Positioning and Aligning Hook Components to Define Key Connection Points in a Custom Ladder Build

Duplicating and Placing Hook Bodies to Establish Anchor Points for Ladder Assembly

Discover how to move, copy, and build features around points in a new ladder location with this step-by-step guide. The article provides a detailed walkthrough on amplifying the design of your project.

Key Insights

  • The article explains how to move and copy a hook to populate new points in a ladder location, and build features around these points.
  • The guide includes step-by-step instructions on copying and moving objects, including using the 'translate rotate' function and adjusting instances to allow for multiple bodies to work with.
  • The article further elaborates on how to use mate settings to align surfaces accurately and ensure design elements such as rings are in precise alignment for real-life construction.

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Hello, in this video we're going to move and copy this hook that we previously made so that it starts populating some of these points in our new ladder location. After that we're going to start building features around these points. So let's get started.

I'm going to go ahead and copy this twice so that I can bring a copy to populate this location here and this top location here. We'll go to move copy body. Here we are.

Select the body we wish to move and copy. Make sure we're on translate rotate. And for this I'm just going to grab the arrow and bring it out just a little bit just to get it out of the way.

It'll make it easier to access. Make sure to copy this body and update the instances to two so we have two bodies we can work with. Close that out.

Save your work. Now let's move these two new rings where they need to go. We'll go back to move copy body.

We'll start with this outside ring. Or better yet, let's close this out. I'm going to hide this beam and I recommend you do the same thing.

The reason is I want to be able to see this surface here. So let's go back to move copy body. We'll select that body and this time we're going to go into constraints here at the bottom.

The first of our mate settings will be mating this surface here to this surface here. Now oftentimes what happens is you will make a mate surface and it will be difficult to determine where that body went. Oh and here it is.

Look for the glowing blue. Beautiful. It was up here in the corner.

Let's get this closer to where it needs to be. So the second mate we're going to make is going to be this radius right here. Make sure you're picking the exact same one right here at the bottom right hand corner.

And align it with this radius we created at the top of our pattern, the bottom right hand corner. Beautiful. That is now sitting exactly where it needs to be.

Technically it's not fully defined because it can still rotate, but for right now it's looking exactly the way we want it to look. So let's go ahead and close that out. We'll do one more move copy body feature with this hook here.

All right so we'll select this as the body and again we'll want to create a mate between this surface and our first instinct might be this surface here, but you can see that this surface and this surface are offset and I want these rings to be in alignment. So let's actually pick the same surface for it to mate with. And just like before it appeared up here in this corner randomly.

So good that we found it. Yours may be in a different location. Just look for the glowing blue icon.

Once you have that mate go ahead and add it and just like before click the bottom right hand radius of that hook and pick the bottom right hand radius of this item here. Now you can see this ring is penetrating this board and that's actually what we want it to do because when we build this thing in real life we want these rings to be in alignment from a side view as you can see here. Great.

All right that's going to do it for this video. In the next video we'll finish out the features that make up this ladder.

photo of William Tenney

William Tenney

William Tenney is a career Solidworks designer. He began his career in consumer products then shifted to retail display design, corporate interiors, and finally furniture. His time with Solidworks spans almost two decades where in that time he designed many pieces for mass production, was awarded co-inventor status on five patents, obtained the Professional Certification and Surfacing Certification for Solidworks, and also contributed to many pieces shown in such publications as Architectural Digest, Interior Design Magazine, Fashion Magazine, and 1st Dibs. Outside of his work life, he is a husband to a wonderful spouse and a father to two future creatives.

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