SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 3: Working with Sketches

Tip

The main ideas to remember with the Stretch tool are that it is used to stretch dimensioned lines, and that you

need to select the lines that will lengthen or shorten as well as the lines that will move. Because if this, select-

ing entities for Stretch is best done with the right-to-left window selection, which also selects any items that

the selection box crosses. (Left-to-right window selection only selects items that are completely within the

selection box.) n

Caution

Figure 3.18 shows the X/Y option being used, but if you use the From/To option, be aware that it may delete

some sketch relations along the way. n

The Move, Rotate, Copy, and Scale sketch tools operate on selections within a sketch. You can use

these tools with pre- or post-selection methods. These tools delete existing sketch relations when

necessary to accomplish the task. For example, if you want to move a rectangle connected to the

origin, the Move tool will delete the Coincident relation between the sketch endpoint and the ori-

gin. If you want to rotate a rectangle, the Rotate tool will delete all the horizontal and vertical rela-

tions on the entities being rotated. This operation may result in a completely underdefined sketch.

SolidWorks does not warn you that sketch relations are being deleted.

If you use the Scale tool on a fully defined sketch, SolidWorks will scale the position of the selected

entities, deleting sketch relations if necessary to do so, but no dimensions will be scaled or deleted.

Caution

Be careful when using these sketch tools. They can delete sketch relations without warning. n

These sketch tools were originally put in the software to avoid some of the complexities and limita-

tions of the Modify Sketch tool, which can also move, copy, rotate, and scale sketches. Figure 3.19

shows the simple interface for the Move Entities command. Select the entities to move in the upper

box and the method to move them below.

Select is usually used to turn off the previous command.

Grid/Snap is used to open the Grid/Snap section of Tools ➪ Options ➪ Document Properties.

Parallelogram can be used in two different ways:

l (^) To draw a rectangle at an angle, click one corner of the rectangle, and then drag a side
connected to that corner. Then click and drag the length of the second direction.
l (^) To draw a parallelogram (adjacent sides are not perpendicular, but opposite sides are
parallel), draw the first side of the parallelogram in the same way as the first side of the
rectangle, but hold down the Ctrl key when dragging the second side; you can set the
angle as well as the length.