From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2021 Essential Training

Creating a coordinate system - SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

From the course: SOLIDWORKS 2021 Essential Training

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Creating a coordinate system

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- [Instructor] Each SolidWorks part has a origin as well as a default coordinate system. Notice down here is a triad, and we have an X, a Y and a Z direction and over here is our origin. Now notice that origin happens to be just randomly in the middle of my part. So sometimes you might want to actually create your own coordinate system where you'd like. This is especially useful if you're trying to figure out like a moment of inertia of the part or you want to weigh it or find the center of mass and you want to use that default coordinate system to define where that is. It's also helpful if you ever get into CNC machining, you can define where that work offset's going to be by establishing a new coordinate system. So I want to point out here, if I go up to evaluate, I can come over here to mass properties. It's using the center of mass over here, and it's using all these values, this center mass from that default coordinate system, right? We only have that default system, because we haven't added any more and same thing down here as far as the moments of inertia and all this other data down here is all using that default coordinate system. So if we add a new one, we can modify how that's all being calculated by using that new coordinate system. So what I'd like to do is come up here under features, come over here to reference geometry, and come down to coordinate system. Now the point I want to use is this little point right here. I want my x-axis to go along this edge right here. And now you can see I've got these other axes lined up exactly how I'm looking for them. And everything looks good. When you're done with that, you can also choose the y or the z-axis to define it a little further but if you've got what you're looking for here, you get the x go in the direction you want, the y's going the right direction, as well as the Z, you are all set, click OK and now you've got a new coordinate system. And you can do the same thing multiple times, we can create coordinate systems all over our part. In fact, if you wanted to create something up here, like a regular coordinate system that you weren't using before, I could say hey, I'd like to just make some basic drawing like starting over here, I could say, I like to have a line going this direction and a line going that direction and just exit out of the sketch. And then you can use those lines to define where your coordinates are going to be going. So let's go ahead and try that one more time. I come up here to coordinate system, I'm going to use this corner, right, as my coordinate system, my x-axis is going to go along this edge here, my y-axis is going to go along that edge there and then the Z is going to be going up, click OK and there's my next coordinate system. So you can rename those over here as well as by clicking on it and just renaming it right here but you don't have to. Okay, so there's a couple of ways you can do that. And then notice over here, because I've got these two coordinate systems, if I go back to evaluate and come up to mass properties, I can now choose them right over here, I can say coordinate system one, notice these values change so does the center of mass, coordinate system two, notice everything changes as well. So you're basing that center of mass off of that new coordinate system or you're basing the moment of inertia off that coordinate system. And if you get into CNC machine, you could say, hey, that's my work offset number one, and this other place over here is going to be work offset number two, and so on. So you have a lot of things you can do using these coordinate systems inside of SolidWorks.

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