SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 6: Getting More from Your Sketches

When you create a derived sketch, you cannot change its shape; it works like a block of a fixed

shape driven by the parent. However, you can change the position and orientation of the derived

sketch. Figure 6.9 shows a derived sketch and its parent. Modify Sketch is a great tool to use for

manipulating derived sketches that are not related to things outside the sketch, especially for

mirroring or rotating.

FIGURE 6.9

A derived sketch and its parent

Original sketch Derived sketch

Using Sketch Pictures

Sketch pictures are images that are placed in a sketch on a sketch plane. You can size and rotate

the images, give them a transparent background, trace over them, and suppress them. They display

as a child of the sketch in the FeatureManager. Image types that you can use as sketch pictures are

BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, and WMF.

To bring a picture into a sketch, the sketch must first be active. Click Sketch Picture on the Sketch

toolbar (it is not there by default, and so you may need to drag it onto the Sketch toolbar from the

Tools ➪ Customize ➪ Commands dialog box). You can also access this command by choosing

Tools ➪ Sketch Tools ➪ Sketch Picture from the menu. You cannot use sketch pictures in assembly

sketches, but you can use them in a part sketch in an assembly.

To change the size of a sketch picture, you can double-click it and drag one of the handles around

the outside of the image. When the picture comes into the sketch, it is usually too big, having been

sized at a ratio of 1 pixel to 1 mm. To size a picture accurately, you should include a ruler or an

object of a known size in the image. If you cannot do this, the next best thing is to guess the size.