Sketch over Tracing Procedure

I am hoping that someone will help me with this. I need to import a tracing of the profile of a weird shaped object into Solidworks, and I am hoping that I can make a sketch over the tracing so that I can indeed capture the exact shape of the object. I am attempting to gain some experience using the Spline tool for the non-geometric shape that I need. If this is something that can be done in Solidworks, and If someone would be patient enough to explain this to a beginner, I would certainly appreciate it.

Thanking you. Karen

Reply to
kareninventress
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Images can be brought into SW easily enough, either in drawings or in sketches. You can trace over them. Once the image is imported into your sketch, you are limited only by your abilities.

Reply to
That70sTick

I appreciate your response, sir, however I need to know the correct sequence and procedure to import, to have the abililty to sketch OVER a drawing. I have no problem copying and pasting into Solidworks, however if I do this, the actual drawing area of Solidworks is underneath my copy and pasted drawing, and I therefore cannot sketch over the drawing. There must be a proper sequence that must be followed to allow this to be accomplished. Karen

Reply to
kareninventress

Go to the SW help and look up Sketch Tools/Picture. It will give you the procedure and some information about it. WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

Karen

Reply to
kareninventress

Thank you so much. Karen

Reply to
kareninventress

Tip - when scanning your tracing, put a ruler on the scanning bed if it is important that the SWx sketch is the exact same size as the tracing (usually is, but I don't know your application). When scale fidelity is important, what we have done in the past is start by sketching a line on top of the image of the ruler, adding a dim to find out how long the line is is, and the % difference between the length of the sketch line and the corresponding marks on the ruler gives us the exact scale factor for adjusting the inserted sketch image. Kinda obvious, but you need to be thinking of it at the time you scan (hence the tip) Ed

BTW - you asked about splines. Splines are easy as long as you don't overthink them. Try using as few spline points as possible to get the shape. You will need to experiment a little to gain the intuition required for this. Though you can drag tangency vectors for any of the spline points, try hard not to do that on anything except for the beginning and end of the splines. If you do the tangency vector or magnitude for middle spline points you can kink up the spline because of some behind-the-scenes breaking of the curve - notice that, once you mess around with tangency handles a little you get a 'relax' spline box in the Property manager for the spline? Clicking it will unkink that internal breaking, but the spline will move from what you drew (however, it will be smoother) Avoid all that mess by making as relaxed a spline as possible form the get-go. the only time I adjust spline vectors on internal points is when I have a precise point where I know the middle fo a spline must be horizontal or vertical - in those cases, the potential reapir work is worth it. Depending on your shape, you might be better off with a few(underline FEW) splines instead of just one. Again, experience will tell you as this is a case-by-case thing. For fine-tuning the location of spline points, I use the XY in the property manager, setting my spin box values to .001" (or whatever is appropriate to the scale of the job). There are also other tricks - splitting viewports (one macro, one micro) or simplyholding down CTRL while dragging a node to turn off inferencing. one guy even wrote a macro. For me, the PM is the most repeatedly expedient. Definately turn on inflection points for the spline if you know why it matters and it is important not to have an inflection point. Curvature comb is also handy, but I will let others comment on that.

Reply to
ed1701

Have not done this for some time - but in the past I scanned the handdrawn sketch and then imported it into Macromedia Freehand ( or any other graphic vector available) Freehand has a trace function ,as most do, which converts the pencil lines to vectors. After alot of cleaning and deleting of the redundant lines - I then exportedthe require lines as a dxf file.

This dxf file was then imported as a new part and used direct. However one could easily change the sketch to construction lines and redraw in the SW sketch.

This might be a way forward.

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

Forgot to add - keep the exported dxf file as the lines you really, really need , because sw does not like creating parts form large dxf files.

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

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