Boundary surface - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

- [Instructor] Let's take a little bit closer look at a boundary surface and some of the options that are available there. So, right over here, I've already got this hole, which is a little bit bigger than this other sketch down here, and I want to create a nice, swooping surface that comes and follows this curvature here, and drops down into this hole here, and eventually this is going to be an injection-molded part, so I want to make sure we have a little bit of draft on the vertical faces here, so that everything can be molded easily. So, to do that, let's go ahead and create a boundary surface. So, click on boundary surface right up here. My first direction, now, if I choose something like this sketch down here, notice that it chooses the entire sketch. I don't want the entire sketch. I just want one section of it, all right? So, if I right click in here, I can say selection manager or choose selection manager and choose just this section here, click okay, and that's my first section. And then for my second section here, or my second curve, right click again, say selection manager, and this time I'm going to choose this edge right here, and then click on the green check mark. Now, there's my most basic boundary surface between those two sketches. Now, if I want to make this a little bit more complicated, notice these little pop ups on either one of those. So, up here, if I click on the little dropdown, instead of none, I want to say I want to curvature to face. And notice what happens is it starts bringing that surface in, and it stretches it kind of from that surface here and then down into the hole, which is pretty cool. And that's exactly what I want. And you can control how much affect that has by clicking on this arrow here. And they can get pretty out of control if you do that. But, you know, you can also type in a value here. So, like, one inch, right? That's the effect of one. Maybe it's not one inch, it's just one, is the tangent length. And you can also define an angle or draft angle. But in this case, I don't want to draft. I just want to come straight out of that surface and down. Now, at the other location, down here, I want to say this is going to be a direction vector, and it's going to give me the error that says, "Hey, we don't have a direction vector." So, click okay, and then come down here, and let's go ahead and choose what my direction vector's going to be. So, notice I have, let's see, it's a top plane right there. And I can use that as my direction vector, so it shows up here. I can define an angle or draft angle. I'm going to type in 3D rays, right, 'cause I'm going to be molding this part. And then notice down here we get this little red arrow, right? So, if I click on this little reverse direction, now it's drafting it outwards, or drafting inwards. So, because it's going to be an injected-molded tool from the top, I want to be drafting it outwards, so it gets bigger as it goes up. And I can also define how much control that has, the tangency length, I can type that value in here. So, right there's what I'm looking for, though, and click on the green check mark, and there's my first boundary surface, and if you look from the top, you can see it's got a nice little draft. It's going down into the hole. So, by just choosing those two line segments that are attached to the surface on the top as well as just the 2D sketch on the bottom, we're able to create a pretty complicated surface using the boundary tool. And you can see this is a very powerful. And more than likely, you're going to have to do this on the exam. Actually, probably multiple times. So make sure you're very familiar with how to create these type of boundary surfaces and practice a few times prior to taking the exam.