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: -
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: -
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.
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.