adymech1,
From your questions it sounds like you are new to SolidWorks. Congratulations, you made a good choice. In order to get the most out of SolidWorks and to shorten your learning curve you should invest some time in training yourself. SolidWorks has a superb tutorial built in to the help menu. Do yourself a favor and go through every exercise in this Online Tutorial. (I don't know why they call it "Online" when you don't link to the internet.) After that then you know what words to search on in the help index if you need more help - "helix" comes to mind.
Enjoy!!
- - -Dennyd, P.E.