SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

FIGURE 7.37

The Keep Feature option, both selected and unselected

Part before fillet

Keep feature off Keep feature on

Creating variable radius fillets

Variable radius fillets are another powerful weapon in the fight against boring designs; they also

double as a useful tool to solve certain problems that arise. Although it is difficult to define exactly

when to use the variable radius fillet, you can use it when you need a fillet to round an edge, and it

has to change in size to fit the available geometry.

Best Practice
It may be easier to identify when not to use a variable radius fillet. Fillets are generally used to round or break
edges, not to sculpt a part. If you are using fillets to sculpt blocky parts and are not actively trying to make
blocky parts with big fillets, you may want to consider another approach and use complex modeling, which
gives the part a better shape and makes it more controllable. Other options exist that give you a different type
of control, such as the double hold line fillet.n

In some ways, variable radius fillets function like other fillets. For example, they offer propagation

to tangent edges and preview options.