Welcome to SolidWorks Tutorials for Beginners blog by shoutmetutorials.com. SolidWorks is one of the best 3D solid modeler cad software which helps the product designers, engineers and students in all way to create innovative ideas in to reality. Today, you are going to see the “Solidworks linear sketch pattern” tool with explanation of tool uses, advantages and how to use it on this CAD software effectively. Examples are roughly shown and you can follow the instructions to make your own linear sketch pattern.
Before going to Solidworks tutorial, let us see some information about linear sketch pattern.
What is Solidworks Linear Sketch Pattern?
Linear sketch pattern is part of Solidworks sketch tools, which helps to create number of patterns from a sketch entities in linear manner. That means, if you have line in the sketch area and you want to create certain number of parallel lines with constant offset distance between them. This is tool also allows to create patterns in both X and Y directions.
It is mainly located in Command manager sketch tools section in Solidworks UI and you can also find Linear sketch pattern tool in the Tools menubar. From the Linear sketch pattern property manager, you can also give X or Y axis, dimensions between patterns and in which angle your linear patterns arranged. Main advantage of linear pattern sketch tools is that to multiply the same pattern linearly. For example, if you have to drill holes in product linearly with equal space, you can achieve it with this sketch tool.
How to Use SolidWorks Linear Sketch Pattern in Sketch Area
See the step by step tutorial for creating linear patterns with lines as example is given below.
Step 1: Create New Part File
Open the Solidworks and New part File. If you don’t know it, read How to Create New Part File. Select the Plane (e.g. Top Plane) and normalize using the “Normal To” Button.
Step 2: Draw Line for Creating Line Patterns
Click on the Line Sketch button in the sketch area and draw a vertical line as shown in the figure above.
Step 3: Select Linear Pattern Tool
Using Command Manager
From the Sketch command manger, click on the Linear Sketch Pattern tool button.
Or
Using MenuBar
Click on the “Tools” menu and select the “Sketch Tools” from the drop down menu. Then side drop down menu will appear and select the “Linear Sketch Pattern” from it which shows in the above image.
Step 4: Enter Pattern Details in Property Manager
Then you can see the property manager box and enter the details for creating the line pattern.
First click on the vertical line and in ‘Direction 1’ tab, first line shows X-axis direction. You can also flip the direction of pattern by click on the side button.
Then enter the distance between the each line. Here I am set as ‘15 mm’ between each line and number of parallel line set as ‘4’. The angle is set as ‘zero degree’.
You can also make linear patterns in Y-axis also by setting values in ‘Direction-2’ tab.
The final line pattern obtained is shown below.
Here also shows another example with circle sketch and created horizontal circles and distance between them as ’15 mm’.
Additional Info: Linear Sketch Patterns Property Manager
Direction-1 Tab
This is the first direction tab which allows user to create linear patterns in horizontal or X-axis direction. Here you can set the distance between the patterns, angle, and number of entities.
Direction 2 Tab
This is second direction tab which allows creating pattern to Y-axis or vertical direction. Other options are same as the ‘Direction-1’ tab.
Entities to Pattern
First you create an entity using the sketch tools like line, rectangle or circle and whole sketch entities can be repeated as pattern using this tool.
