Line, Center Line, and Rectangle tools - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

- The line command seems very simple and it really is. However, there are some secrets hidden tools inside of the line command that allows us to use it to a level a little bit above just the basic knowledge of how to create a straight line. We're also going to be covering the center line tool as well as the rectangle tool in this video. So let's jump right into it. Right up here, I've got a sketch started and I'm going to click on the line command right up here at the top. A couple of ways to create a line. I use what I call the click click method. So I want to click where I want to start and I want to click where I want to end. Okay? And I notice I get this little pop up display here telling me how long my line is and if I type in something like seven, it'll automatically make that line that long and notice I can continue making lines. Okay? So click again and click again, and notice I'm getting that little heads up display. And of course I can type in a value here for the length of that line. So it's giving me the ability to kind of create that thing. If you don't see that little pop up length here, that I can type in the real value, don't worry. Right up here on the gear or the options come up here. Under system options, come down here to sketch, and we have this little option here. It says, enable onscreen numeric input for entity creation and you also have the option for create dimension only when the value is entered so click on that. So if I don't put anything in there, it's not going to add any dimensions. Let's try it again. So now if I click over here and type something, or if I type in a value like 3.0, it'll actually create that dimension notice like, so we can actually define our shape with that input. Now, sometimes you might not want that to happen, but in this case, we do have that option. So now I can, again, type in a value. It'll automatically add the dimension for me or the length and if I don't click in a dimension, it just keeps making lines. Now notice these little helper lines, look at these little yellow guys. We covered this a little bit in the past, but if you click on this, it'll automatically add that relationship we talked about. So here's a relationship between those two lines. If you click on it, it'll show you which lines are involved. Same thing as the one over here, like this line here, it's in a parallel relationship to this one down here. So a couple different ways you can create it. So that's the click click method. Again, we want to click right where we want to start and click again where you want to end. We also have the click and drag method. So click once and then just hold down your cursor and let go when you're done and that will complete that line segment. It doesn't allow it to keep going, right? So a lot of times you don't want to just keep making lines on top of lines. You just want to make one line segment and that's fine. So click and drag and then you have a line segment that looks like that. Okay? Now of course you can add things like relationships. You can add other lines and you can jump back into that line command and just continue on by clicking on the end point and then making some lines. And if I want to type something like 13, I can make an add a dimension here so I can define my sketch as I'm going through it. Okay? If you didn't add a dimension, you can always go back and add a dimension to a line later on. No problem, right? We can always add them any point in time. It's just a little bit of a heads up display there that gives you the length of the line and it allows you to type that value in right while you're creating them, so it makes it pretty easy. Okay? Now let's take a look at some of the options on the lines. So clear this line here. Notice over here, there's a pop up window here that gives me a few options as far as like relationships, but I also have this one here. It says construction geometry. So it will switch between regular geometry and construction geometry, or that'll turn it into a center line. Okay, so click over here. I also have that same option over here for construction. So it can turn that on or turn that off. Right? And I love, I just absolutely love construction geometry. It allows me to create a bunch of these lines that can link things together. I can use midpoint relationship, things like that to define a pretty complicated sketch with very few dimensions and that's what you're really looking for. The simplest sketch you can possibly get with the fewest amount of dimensions to fully define what you need to make. So that's kind of our goal here. And for instance, like if I wanted to make a rectangle, right, and I want to put it right at the center, so here's a rectangle. I can just draw out a rectangle. Okay, so once we've selected the rectangle, we've added that center line, then we've added that midpoint relationship, now that's attached to the origin. Now I can change the size, but it's always attached to that origin using the construction geometry. Okay? Now I told you I was going to teach you a little bit more about the rectangle command and that's what we're going to jump into right now. So right up here under the rectangle command, if you click on the little drop down next to it, we have a bunch of different types of rectangles. So notice my regular corner rectangle, the way it creates that rectangle is really just four lines and it adds some relationships as this one is horizontal, this one's horizontal. This one over here is vertical, this one over here is vertical. However, if you wanted to rotate this thing at like a little angle, that's just not going to work with this, the way this is designed, right? This is always going to be a vertical line. So I'm going to have to like delete that, hit that and hit delete on my keyboard. Same thing over here, have to delete that. Now I can kind of move these lines like this, that'll work, but if I wanted to delete that relationship and delete that one, now I have this thing kind of free floating and it's not a rectangle anymore, right? So I'd need to go ahead and create a rectangle a different way. And my other way I could create a rectangle might be using like a perpendicular. So click on this line here. How about that line over there and say, let's make these perpendicular, how about these over here? Same thing, make them perpendicular. I can make this line here and I can make that line there. We can make them parallel and it's a bunch of different ways we could do this, right? But now I have the ability to take this and I can, I can change the size of it, but I can also change the angle. If I wanted to define like, this is a flat line here or a horizontal line, and I could define an angle between this and maybe this line up here. It would have to be like 30 degrees and notice automatically that rectangle rotates around. So that's a lot of work to do all that, all those relationships and angles and things like that. Well guess what? SOLIDWORKS thought ahead here and they decided to, instead of just giving a regular rectangle, I also have the center point rectangles. So just click on wherever you want the center point to be. But we also have this three point corner rectangle. In that case, click once, click again, and then click a third time and notice how it created that rectangle. It did a parallel as well as two perpendicular relationships to create that rectangle. Now, what I can do is of course, I can rotate that around so I can snap one of the things to like the origin and grab a point and I can rotate that around anywhere I want. It's designed for putting it at a funny angle. So again, there's a bunch of different ways you can create rectangles. So corner rectangle is just going to grab two clicks, one where you want to start, one where you want to end, the center rectangle is, click where you want to be, start the rectangle, click where you want to end, and notice it adds those two center points or center lines with that center point. So pretty handy. The next one is going to be that three-point corner rectangle. We also have the center point corner rectangles. So it starts at the center and defines whatever shape you want. And then the very last one here is that parallelogram. Click once and then drag it out and you have a parallelogram. So a whole bunch of ways you can create rectangles, SOLIDWORKS has really thought about it's just four lines with some relationships added, but depending on which style you choose will define what type of relationships are added and how SOLIDWORKS create it. But hey, if you don't like the rectangle command, feel free to just use a regular line command, create those rectangles, add some center lines and you should be off and running.