3D curve creation - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

- In this video we're going to be creating some 3D composite curves. The first way to do this is to take this curve here which is a spline which I've created on the front plane, or actually Plane1 here, and I'm going to project that curve onto this surface. Now this is just a simple extruded surface and we're going to be getting into creating those very soon. The first thing I need to do here is go and do a projected curve. So I'm going to go up here to Features, Curves, and Project Curve. Now I have two options here. The first one here is Sketch on a face, and the second one is Sketch on a sketch. For the first option I'm going to use the Sketch on face but I am going to come back and teach you the Sketch on sketch. And for this one here, I'm going to choose my sketch so I'm going to go ahead and just choose the spline. And for my surface I'm going to choose that face there. Notice there's a little arrow here pointing the wrong direction so let's go ahead and flip that to the other side. Now you can see it projects that curve directly onto that surface. Now this doesn't necessarily have to be a surface. It can be a face. It can be revolve any shape, any surface, any curve, can work with this feature so I can project pretty much any curve I want under pretty much any surface or face. So go ahead and click on Ok. And there it is. Now it shows up as a feature in our tree and underneath that feature is that sketch. So I'm going to go ahead and turn that sketch back on. There it is and there's my first one. Now the next one I'm going to show you is that Sketch on sketch. So let's go ahead and hide the surface itself, but I'm going to show the sketch that was created. So there's my original sketch that made that. And let's go ahead and hide this feature right now. And hide. Ok, now I'm going to take these two sketches and I'm going to intersect the two. So I'm going to go to Curves, Project Curve, and Sketch on sketch. This time I'm going to choose that sketch here, and that one there and again I get almost exactly the same thing I did before but the point is that you don't necessarily have to have a face or surface, you can just use the sketches and intersect the two with this Projected Curve. Ok, there it is. And notice these are both features. Sometimes when you're needing to use a sketch a feature won't work, so there's a quick workaround I'm going to point out. If I go to this curve here, I can go up to Sketch, I can go up to 3D Sketch, and then I'm going to go Convert Entities and I'm going to choose that. As soon as I do that it converts that as I exit out. Now I have the exact same curve here, so Curve2 which is a feature, now I have it as a 3D sketch. So sometimes you might need to choose only a sketch and it won't let you choose a feature, that's the workaround to get to a 3D sketch. Ok, the next thing I want to point out is doing an intersection curve. So I'm going to go ahead and hide a few of these. So hide that, hide that, and I'm going to show this one, and then I'm going to intercept this with this surface but first I need to extrude this sketch. So I'm going to go up to Surfaces, I'm going to do Extruded Surfaces, I'm going to choose this sketch right here, make sure we're going in the right direction, and I'm going to go directly through this projecting or intersecting those two surfaces. Go ahead and click Ok. And we're going to be getting into the extruded surface here very soon, but for right now just assume that we know how to create these two intersecting surfaces under sketches and I'm going to Intersection Curve. Now I'm going to say I want to intersect and I can choose it from the window here or I can also go over here and choose the individual surface bodies. So that one there, and that one there. And click Ok. And again I get the exact same thing as we just did before but this time showing the intersection of two surfaces and again I get a 3D sketch. So that I can exit out and there it is. So again multiple different ways to create the exact same thing, but these are all 3D composite curves. I'm taking two entities and intersecting them together or interfering them together and finding out what the composite 3D sketch is. This is very powerful. It's a great way to do some complex surface modeling all using 3D intersecting curves.