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SolidWorks Tips & Tricks sponsored by
ProFab Copy Entities Versus Mirror Entities Sketches often contain shapes that are used more than once in a sketch. There are various ways in SolidWorks to accomplish this. The first way that comes to mind to copy sketch entities is Copy Entities (Pull down the "Tools" menu and pick Sketch Tools - Copy). Sketch entities can be copied to another location using X and Y coordinate values. Once the new entities are placed, however; there is no relation to the original entities. If you want the entities related to one another, this is not the best method. A better method would be Mirror Entities (Pull down the "Tools" menu and pick Sketch Tools - Mirror). When you create mirrored entities, SolidWorks automatically applies symmetric relations. If you change a mirrored entity, its mirror image also changes. Not only is the location constrained, but the size of the original entity is tied to the mirrored entity. Take a look at Figure 1. The top left rectangle was mirrored, the bottom left rectangle was copied.
In Figure 2, the dimensions of both rectangles were changed. Take a look at the results. The size and location of the mirrored rectangle automatically update when the original entities are modified. Since there is no relation to the original entities using Copy Entities, no change was made to the copied rectangle.
(May 23, 2006)
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