Wave the Flag!

Flags?
Really?
Well, many of our customers build boats, some design toys...
Plus Freeform is a command that can be used to modify solids or surfaces - here I have created an extruded surface.

HIt the button and select the face you want to distort and generally mess about with: -

As you hover the cursor over the face you will see a preview of a thin green line - this is control Curve - you can put these in either (or both) orientation(s) - you can hit the Tab key on your keyboard to toggle between the two directions.

The idea is, you put on curves and then you can add control Points to the curves - it is these that you can pull or push around.

In addition to control Curves across the face, you can set the edges to Moveable - and add Points to those.

When you have added enough Curves and Points, click on a Curve (or a movable edge) and any points will become visible - click on a point and you will get a Move Triad - great fun!

I find it best to only use the arrows to move the points - using the pinky-purple plane between arrows is OK, as that constrains the movement to that plane - best to avoid the dot in the middle as it can go anywhere!

By carefully moving the points (rotate your view often!) you can get some nice shapes...
If you go too far, don't panic and hit Escape - just right-click and use Reset Curve.

If you are doing this on a surface and you want to have it 3D printed, don't forget to use Thicken - surfaces have no thickness at all and cannot exist in real life...

To finish up, I did a sketch:-

And then used the Split Line command to divide up the faces - which I then coloured: -

Sorry, you weren't really expecting the English flag were you?

Have fun,

Rory Niles
SOLIDWORKS  Instructor.