Each week we’re sharing a new tip with you here on the ‘Smack to help elevate your CAD game to a new level.

Our goal is to mix up the weekly tips to cover a wide variety of ground for using CAD effectively as a product design tool. Some weeks might feature basic form-building exercises to get your modeling muscles in shape and some weeks might feature rendering theory tips to make your sure your final projects are looking sharp.

While the bulk of the tutorials will utilize SolidWorks and MODO, we are always open to requests for other programs including Autodesk Fusion 360, Rhino, Adobe Creative Suite and others.

All of the videos come from our industrial design training site cadjunkie. Be sure to head over there for the entire archive of Hump Day tips and the expansive library of in-depth training content!

SolidWorks Hump Day Tips 06: Closing Surfaces in SolidWorks (Part II)

Summary

Some of the most difficult shapes in CAD are the ones that ‘cap’ or ‘terminate’ closed shapes. Over the next few weeks we’ll be looking at ways of terminating closed shapes using all of the various surfacing tools available to us in SolidWorks.

Last week we took a look at capping off a circular section…which is arguably the easiest shape to cap off using a simple revolve command. Essentially what we determined was that as long as your input curve is continuous with the profile of the base shape, the revolve will work perfectly.

This week we’re going to get slightly more advanced in our methods and take a look at capping a shape that is all too familiar (but for good reasons) these days: the ‘squircle’. You’ve seen this ‘square+circle’ hybrid shape around on products including portable wi-fi hotspots and even in various Apple designs including the iPhone.

If you can get these surfaces closed, you’ll be in a great position as we continue the series next week. Happy surface capping!

  • review of a revolved circular surface (and why it works smoothly)
  • overview of a ‘squircle’ (and why you might have seen it before)
  • overview of lofted surfaces (and approaches towards using them)
  • maintaining continuity across your new surfaces

Have any questions you’d like answered for a future SolidWorks Hump Day feature? Drop us a line in the comments below.

Head over to cadjunkie for more Hump Day Tips and industrial design training content! Hit it!

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