CATIA beginner training – basic sketching
Welcome back to this series of CATIA beginner training articles, where we continue our discussion about basic sketching in CATIA. This set of articles is a useful supplement for CATIA video tutorials for students who like to have some reading material to accompany their visual-based learning. This level is appropriate for those needing CATIA beginner training; if you’re an intermediate student, you will know this information already! :)
Let’s talk about creating rectangles in CATIA. First thing to do is click the Rectangle icon from the Profiles toolbar. The Sketch Tools toolbar should now display values for defining your rectangle. You can position your cursor in any field on the Sketch Tools toolbar, using the mouse, or by pressing the tab key. You can then just enter the values numerically for your points, and then lines of the rectangle. So, this is a way to create rectangles with manual data entry, rather than sketching them in the graphic area. This might seem clunky or old fashioned, but if you’re used to working this way, and you know your exact coordinates, this will be more precise and faster. As always, it’s a matter of preference, speed and experience.
You can create what’s called an Oriented Rectangle, also. This is rectangle that’s basically not planar to the X and Y axes. You’ll need to defined three extremity points of the rectangle. Your first step is to click the Oriented Rectangle tool on the Profiles toolbar (it’s on the predefined profiles sub-toolbar.) The toolbar again shows you fields where you can enter values for the coordinates of the rectangle, as well as the length of the rectangle lines. So you key in your desired values and click OK to accept your oriented rectangle. Easy!
On we go in this CATIA beginner training article…next let’s talk about how to create a parallelogram in CATIA. First, you need to click the Parallelogram icon on the Profiles Toolbar. It’s also on the Predefined Profile sub-toolbar. Then you need to position your cursor in the desired fields on the Sketch Tools toolbar to enter your values for the coordinates of the parallelogram’s vertices, as well as the length of the lines in your geometry. You need to key in values for three points. Then, left click to create the parallelogram.
Now let’s talk about creating a slot, or an elongated hole. First, you need to click on the Elongated Hole icon on the Profiles toolbar (this is also on the PreDefined profile sub-toolbar. Now the Sketch Tools toolbar shows values for defining the elongated hole’s centre-to-centre axis (the first and second point) and then either the elongated hole’s radius or a point on the elongated hole. You put your cursor in the number fields in the Sketch Tools toolbar to key in your desired values for both centre points and the oblong distance of the slot.
This concludes our CATIA beginner training article. In our next article we’ll continue working on basic sketch profiles.
PS: here is a link to my youtube playlist for CATIA – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx-VY2mDlK2GYctAfT5zcfwH-LU8FGQWy
Thanks! Rosanna D, VTN www.video-tutorials.net
CATIA beginner training by Video-Tutorials.net