Hello everyone, so I was trying to make a mirror of the blue highlighted part below so that there would be two rods in the form of an X. How do I proceed?
I thought about mirroring it across a plane, but I was unsure how to make a plane that was right in the middle of the assembly.
Thanks,
Mark A
From where you are now, I'd just drag in another copy of the part and mate it up where you need it. In the future, I would carefully model each part to be symmetrical about some meaningful plane, so that, as you build up the assembly, the built-in planes are in logical locations, including and especially splitting the symmetry of the model. This is something I harp on a lot.
Hello Mike,
Thank you very much. Both of the rods should be at 45 degrees; is there a way for me to rotate this rod to the precise degree?
Cheers,
Mark Agostinelli
Yes, absolutely. You can define a mate between the shear tie and anything you want to be 45 deg. You could, for instance, mate a face on the shear tie to the top plane of the assembly*. To get it centered, you could mate the origin of the tie to the right plane of the assembly, IF everything were built up using best practices. I'm guessing they are not (which is not a slam) and this is the type of thing that could be very easy or kind of a pain, depending on where you start. If you could post the assembly, I could be more specific about the best ways to build it up.
*This is not the best choice, but it is a common one for beginners because it is easy to understand.
Mark,
In addition to the excellent advice you got from Mike, I wanted to point out that if you did mirror the part about a plane that was centered on your assembly, then the rods would be interfering with each other at the center. See below.
Hi Glenn,
To clarify, I made the mirrored part independent and then flexed it at an angle so that they touched but do not interfere with each.
Mike,
If I insert the pipe so that it is diagonal, and then "move triad" so that the measure reads 45 degrees, is this amother precise way to angle a component?
Thank you both for the assistance,
Mark Agostinelli
That will give you a precise position. But a commonly-accepted best practice for SolidWorks is to have all components fully-defined by mates in assemblies that have no mechanism. Some CAD programs are pretty good at leaving components right where you put them without mates. SolidWorks is bad at it, and your assembly is unlikely to hold together if it is not at least mostly defined.
