Hey just for some background i worked with solidworks as a studen. Since then i have spend the last two years working in Creo and i am attempting a switch to Solidworks. I have found a few work flow aspects particularly frustrating and i was hoping someone with experience in both creo and solidworks could clear some thing up for me?

1. Solid Skeleton modeling

The way i used to go about modeling in creo was by first creating a single solid skeleton part. I would then create new parts and copy quilts (surfaces) from the skeleton part into these new parts and solidify or thicken these quilts.

This could be done with realitive easy by simply activating the skeketon part, selecting a surface/surfaces and copying and pasting these. I would then activating the part into which i want the surfaces, select the surfaces and copy and paste.

Is there a way to mimic this workflow in solidworks? I find the only way to copy and paste faces in solidworks is with the offset tool and it becomes rather tedious.

2. Using surfaces as references

My second question follows on the first. Once i made a copy of a face/faces in the skeleton part and pasted it as a quilt (surface), it acted as a sort of snapshot and any model changes that followed would not effect the surface. This allowed for a great reference when modeling new parts without the worry of references becoming lost when i make changes later down the model tree of the skeleton part.

Thanks in advance!