From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2018 Essential Training

Getting started with the Hole Wizard - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2018 Essential Training

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Getting started with the Hole Wizard

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- [Instructor] The Hole Wizard is a feature inside of SOLIDWORKS that allows you to add industry standard holes, slots, and taps to your part. It's pretty straight-forward and easy to use. So let me show you exactly how to use it. Go ahead and click on the Hole Wizard under the Features tab. Click on that one there. Now, you can see over here we've got a whole bunch of different styles of Holes we can add. Up here, at the top, you can see we can start with a counterbore hole or a countersink, a regular hole and then jump down here into the taps. So you can do a straight tap or a pipe tap or tapered tap and so on. And down here, you also have the ability to add slots, so you can do a counterbore slot, or a countersunk slot, or just a straight slot. So you have a whole bunch of different options here and we have a bunch of different standards and types of holes you can add, but first things first, before we jump in to all that detail, let's go ahead and just figure out how to use this tool. So the first thing I need to do is just select a size of hole. So I am going to choose a counterbore at the top and in this case here, I'm going to use a half inch. Actually, not for a Binding Head Screw, we want to use actually, a Socket Head Cap Screw. So I'm going to come down here to a Socket Head Cap Screw and then choose a half inch. Alright, there it is. So that's a hole I'm going to add to this part. Now we'll come back and learn about all the other standards and so on in the next video, but for right now, let's go ahead and just create a few of these holes. Before I do that though, let's go ahead and change the end condition to be up to next. Alright, and now we're ready to go and add those holes. So first things first, let's click on Positions. Now, come over here and just choose this top surface. Alright, if I choose that top surface, now what I can do is anywhere I want to place a hole, just click, and place a hole. And notice, you get a preview of exactly the hole you're going to be adding to that part. Now, the way this works is anywhere you put a point, or a dot, it's going to add one of those holes. All these holes are going to be the exact hole you chose first, and anywhere you put that dot is going to add one of those holes. Now, if you want to go back and modify the type of hole, you of course, go back over here to Type, make some modifications to the style of hole, and then come back over here to Positions again, and place more holes or remove them. Now, because the point command is active, anywhere you click is going to add one of those holes. So you might have holes out here in space and have all kinds of issues and you want to get rid of these holes. Don't worry, hit Escape on your keyboard. That's going to turn that point command off and now if you have too many holes, go ahead and just click on the points and hit delete on your keyboard to remove them. If you want to add more holes back in, just go ahead and turn that point command back on and then place those holes. Alright, hit Escape to get back out of that tool again. Now, you can also spin your model around so I'm going to click on that top surface there, hit the Space Bar and then click on normal two, so I'm looking straight down on it, and now I can start placing where these holes want to be. So I can just drag these points around. You can snap the points to existing geometry, like this sketch I already have there, and that will fully define that one point and you can see it right there, it's fully defined. Or you can create some construction geometry here to locate where your points might be. So you have a whole bunch of different options for adding points, moving them around, and playing with them. So, I just want to show you really quickly, how do you add a sketch. So, you can switch over here to these sketch tools. Instead of a regular line, or regular rectangle, I'm going to use this corner rectangle. I'm going to draw a rectangle out and then I'm going to switch it over here to For Construction. So if you look over here, you can we have For Construction. Click on that one there, and it changes all those lines to be in construction lines, so they don't interfere with the Hole Wizard. So all I'm using these lines for is to locate where these holes are going to be. Then I'm going to go ahead and add one more line, which is going to go from side, all the way over here to the other side, and then go ahead and click on the Origin and click on that line, and click on Midpoint. Alright, now we have that centered on the Origin. Now, we can grab these points here and just snap them to the corners, to very easily locate where they're going to be. Over here, click on that, drag it to over there, and let's go ahead and delete this relationship here, grab that point and drop it over here in that corner. So, now you have four holes directly in the corner of that rectangle. You can also add a couple dimensions if you'd like to, right there, and let's go this way as well. Alright, once you have it fully defined, go ahead and click on the green check-mark, and there you go, your holes have been added to your part using that Hole Wizard. If you ever need to make a modification, or change those holes, you can jump right back into the tool, right over here. Right-click on it, click on Edit Feature, you can modify the style of hole as well as the location of where those holes might be on your part.

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