From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2017 Essential Training

Line and Centerline tools - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2017 Essential Training

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Line and Centerline tools

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- In this movie, we are going to be going over the line and center line tools. Just start drawing lines, I need to start a sketch, and I'm going to choose the front plane. Now up here on the toolbar you see I have both a line and then you see a dropdown next to that line which gives me the option for both the center line as well as the midpoint line. So click on just a regular line to get started. Now there's two different ways to create a line. The first one is the click click method, the second one is a click and drag method. So the click click method is just click right where you want to start, and then notice as soon as you've clicked once, this icon shows up underneath where your cursor is showing me that I'm in the line command and it's giving me a heads up display of how long this line is. Now I can spin this around as I go to vertical it gives me the option of adding an automatic relationship. As I come over here to horizontal, same thing. And down here again, a vertical relationship. And horizontal over here I can even snap two angles if I want to. So that's the click click method. When I'm happy with the length and angle of the line just click again and you can see it just ends that line segment but it keeps the tool active. Now the tool is active and I also have these little yellow, helper lines that allow me to add automatic relationships. So if I go and click on this yellow line here it will automatically add a collinear relationship. Down here it will automatically add a perpendicular relationship and so on. So if you don't want any of those just click anywhere outside of those lines and just place your line. I can continue this as much as I want. Just click anywhere I want to place a line and it will just create that shape. When I'm happy with the shape I can hit escape to get out of it. Or if I go over here and click on the starting point, it will automatically exit out of that feature and create that one and continuous shape. Now I'm still in the line command though, but it did end that line segment right where I started. Now the other option is the click and drag methods. So up here I'm going to click one time and just drag out a line. As soon as I let go it just ends that line segment. Again I'm still in the line command, but that line segment has now ended. So if I click once and click again, again this active tool stays, trying to make more lines. And notice all these helper line we're getting now. Everywhere I go it's trying to make some kind of relationship or some type of little helper to the other relationships that are around, or the other points or lines to where I'm going. So that can be sometimes overwhelming if you have a lot of things in your sketch. But it does help things out if you want to. Otherwise, just hit escape, exit out of that tool and exit out of that line command. So that's the basics for your standard line. Now I can come up here and do the same thing with the center line tool. Center line tool works exactly the same as the regular line tool. Click once when you want to start, click where you want to end. Click again, click again. Or escape out of that, go back to that center line tool, and click and drag and that way it doesn't continue on with that tool. Those are the basics for those two tools. Now I can switch between the two types of lines very easily. If I click on a line here, notice over here on the lefthand side I can automatically add some relationships like horizontal or vertical. I can also say that this is for construction. I even have the option to make it infinite so it goes all the way across the screen. Or turn those off, turn those off, and you go back to a regular line. So you can switch between the two. If I want to select all of these, I can click and drag a window around them, select everything and I can say that I want everything to be construction, or everything to be a regular line. Quickly change between the two. If I click and drag the other direciton, I can also select all of that and I can apply relationships to a lot of these lines. I can add or change it back to construction if I wanted to. And I can apply these on all the lines at the same time by selecting them with one of these mass selection type windows. I also have the last option here of the midpoint line which allows me to start at the midpoint and then just drag the line out however I want. Again, it's a new useful tool that has been recently added to SOLIDWORKS. So a very handy little tool. I have the midpoint now, I can snap that two other lines. I can move things around and again it has a vertical relationship so it allows me to move things around. And then when I have lines on the screen I also have the ability to move the line by its endpoints as well as the center of the line. So if I click on an endpoint here, I can drag that endpoint anywhere I want. If I choose the line itself, it's then going to control where that line is. Up and down, or over here I can choose and slide that entire line whereas if I choose the endpoint it's going to allow it to kind of move and change the shape. So, a lot of different options of how to create line, how to create center lines and how to convert from one to the other.

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