If you revolve it, you can control the diameter, height and axial shape (see Figure 2). If you extrude it, you can control the diameter and height as well as the shape perpendicular to the direction of the extrusion (see Figure 1). Should you extrude the cylinder or revolve it? This is very important to decide. The next decision is a little more daunting. For instance, a mighty space rocket is, at its heart, a cylinder. Reduce it to its most basic shape-the lowest common denominator. You must really think about the overall shape you wish your model to achieve. Whether surface or solid, your SOLIDWORKS models will begin with a sketch. Revolving gives you greater versatility to shape your model, but its basic shape will always be cylindrical. Extruding gives you control of your model from one end to the other.įigure 2. Use both methods to achieve great models, fast, and with greater flexibility.įigure 1. Surface modeling produces super-high-quality models, but can take time.
Solid modeling is really, really good at getting a lot done, quickly. The best way to use SOLIDWORKS is to use surfaces and solids to achieve truly marvelous models. Often your models will appear somewhat boxy and dull. They are really great at capturing manufacturing data (like mass, weight, etc.) but they can also be fairly restrictive in what you can create. Solids have many benefits, but there are inherent limitations there, too. But a surface model defines only surfaces, so it is hollow. You can create any shape you can imagine (given enough time and practice). This is somewhat tedious because you generally must build one face of the model at a time, trimming and manipulating as you go. (You can’t really measure it accurately.) You can build your design with surfaces. Easy to do and valuable for initial concept work, but not very versatile or informative. You can do everything on a napkin sketch. There are many ways to arrive at your ideal design destination. But SOLIDWORKS helps you with that by giving you tools that are easy to use and very powerful. You usually need to make countless small changes-no matter how great the concept. It’s very rare that you design something and get it right the first time.
Why would you want to do that? Repeatability and changeability. In this way, you can capture design intent. It is parametric, which means you assign dimensions to your geometry that tell it how to behave. SOLIDWORKS, as you might gather from its name, is primarily a solid modeler.
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