SolidWorks Chopper Tutorial: Tips and Tricks for Modeling a Cool Chopper in SOLIDWORKS

I want to break it up into 2 posts, 1 that covers that modeling portion of his set of tutorials and the other covering the rendering portion of them. I recently completed the modeling of the chopper and I have to say I was quite pleased with how it turned out (see pictures below).

All in all I was impressed by the completeness of the tutorials. The modeling portion was broken into 14 different PDF tutorials and each of the 14 tutorials included clear and concise step by step instruction as to how to model the different aspects of the chopper. With that being said, I want to point out that this tutorial is not for a newbie. There is a certain level of knowledge of the software that the author takes for granted that you know. I would say if you have been using the software full time for 6 months or so you would be more than capable of completing these tutorials.

SolidWorks Chopper Tutorial

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There were a few things that I would have liked to see changed as far as a modeling tutorial goes. I wish there was more design intent incorporated into the tutorials. The main one that I ran into time and time again was the use of extrude cuts in 2 directions to a dimension as opposed to a through all both ways when that is clearly what you were wanting your end product to show. Another one in the assembly tutorial was the use of a parallel mate between planes at a distance of 0 as opposed to a coincident mate. However, these did not diminish the fact that the rest of the tutorial was great all around. 2ff7e9595c