Using Delete Face as a cutting tool

Using Delete Face as a cutting tool

Today’s little tip is the use of the “Delete Face” as a cutting tool, to save you the time and effort sketching and creating features to remove the model geometry

Let me explain below:

As you can see, due the sequence of creation, the boss has been added after the cut which has meant the boss geometry appears through where the cut should be…

…therefore to avoid having to reorder features or create a second cut we can use the “Delete Face” tool with the “Delete and Patch” settings (this can be found on your standard surface toolbar or via the menu system at “Insert, Face, Delete”) by selecting the face as below...

...this then removes the face selected and patches in the faces left behind to close and form the solid body:

Using the same procedure we can also use it to work on data that may not have been created in SOLIDWORKS and therefore lacks the feature history to allow us to delete features or reorder items in the tree, here we have an imported IGES file with a small section of unnecessary geometry we wish to remove:

Before                                                                         During                                                                    After

So, give it a try next time you have some extra geometry you wish to remove, key tip is to make sure you select all of the faces that make up that piece of geometry. 

Also don’t forget to head over to our www.solidSolutions.tv pages and watch our tips and tricks video’s as well as our Webcast Wednesday archives

Thank you for your time,

By, Russell Richardson

Elite Applications Engineer

SolidSolutions