Computersight -

In the first article of my tutorial set, I tought you how to draw linear objects. Those were simply lines and rectangular, that is, the main elements of drawing. In this article, I aim to teach you curves and the simplest closed curve, a circle.

How to Draw a Circle

As a mathematical description, circle is a combination of points with the same length from a fixed point. To draw a circle, two things we need. They are the coordinate of center of the circle and radius or diameter of it. Let’s now draw our first circle by Solidworks. Let’s draw a circle with a center of origin and a radius of 20 mm.

1. Click the sketch button to define a plane on which you will draw. Since our drawing is 2D, any plane can be chosen. I choose top plane as a reference plane.
2. Click the circle button on the toolbar and choose origin as the center point of the circle. Afterthat, drag the circle to the out of the page.
3. By clicking “smart dimension” button , dimension the radius of circle. Since the radius is 20 mm, specify diameter as 40 mm.

How to Draw Filleted Arcs

To draw filleted arcs, we first need a corner of two intersecting lines. As an example, we will filet one corner of 40×40 mm square. Lets first draw the square by using rectangular button on the toolbar.

1. Click the fillet button on the toolbar.
2. Enter the radius of fillet as 5 mm into the fillet parameters space.
3. Choose the corner point which you want to fillet. Be careful here, you should select the point not the sides you want to fillet. After that, Solidworks automatically dimension the filleted arc. Here is the result.