SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

The Keep Relations option does not actually keep any relations — it deletes the Horizontal and

Vertical relations in the sketch, as shown in Figure 6.5 — but it does keep the merged endpoints,

as shown in the right-most image of Figure 6.5. This can be useful, especially considering how

many sketch relations it would take to make a sketch move like this naturally.

FIGURE 6.5

Using the Rotate tool

Copy entities

The Copy entities tool works exactly like the Move entities tool, except that it copies instead of
moving. The Copy entities tool enables you to move selected sketch entities by either selecting
From and To points, or by typing in XY coordinates to copy. SolidWorks copies the entities and
tries to maintain the sketch relations and merged points.

Scale entities

Scale entities is one of those functions probably best left alone. This is because the results are
erratic and unpredictable, particularly if there are dimensions on the sketch. This tool works on a
selection of entities, particularly on an isolated selection that is not connected to other entities in
the sketch. The PropertyManager for the Scale Entities tool is shown in Figure 6.6.

Modify Sketch

The Modify Sketch tool has been available in SolidWorks for a long time, but it has been super-
seded by some of the newer tools mentioned previously. However, it still has some unique func-
tionality that is not covered by any other sketch tool. Modify sketch works on the entire sketch
rather than on selections from the sketch, and it works best if there are no external relations
between sketch entities and anything outside the sketch. It can also work on a sketch without the
sketch being active. While most feature and tool interfaces have been moved to the
PropertyManager, Modify sketch still uses a dialog box, as shown in Figure 6.7, that floats in the
graphics window.