Solidworks is a 3D Design package that is very similar to Creo/ProEngineer. It uses the basic design process of creating a shape and then adding constraints and dimensions. This design package is used very often in the engineering world due to its ease to work with, as well as the Finite Element Analysis that can be done with it. This will be a tutorial about basic design works as well as the sheet metal feature in Solidworks. Both of these were used in our design project.
Basic Tutorial
When Solidworks opens, open a new part. Solidworks uses sketches as the basic element of every feature. To sketch a feature, press "sketch", and choose a plane to sketch on. Whichever plane you sketch on will determine what orientation the part takes in the program.
A next major tool in basic design is the "extruded boss/base" tool. This will turn your 2D sketch into a 3D part. To use this tool, click on the feature tab, then the tool. The tool will prompt you to either create a new sketch on a plane, or choose an existing sketch. Either is fine. After choosing our sketch, this menu will appear.
The direction is just the direction the sketch will be extended. The drop down menu under "blind" will give you different directional options for extruding your piece. Thin feature is used to remove material from the center. After selecting all the options, click "ok" and your 2D sketch will be extended.
The next basic feature we will show you how to use is the "extruded cut" tool. This will be used to remove material from a 3D part. It works essentially the same way as the "extruded boss" tool. We will draw a sketch, choosing the surface of the part as our sketch plane. After doing this, we will choose how far we want the cut to extend into the part.
To add relations to a sketch, select two seperate entities, such as two lines or a line and a point, and add a relation in the options. These relations will be dependent on what types of entities you select.
If during a sketch, you over define the sketch so that it can not possibly be created, Solidworks will warm you and show you which conflict. These are generally very easy to determine.
After creating and defining our sketch, we will choose the "extruded cut" feature. Again, it will prompt us to choose either a new sketch plane or existing sketch. We will choose our sketch. Solidworks will show you a preview of what will be removed and you have very similar options compared to the extruded boss feature.
After clicking "ok", this basic part will be complete. In the next tutorial we will show you how to convert the part into sheet metal, making the part easy to manufacture.
Sheet Metal Tutorial
A useful feature in Solidworks is its sheet metal tools. This gives the user the power to turn almost any part into sheet metal, making it very easy to manufacture. We will be showing you how to turn the part we just made into a piece of sheet metal for manufacturing. The first step is to open the sheet metal tab and click "convert to sheet metal". This will open a menu with many options which we will look at.
The first option is to choose a face on the part which will be considered the fixed face. Essentially this is the face you want all other bends to come off of. The next options are the thickness of the sheet metal you will be using (.065" in our case) and the bend radius (.125" here).
The next option is the corner settings. This will change the specific miters of the corners for the part.
To begin, select the bottom face as the fixed face. Then choose the edges of the part as the edges to bend. You will begin to see the part forming.
At this point, we have a part which is made out of sheet metal. For manufacturing, it would be extremely helpful it a flattened view was shown. Luckily there is an option for that. Click the "Flatten" tool and the flat pattern will be shown.
