Creating a Solid body with surfaces in SOLIDWORKS
While working with surfaces in SOLIDWORKS, you would typically add a feature to convert it to a solid body at the end of your design tree. How do you convert it to a solid body? There are many ways to do that. Here you will learn different features of Surfaces that has an option to convert your surfaces to a solid body.
Knit surface is the most commonly used feature in creating a solid body in SOLIDWORKS. It is a tool that can combine two or more surface into one. You can select the “create solid” checkbox from the top of knit surface Property Manager. For this option to be enabled, you must select the surfaces first and make sure that these surfaces are enclosed or form a closed volume.
Thicken
As the name says, it is a future to increase the thickness of a surface or create a solid feature from a surface. You have an option to increase the thickness from a different a direction and to create a solid body from a surface body that is fully enclosed by surfaces known as “Create solid from enclosed volume”.
Trim surface feature can be used as a trim tool to trim intersecting surfaces from two or more surfaces. To create a solid body, you must select mutual under trim type in Property Manager. Creating a solid body in trim surface feature is a little bit tricky. You can follow these steps to create a solid body. First, select the surface as trim tool and surface to trim under trimming surfaces of selections. Second, you can choose “keep selections” to select less number of surfaces or choose “remove selections” which requires more surfaces to select. Third, select the surfaces you want to keep under “pieces to keep”.
Filled Surface
You can use this feature to create a surface to fill a gap or holes in your surface bodies and create a solid body. To create a solid body, select all the edges, sketches or curves of your model then select the checkbox for “create solid”.
The boundary surface feature is just the same as other surfaces feature that creates a solid body with enclosed surfaces or for a volume a closed volume. You may select the “create solid” from the bottom of Property Manager under options and preview.
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Originally published at www.nccs.com.au on June 13, 2018.
