Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts
The solid profile cut sweep has a few limitations that I need to mention:l It uses a separate solid body as the cutting tool, so you have to model multi-bodies.l (^) The path must start at a point where it intersects the solid cutting tool body (path starts
inside or on the surface of the cutting tool).
l (^) The cutting tool must be definable with a revolved feature.
l The cutting tool must be made of simple analytical faces (sphere, torus, cylinder, and
cone; no splines).
l You cannot use a guide curve with a solid profile cut (cannot control alignment).
l (^) The cut can intersect itself, but the path cannot cross itself.
You can create many useful shapes with the solid profile cut sweep, but because of some of the
limitations I’ve listed, some shapes are more difficult to create than others. For these shapes, you
might choose to use regular cut sweep features. Figure 7.20 shows an example of a cam-like fea-
ture that you may want to create with this method, but may not be able to adequately control the
cutting body.
FIGURE 7.20
Controlling a cam cut may be a challenge
Creating Curve Features
Curves in SolidWorks are often used to help define sweeps and lofts, as well as other features.
Curves differ from sketches in that curves are defined using sketches or a dialog box, and you can-
not manipulate them directly or dimension them in the same way that you can sketches. Functions
that you are accustomed to using with sketches often do not work on curves.