Learn how to finish your lampshade arm design using extrusion and sketch tools in part three of our series. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to use these tools to create separate bodies and holes within your design.
Key Insights
- The extrusion tool can be used for creating separate bodies. By individually selecting and extruding parts of your sketch, and changing the operation to new body, you can create distinct bodies within your design.
- You can create holes within your design by creating a new sketch and drawing circles. The extrusion tool can then be used to cut through your geometry, creating holes.
- Dimensioning tools are essential in ensuring accuracy in your design. For instance, in this tutorial, dimensioning was used to position and size the circles used to create holes through the lampshade arm.
In this video, we will finish our lampshade arm. You will see that I am in the Step 3 file and my Lampshade Arm component is currently active.
So let's get started. I will go to my Extrude tool, and because we know we want this to be created out of five separate bodies, I cannot simply select all five of these profiles and drag up. You will see that this will join all of our bodies into one body because we are selecting them all at the same time.
Instead, let's go to Extrude and first select this center body, drag up 30 and press ENTER. Let's go into our sketches and turn on Sketch 1 and go to Extrude one more time. Now when I select these four remaining bodies and drag up and type 30, I can change the operation to New Body, and that will split these into five distinct bodies, which you can see in our Bodies folder.
I'll turn off Sketch 1 and collapse my Bodies folder. Now let's create the holes through our arm. I will create a new sketch and select this face for my sketch. I will go to Circle (C on the keyboard), and I will draw two circles.
I will dimension this circle to 5 and this circle to 5. Next, I will drag them into place and go to Horizontal/Vertical Constraint. Remember to hold SHIFT to see your midpoint snap. Let's dimension our circles.
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This circle will be 22.5 and this circle will be 15. I will Stop Sketch and orbit my model. We know that the Hole tool creates holes that cut through our geometry.
We can use the Extrude tool for the same purpose. I will go to Extrude and select both of my circles as my profiles and drag all the way through my object. Again, I'm not worried about distance, but just make sure it goes through the entire object.
I will click OK and return to my Home view. I will collapse all of my folders, activate my top component, and save my file. In the next video, we will apply Joints and As-Built Joints to assemble our model.
I will see you in the next video.
