SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 11: Editing and Evaluation

FIGURE 11.23

Entering a range of sizes for the optimized feature

Tutorial: Making Use of Editing

and Evaluation Techniques

Using this tutorial, you make some major edits to an existing part. You use some simple loft and

spline commands, and work with the rollback states and feature order, as well as some evaluation

techniques. Please follow these steps:

1. Open the existing part with the filename Chapter 11 Tutorial Start.sldprt.
   Roll the part back and step through it feature by feature to see how it was made. Edit the
   loft feature to see which sketches were used to create it. This can help you to understand
   how the part was built. Exit the loft command and move the rollback bar back to the bot-
   tom of the tree.


2. Open the Deviation Analysis tool (Tools ➪ Deviation Analysis). Select the edges, as
   shown in Figure 11.24.

The maximum deviation is about ten degrees, which is far too much. This part needs to
be smoothed out, which you can do using splines in place of lines and arcs.

3. The first step is to make the outlet all one piece with the spiral. You can do this with
   a Fit Spline. You need to create the Fit Spline before the loft profiles and after the spiral.

Expand the loft, and roll back between the loft feature and the first sketch. Click OK in
response to the prompt, and then roll back to just after the spiral, as shown in Figure
11.25.

4. Right-click the spiral in the FeatureManager and show it. Open a new sketch on the
   Top plane.