Complete newbie

I apologize for the basic nature of this question, but I am an AutoCAD user
trying to teach myself solid modeling. Most sketch entities are working
just fine for me but I am having trouble with lines. If I open a new sketch
in a part drawing I click two points to sketch a line close to 30 deg. I
then select the line and highlight the angle in the property manager and try
to type in 30. I hit enter and nothing changes. I am able to alter any
other part of the line in this way, but not the angle. I haven't added any
relations, fixed the line or anything.

Can someone please explain what I am doing wrong? Thanks for your
forbearance with such a simple question.

Greg

 

Greg,

You need to get used to using dimensions. The property manager is for other
things, and is best turned off for new users (in my opinion anyway). Use
some construction lines (vertical or horizontal) constrained to the origin
if your first line is angled. Or, just rough sketch the whole profile and
constrain/dimension to suit


In Autocad, the geometry drives the dimension. In Solidworks it's the other
way around. Like someone else here said, "in autocad you draw something, and
dimension it to tell you what you did" "In Solidworks you dimension to tell
the geometry what you want it to do". This is a very basic concept you must
grasp to learn Solidworks.

Regards

Mark

 

I would really recommend you take the tutorial book and literally go
through the examples from first to the last page, and it will give you
a very good overview of all the basic functions and how they work.

As basic as those first simple parts are, they drill you in all the
most common basics so your mind gets tuned to the way SolidWorks "does
it".

Bo

 

Thank you both, I was afraid that the problem that I was having was my
thinking process (confirmed). I am trying to model a part that was drawn by
someone in AutoCAD with bad geometry (open profiles). I have been sketching
and trimming radii and lines to generate a cam profile, and have been adding
tangent relations and center points along the way, but have been struggling
because of the problems with the original drawing of the part that I am
trying to model. I have modeled a few simple parts, and have used
dimensions to drive the geometry of some parts. As I was trying to change
the angle of one of the lines in my cam, it was driving a change in a radius
that I want to maintain. I obviously didn't have the radius constrained
well enough to prevent this. I will try to add the whole profile to my
sketch, and then to start to add relations to the parts that I know I want
to maintain and see what has to change to correct the open profile that I
started with.

Thank you again for the time you took to respond.

Greg

 

I was in the same situation as you in that I had an Autocad backround
when I started to use Solidworks. I found the best thing to do with my
Autocad knowledge, was to completely forget it. Like someone mentioned
in a earlier post, go completely thru the online help tutorial.
Another recent item available is the Solidowrks for Dummies book by
Greg Jankowski. I got a copy for attending the Western Users
Conferance, and I must admit that even with about 6 years of use under
my belt, I picked up a few things from his book!! Another great
resourse available are the local user groups. Im not sure where you
live, but if you check out www.swugn.com you can search for a local
group. These meetings can provide you with tons of information, and
each meeting usually has a solidworks how-to session. Biggest advice I
can give you, dont give up. At my former company I went from being a
Solidworks newbie, to the guy everyone went to with their questions.
Good luck!