to the Tangent Arc tool, draw
the tangent arc, and press A to switch back to the Line tool, and so on. Although you can
press the A key to toggle between the line and arc functions, you can also toggle between
a line and a tangent arc by returning the cursor to the line/arc first point.
l Rectangle and arcs. Draw a rectangle, place a tangent arc on both ends, and then turn the
ends of the rectangle into construction entities.
l Thin feature cut. As you did earlier with the groove, you can also create a Thin Feature
slot, although you need to follow additional steps to create rounded ends on it.
l Offset in Sketch. By drawing a line, and using the Offset with Bi-directional, Make Base
Construction, and Cap Ends settings, it is easy to create a slot from any shape by drawing
only the centerline of the slot.l (^) Library feature. A library feature can be stored and can contain either simple sketches or
more complex sets of combined features. The library feature is a good option for the coun-
terbored slot used in this example. Library features are discussed in depth in Chapter 19.