Friday tech tip

It's the Friday before a long weekend (July 4th) and I'm running out of blogging time so I thought I'd post a quick tech tip.  I'm honestly not sure if this enhanced functionality appeared in SW 2005 or SW 2006, when you're testing alpha and beta releases as well as using a production release it's easy to lose track of what functionality was introduced in which release.  This tip works in SW 2006 and if you're still using SW 2005 you'll have to give it a try and see.  The slide to the left gives a good graphical explanation of the tip.
This tip deals with dimensioning circles and arcs.  Let's say you have two circles and you would like to dimension to the farthest outside edges of those circles.  The original method of handling this in SolidWorks was a little cumbersome.  You would select the "smart dimension" tool and click both circles which would give you a dimension from center of circle to center of Ciel.  Then you could right click the dimension, select properties and set the end conditions (min center max) for each circle.  This method worked (and still does) fine except it required some extra clicking.  Luckily someone at SolidWorks came to work with their thinking cap on one day and wrote a little code to make our lives easier (whoever you are..thank you). 

The new method for creating this dimension is much simpler.  Start with the same two circles, using the "smart dimension" tool hold down the SHIFT key and select the circles near the quadrant you would like to dimension too.  For this example we would hold the SHIFT key and select the quadrants the furthest apart from each other (see slide above).  As you pull the dimension you'll notice it's attached to the circle in the locations we selected.  Click to place the dimension and you're done.  This tip works when your trying to dimension a circle or arc and some other form of geometry (line, edge, etc).  The slide example shows this tip being used in a drawing but it works just as well in sketch mode while you're modeling.

Comments

[Shin Kim]

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[rob rodriguez]

Thanks guys. This was another tip in my presentation from the SWUGN Technical Summit in Boston, I was amazed at how many people didn't know this.

Ricky, your third method is also another way of doing this. I seem to have an issue with dragging the dimension attachment points in drawings. In sketch mode it works well but it seems to work intermitantly in drawings. Any tips for me?

[Ricky Jordan]

GREAT tip Rob!

This is definitely one I use often. It's a feature that many people do not know about.

Another "legacy" trick that still works if you have already created a dimension on center and want to change it to max/min is to left click & hold the attachment point of the dimension at the circle and drag it to either side. This saves you from having to enter the property menu.

Good stuff! Keep the tips coming!

[Devon T. Sowell]

Great tip, thanks!

Devon