This article guides readers through creating a base component for a lamp by adding a hole and fillets using a 3D modeling software. It offers step-by-step instructions on how to manipulate the geometry of the base, including the creation of a sketch dimension and the use of the fillet tool.
Key Insights
- The process begins with creating a hole in the lamp's base geometry through a new sketch, selecting the face on the vertical body, and creating a point on the model as a reference for the hole.
- Readers are guided to create an orthographic dimension to the side and straight up to fully dimension and constrain the point, subsequently using it to create the hole, adjusting its size and depth as needed.
- The article concludes with the application of fillets around the bottom edges of the lamp's base using the fillet tool, the importance of saving the file frequently, and activating the main component to ensure the model is well-organized.
In this video we will finish the base component for our lamp. You can see that I am still in the step 01 base file and my base component is still active.
The first thing we will do is create a hole in our geometry. I will go to a new sketch and I will select the face here on my vertical body. Be careful that you are not selecting this plane but rather the face on this vertical body.
You can orbit your model to make sure that you are selecting this face. When you create your sketch your view will automatically reorient itself. And let's create a point on our model that will be referenced in the next step to make a hole.
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I will go to sketch and find point in the drop down menu. I will place this point somewhere on the edge of my face by clicking. I will hit escape to end my command and go D on my keyboard to create a sketch dimension.
In this dimension we cannot simply select a line to give it length. We need to select two geometries and select a distance between them. So I will select my point and then I will select the corner point here.
You can see as I drag out to the left I can create an orthographic dimension. If I drag straight up I can create an orthographic dimension. And if I drag at an angle I will create an angled dimension.
For this example let's create an orthographic dimension to the side and make this 15, enter. And I will create another orthographic dimension straight up and make this 7.5 and hit ENTER. You can see our point turned black which means that it is fully dimensioned and constrained and I will hit stop sketch.
We can now reference that point to create a hole for our model. I will go to create and find the hole command in the drop down menu. You can go ahead and select this point to begin our hole creation.
When we first select the point we can see that our hole is much too large. We can use this slider to change the length of our hole and we can also use this slider to change the radius or diameter. I will go over here and make my depth 30 and my hole diameter 5. We can leave the other options of the hole as they are because this is a simple hole going through my whole part.
I will hit ok and we can see a small hole goes all the way through our geometry. To finish our base we want to create fillets around the bottom edges here using the fillet tool. So I will go modify, fillet and I will start to select my edges here, here, here and you may need to orbit your model and you can select directly through your geometry here.
I can also make my selection with a selection window but not with a crossing window. When you see that you have four edges selected you can change the radius here by typing in a value or sliding your arrow slider. I will type 15 and hit ok.
One more time I will go to my home icon and I will save my file. When we are done working in a component I tend to close all of its subfolders and activate my main component. This keeps my model well organized and keeps me from creating geometry in a component accidentally.
When you have closed all of your folders and activated your main component I will save my file one more time and we have finished our base component. In the next video we will begin to work on the lower arm for our lamp. I will see you in the next video.