SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal - Sketch-driven Enclosure Assembly Design

Course Overview
Hello. My name is Chris Scarlett, teacher and designer, and I'm looking forward to guiding you through this course on how to use a single sketch to drive an assembly design. I will demonstrate how an inserted 3D sketch part will be used to drive the basic model geometry of a whole sheet metal assembly. If we need to make our assembly, and all the parts within that assembly, longer, wider or taller or change the positions of shared whole locations or move some cuts or features that are shared by more than one part I'll show you how to do it, and it will be easy. There will be some errors along the way, and I'll demonstrate how to recognize them, fix them, and sometimes avoid making them. We will also explore the tab, jog, and hem sheet metal tools, and we're going to use a sketch block to drive them. Much of what we will demonstrate in this course will include modeling a part with an assembly, and making in-context references, inserting an existing part and making new in-context references to the design envelope part, making modifications to our 3D sketch design envelope part, and exploring the tab, job, and hem sheet metal tools, and driving them with a sketch block. By the end of this course you will feel confident that there really is a way to create an easy to follow and modify in-context assembly. It's easy because all of our references will point to only one sketch as the only element in our design envelope part, and at the easy to find location on the top of our assembly feature manager. You will also find this technique can be applied to many non-sheet metal assemblies where parts will share basic model geometry. Before you begin I believe that you should be moderately skilled in SOLIDWORKS, and know how to create sketches, features, parts, and assemblies without errors. You should also have some experience with SOLIDWORKS sheet metal. You can review various SOLIDWORKS courses with Pluralsight before you begin if needed. I hope that you will join me on this design productivity adventure learning about easy in-context sheet metal assembly design at Pluralsight.

Insert Design Envelope in New Assembly - Establish Relations on New Part
This is what we're going to be doing. We're going to start by inserting a 3D sketch "Design Envelope" part, as I call it. This part was created in a different course, and we will be inserting it as our first part in our new assembly. This part is simple, and contains only one design item, a 3D sketch. Now you might consider this sketch to represent a skeleton, in a way, of the edges of a rectangular prism, and it creates a six sided envelop with various items and sketch geometry for which our sheet metal parts will have in-context relations to. We're going to be taking this apart. We're going to put it on top of our Feature Manger Tree. In that part we'll draw up all the basic geometry of each related part in that assembly. Then we're going to jump into the creation of the Sheet Metal part with relations to that Design Envelope. We're going to use the Base Flange, and then the Edge Flange Sheet Metal tools, and we're going to create in-context relations with the Design Envelope part, both on the sketch level, and on the feature level too, so why are we doing this? It's a way to automate our designs, and to create a lean, compact, and easy to follow assembly model. The design envelope is a simple part, it's easy to modify, and it provides a one stop shopping experience, as I call it, where you can modify all the related generalized geometry of the assembly in one location at the top of the Feature Manager Tree, after which each related part in that assembly will be updated fast and easy.