Modeling Tools¶
The tools that turn sketches into solids in the Design tab, and the reference geometry they attach to. Every tool consumes what is already selected, and every one of them becomes a feature in the tree that can be edited later.
- Add Material
- Surfaces
- Dress-up
- Holes and Threads
- Placement
- Combining
- Reference Geometry
- Assemblies
- Variables and Expressions
- The Feature Tree
Add Material¶
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Extrude | Shift + E |
Extrude a profile, or push and pull a face that is already on a body |
| Revolve | Shift + R |
Revolve a profile about an axis |
| Sweep | Shift + W |
Sweep a profile along a path, including a helix for springs and augers |
| Loft | Shift + L |
Skin between two or more profiles |
| Thicken | — | Offset a solid face into a thin plate as a new body |
| Rib | — | Grow a stiffening wall from an open sketch line, fused to a body |
Extrude offers blind, symmetric, two-sided, through-all and up-to-face end conditions, plus a draft angle on the side wall. Its result can add to, subtract from or intersect an existing body, or start a new one.
Note
A subtraction that removes no material is reported as an error rather than succeeding silently.
Surfaces¶
Sheet bodies are surfaces with no thickness, for shapes that are easier to build as a skin and solidify afterwards.
| Tool | Key |
|---|---|
| Surface Extrude | Shift + G |
| Surface Revolve | Shift + J |
| Surface Loft | Shift + O |
| Surface Fill | Shift + Q |
| Surface Offset | Shift + U |
| Thicken Surface | Shift + V |
Thicken Surface is how a sheet body becomes a printable solid.
Dress-up¶
| Tool | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Fillet / Chamfer | Shift + F |
Round or bevel a picked edge |
| Draft | Shift + D |
Taper a picked face by an angle |
| Shell | Shift + K |
Hollow the body to a wall thickness, opening a picked face |
| Delete Face | — | Remove faces and heal the solid, which is how a feature is stripped off an imported part |
Holes and Threads¶
Hole (Shift + H) drills simple, counterbored and countersunk holes, centered on a picked face or placed on a plane. It carries an ISO and ANSI standards table, so you can ask for an M6 clearance hole instead of computing a diameter.
Thread (Shift + T) cuts a real helical thread into a bore or onto a shaft.
Placement¶
Operations that move a body without changing its shape: Transform (Shift + Y) moves and rotates a body, Mirror (Shift + Z) reflects it about a plane, and Mate places one body against another (see Assemblies).
Combining¶
Boolean (Shift + B) unions, subtracts or intersects two bodies. Cut (Shift + X) splits a body with a plane. Pattern (Shift + N) repeats a body linearly, in a circle, or along a curve.
Reference Geometry¶
Datum features carry no material. They exist to give later features something to attach to.
| Feature | Key | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| Plane | Shift + P |
An offset, a tilt, a midplane, a tangency, two edges, or coincidence with a face |
| Axis | Shift + A |
Two points, a face normal, a cylinder centerline, the intersection of two planes, or an edge |
| Coord Sys | Shift + C |
A full frame, from a world point or from a face plus a direction edge |
| Helix | — | A helical curve to sweep along |
| Project | — | A body's edges projected onto a plane as sketch geometry |
Tip
On the Coord Sys tool, picking a direction edge is worth the extra click. Without one the frame takes its X from the face's first edge, which is repeatable but not necessarily the direction you meant.
Assemblies¶
Mate aligns two coordinate systems and moves one body onto the other. Five kinds are available:
| Kind | Leaves free |
|---|---|
| Fastened | Nothing — all six degrees of freedom are locked |
| Planar | Sliding in the plane |
| Revolute | Rotation about the axis |
| Slider | Sliding along the axis |
| Cylindrical | Rotation and sliding |
Check interference reports every overlapping pair of solids together with the overlapping volume, so a clash is a number rather than an impression. Bodies that only touch enclose no volume and are not reported.
A mate connector is drawn as a small face, whose orientation can be read at a glance. Draw mate connectors as a face (Preferences → Control → Camera) turns that off in favour of the conventional disc with a roll quadrant.
Note
Mates are applied in the order they were created rather than solved together, and mate limits are not implemented. Build an assembly from the fixed body outwards.
Variables and Expressions¶
Define named variables and drive dimensions from them. Any numeric field accepts an expression, such as width/2 or wall*3, and everything is re-evaluated on recompute. Change one variable and the whole model follows.
The Feature Tree¶
The tree is editable history rather than a log. Selecting a feature reopens it with the same on-geometry interaction that created it, F2 renames it, and Del removes it. Every change replays the recipe from the start, so a dimension set early in the model rebuilds everything downstream. Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Shift + Z undo and redo across the whole tab.