SolidWorks® Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling Bible

Chapter 1. Understanding Basic Concepts

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Assumed basic skills

• Concepts, tools, techniques, and strategies

• Understanding the difference between design and modeling

Everyone has a different idea of what the words "basic" and "advanced" mean. In general terms, some users might consider everything in this book advanced, and others might consider it basic. Still, in order to progress, the concepts have to start from somewhere, and so the initial concepts will form the basis for the more advanced material to come later.

SolidWorks probably has more surface and complex shape functionality than you realize, especially if you are coming to this book from a machine design background. Some of the tools are matured, having been available for quite some time, and some are newly added to the software, with some occasional kinks still left to work out.

Regardless of how you have arrived here, surfacing and complex shapes are areas of the SolidWorks software that have been flourishing in recent years, and improve with each new release of the software. Still, it is an area that doesn't get as much traffic as, say, the extrudes, revolves and fillets, and so bugs, or quirky functionality, can still be found from time to time.

Figure 1.1 shows an example of some of the modeling that you will find in the pages of this book. This is a SolidWorks model of the SolidWorks Roadster, a Shelby Cobra kit car built by SolidWorks employees, and displayed at SolidWorks World 2007. This rendering was done ...