The sweep shows the use of guide curves to drive the shape of the profile. The goal was to keep basically the same profile shape along the length of the blade, but drive the profile to shrink. Be sure to use pierce relationships between profile points and the path/guide curves.

High gloss parts can be challenging to model with good transitions between surfaces.This model shows good ways to blend surfaces together. It also contains a pattern along a curve for the serration edge.

This multi-body part shows how break up difficult geometry into manageable pieces. It demonstrates the use of 3D sketches to create the handle geometry. It has multiple sweeps including 3D sweeps. Other features in the part include multiple lofts (one with a guide curve), combine, split line curve, mirror, revolve and move/copy body.

This assembly is a model of a Silicone BBQ Basting Brush. The handle of the brush is made using Sweep and Surface Loft. Sketch relations are used to calculate the location of the seed bristle. Linear Pattern and Mirror features create the bristles on the brush. This two part assembly can be downloaded below.

This two part assembly of a wall cabinet is made up of the wall cabinet and the cabinet doors. The wall cabinet part uses a Multi-Contour Sketch to create the first three vertical extrusions. Since the doors are very dependent on the wall cabinet part dimensions, a sketch was made at the assembly level using relations from the wall cabinet part to create the doors. Four Mates and a Mirror Component complete the model.

This deceptively simple looking chip clip makes use of several features used in innovative ways to quickly create the part’s geometry. A setback fillet easily creates the rounded front corner of the clip; body split is used to create a parting line; surface fill is used to repair several bad faces allowing the draft feature to work. Finally, the upper and lower clips are managed with two configurations within the same part.The assembly also features a torsion spring that appears to “update” in real time as the chip clip is open and closed.

This two-bay compost bin shows how to create a library of custom weldment profiles so the SOLIDWORKS weldment environment can be used to quickly design a wood structure.

In this part we chose to do a surface cut instead of sweeping a solid cut in case we need to make adjustments after a design review. The cut with surface is very flexible, and it allows stable changes. A swept cut would limit the scope of changes to swept shapes only.

This wire kitchen whisk demonstrates insert molding of the wire whisks and hook into the interior handle shafts. Also, the wire whisk body is patterned in a circle and move/copied to the correct height offset.

This lounge chair base features advanced surfacing techniques used to model shapes that cannot be created accurately with solid features and the fillet tool. Surface features will be used to blend the foot into the leg and to create the complicated Y blends between the legs and central cylinder.