SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Part II: Building Intelligence into Your Parts

FIGURE 6.8

The Modify Sketch tool cursors

Note
The Modify Sketch tool is one of my favorite sketch editing tools to use because it is straightforward and
doesn’t do anything unexpected. It was also an original SolidWorks development, not a tool meant to duplicate
existing AutoCAD functionality like some of the previously mentioned sketch tools.

The one thing about Modify Sketch that many people find unsettling is that the red sketch origin moves and
rotates along with the rest of the sketch. Once you make peace with the fact that you can’t use the red sketch
origin for much anyway, this becomes unimportant. n

Copy and paste

Probably the simplest way to copy sketch entities in a sketch is to select the entities and use Ctrl+C

and Ctrl+V or one of the many other methods available for this purpose (such as the RMB button

menu, the Edit menu, and Ctrl+dragging).

In addition to copying selected entities within an active sketch, you can also select a sketch from

the FeatureManager and copy or paste it to a selected plane or planar face. This creates a new

sketch feature in the FeatureManager that is not related to the original, although it does maintain

internal dimensions and relations. (External relations are not copied with the sketch.) This is

particularly useful when setting up certain types of lofts that use several profiles that can be created

from a single copied profile. Copying and pasting is a fast and effective method of putting sketches

on planes.

Simple drag

If a selected set of sketch entities has no external relations, then you can select it as a group and

move it without distorting or resizing the sketch. For best results with this, avoid dragging end

points.

Derived sketch

A derived sketch is a parametrically linked copy. The original parent and derived sketches do not

need to have any geometrical relation to one another, but when the parent sketch is changed, the

dependent derived copy is updated to stay in sync.

To create a derived sketch, you can select a plane or planar face, Ctrl+select the sketch of which

you want to make the parametric copy, and then choose Insert ➪ Derived Sketch.