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New to SW - a question or two

Hi all:

I've been using Inventor for 6 years (through R10), but recently changed employers and switched to SW (2005). I've taken every online tutorial, and have a pretty good grasp of the geometry-creation tools, etc., but I've only been using it for a couple of days. I did spend some time trying to find answers to these before posting here, but haven't found them:

1: Does SW have an equivalent to IV's insert constraint? In other words, is it possible to constrain a cylindrical boss inside a hole with a single constraint and have only the rotational degree of freedom left?

2: When I modify the color of the part, subsequent features do not inherit the part's color. What am I doing wrong?

3: What are some good online resources for tips and tricks, tutorials, etc.?

Overall, SW seems to be quite capable. My biggest challenge is getting used to the different command syntax and user interface.

Regards, John.

Reply to
john_manly
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Another question:

4: While using IV, I tried to develop the habit of referencing the initial workplanes as much as possible when adding new features to avoid uninteded feature relationships. However, in SW, I can't figure out how to project the workplanes onto the current sketch. I tried using the convert command, but it only recognizes edges from geometry, not workplanes or axes. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance, John.

Reply to
john_manly

If you use "Smart Mates", you can get a concentric and a coincident mate in one go, which leaves only the rotational. This happens if you smart mate a circular edge (intersection of a cylindrical and a flat face) with another circular edge. Even if IV shows one constraint, I'm sure it's two behind the scenes.

Must be that you are not changing the part color, but only the feature or body color. Select the top level entry in the tree and change the color for that.

There was a recent thread on links to SW websites. There is a decent list in that thread.

Matt

Reply to
matt

If you are making a dimension, and the plane is perpendicular to the current sketch, just use the dimension tool and select the plane from the feature manager.

If you are making a sketch relation, just select the plane and the sketch entity and make them coincident.

You can also select the part origin to make relations and dimensions to that, even if it isn't at the same Z height as the sketch.

Reply to
matt

Ahh!

My IV paradigm strikes again. I knew it was something obvious.

Thanks, John.

Reply to
john_manly

Thanks Matt!

Reply to
john_manly

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