Hey this is Rohit with another SolidWorks quick tip for you guys if you like what
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today i wanna talk about contour selection
if you right-click in on your mouse and come down to the bottom here
there's an option called contour select tool
and when you're inside an extrusion you also have a box at the bottom for
selected contours so there's a little bit of a debate on
how much information they should be putting inside a sketch some say that
you should keep your sketch very simple and some say should try to put as much
information to a single sketch as possible
we have two sketches here to start
one is simply the base for this part and we create features and sketches
after the fact and the second here has all of our
contours in a single sketch and in the features are built from that
single sketch so i tend to prefer this method
and i would say use this method as long as your sketch doesn't get too
difficult to manage and so if you get to the point where a
single change to one part of the sketch starting to ruin the rest of sketch that's
when you typically know that you have too many
items in a single sketch but for example if you're taking the
SolidWorks certified professional exam you want to use
a single sketch as it significantly faster for producing
the part that you tried to create so I'm gonna go back in and
remake both of these parts or both of these bodies
and i'll go ahead and delete out the features
to do that
so to start i'll go ahead and build off of the sketch on the right
and in this method i've created the entire body first
or the piece of stock that I'd be using
and then i create a sketch on this space to remove out material
and then I created another sketch on the top face
another circle
and then created another cut and lastly i create the slots profile on
the top base and then cut through the part
now on the other side with everything in the same sketch
with me that come in an extrusion start using contours
or we can right click in the and choose that contour select tool
in this case by choosing outside ring and then
this portion of the part is coming to an extrusion
or simply use the instant 3D to drag this out
to consider if you're also combining this with the instant 3D SolidWorks
that this will be a lot faster of a way to create these features
but either method is valid like i said i tend to prefer the contour select method
as it allows you to put everything in one sketch
and manage everything from there typically in a more complex part
you'll use some combination of multiple contours
and then possibly add sketches to other faces at a later point to make
modifications keep in mind that you do have both of
these options available when creating your part