Chapter 3
Working with Sketches and Reference Geometry

The first step to learning how to create models in SolidWorks is to learn how to sketch. If you are coming from another history-based modeling program, many of your skills are transferable to SolidWorks. If you have never used CAD before, think of the sketch-feature relationship as creating a simplified 2D drawing that represents a portion of the part that you can make with some sort of process such as extruding or revolving.

So far in this book, you have looked mainly at concepts, settings, and setup, which are necessary but mundane. In this chapter, you'll begin to learn how to control parametric relationships in sketches. Then in later chapters, you'll begin to build models—simple at first, but gaining in complexity and always demonstrating new techniques and features that build your modeling vocabulary. Beyond this, you'll use the parts to create assemblies and drawings.

This chapter deals entirely with sketches...