SolidWorks® 2011 Parts Bible

CHAPTER 4

Creating Simple Parts and Drawings

IN THIS CHAPTER

Establishing design intent

Building a simple part

Making a simple drawing tutorial

Good modeling practice is based on robust design intent. This just means that you should try to build parts that can adapt easily to changes. This section of the book begins with questions that you need to ask to make good models.

Beginning to create simple parts will help you understand techniques used in more complex modeling projects. Learning on simple tools and then expanding your skills helps you to understand best practice issues, which makes you a better contributor to a team environment.

Discovering Design Intent

By asking questions about the part's function before you start modeling or designing, you can create a model that will be easier to edit, easier to properly place into an assembly, easier to detail in drawings, and easier for other SolidWorks users to understand when someone else has to work on your models. Whether you are doing the modeling for someone else or doing the design and modeling for yourself may make a difference in how you approach the modeling task.

The purpose of these questions is to help you establish design intent. The term design intent is a statement of how the part functions and how the model reacts to modeling changes.

It may help if you try to put the design intent into words to help you focus on what is important in the design. An example of a statement of design intent is “This part is symmetric ...