Thursday March 27, 2014 at 2:15pm
Anyone that has used the Weldment command "Structural Member" will know that you can set it to give you mitred corners - here we will look at a situation where we have three lines meeting up at the one corner of a 3D sketch. If anyone hasn't seen it - this is the button that kicks it all off...
Anyone that has used the
Weldment command
"Structural Member" will know that you can set it to give you mitred corners - here we will look at a situation where we have three lines meeting up at the one corner of a 3D sketch. If anyone hasn't seen it - this is the button that kicks it all off: -
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
As you can see now, I've selected the right hand line at the top: -
I've gone for a 1" diameter round tube profile for this example.
I can now select either of the other lines without any trouble, but I can't select both of them until I hit the
"New Group" button.
Having pressed "New Group" I can then have all three.
However, it isn't giving a great result where all the tubes meet up: -
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
To sort this out, there is an option in the "Structural Member" command that many people will not have spotted - to get it you need to be editing the feature, and you click on the pink dot at the corner - that brings
up the "Corner Treatment" panel shown below: -
Many users will have spotted the three green and yellow buttons for switching between
mitre/end butt 1/end butt 2 - but maybe not noticed the
"Trim Order" box.
This allows us to give equal priority to both of the "Groups" meeting at this corner.
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Having changed that, this is the result: -
All the tubes are now mitred in the same fashion - which not only gives us a much nicer looking frame,
but makes cutting the tubes easier as well!
Rory Niles, CSWE
SOLIDWORKS Instructor.