SOLIDWORKS Basic Tutorials Series – How to create face fillets, part 2
Welcome back to the SOLIDWORKS basic tutorials series, and in this installment we’re still working with fillets, but now we’re checking out the Face Fillet.
In the previous part of this article, we’d just created two face fillets. It was a very quick demonstration of how this particular feature allows you to model very complex surfaces very easily. Let’s go ahead and edit our second fillet. In the Feature Manager Design Tree, right-click on Fillet 2 and left-click on the Edit Feature icon that’s shown below:
SOLIDWORKS basic tutorials series
Figure 01 – Edit fillet 2.
For more SOLIDWORKS beginner tutorials, please see our SOLIDWORKS Essentials course or visit our youtube channel for many free sample videos, so you can gauge our pacing and quality.
Let’s scroll down the the Fillet Options section of the property manager; it’s under Fillet Parameters, which is where we’d changed the radius for our first fillet. I’m going to use the Hold Line option, so what I’ll do to enable this is click in the selection window under the words Hold line:.
SOLIDWORKS basic tutorials series
Figure 02 – The hold line option – how to activate
Once I’ve clicked in this window, it becomes blue, as shown above. Then, I go to the graphic area to make my selection of a hold line. Here’s the line I’ll select; you can see it highlighted in green-yellow dotted line in the screen shot below.
SOLIDWORKS basic tutorials series
Figure 03 – selecting a hold line
I’ve also marked it with a red arrow that I drew in afterward; sorry I’m so shaky on that arrow. But, if I had super steady hands I’d be an ER surgeon, not writing SOLIDWORKS blogs, hee hee.
In case it’s not clear, I’ve selected the top face of the elliptical extrusion; the elliptical perimeter of this face is used as the hold line. Note the preview in yellow line, and this preview shows you exactly how the hold line smooths and guides the transition between the elliptical extrusion and the tall cylinder.
As well, the yellow preview tells us that SOLIDWORKS will be able to calculate our fillet; if you enable the Full Preview option under Fillet Options and don’t see the yellow line preview, this means that something is wrong with your specifications, and SOLIDWORKS won’t be able to generate the fillet. (When wouldn’t you want to use a full preview? Well, that would be if your model or assembly is very complicated, then not using a Full Preview is a way to save some computer resources.)
SOLIDWORKS basic tutorials series
Figure 04 – Edge 1 appears in the Hold Line selection window.
In the Hold Line selection window above, Edge 1 now appears. That’s how you know you’re using a hold line. To not use a hold line, you’ll need to remove this selection. That’s easy: just right-click in the selection window and select Delete or Clear Selections.
By the way, while we have the Hold Line option available we’re not able to edit the fillet radius under Fillet Parameters; this field won’t be available to you. Why not? Well, that’s what the hold line is for; the SOLIDWORKS fillet algorithm doesn’t need you to define the radius if you’ve got a hold line selected; this geometry is now implicated in the modeling algorithm for the fillet generation.
This concludes this second part of the article on creating face fillets; I’ll publish the next part shortly. Thanks! Rosanna D, VTN