Scale a Sketch

[MadMango]

SW05 Sp4.0

I'm having trouble scaling a sketch to the proper size. I received an AutoCAD drawing from a customer, and when I copy the sketch into SW, the scale is off. A dimension that is 249mm in the 2D drawing comes in at 24.9 inches in the SW sketch. I've gone through Help, using Tools>Sketch Tools>Scale or Copy without any affected change. Any pointers for scaling a 2D imported sketch?

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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[handleman]

Scale it with dwgEditor before importing?

 

[rfus]

did you try to bring the dwg into SW through DXF/DWG Import Dialog? I would try selecting Create new SW drawing, and Convert to SolidWorks entities. I find that opening it through this utility, where yuy can preview it, set the units, and position it is well worth the time, not to mention the benefit of its translation to Solidworks sketch entities. Then copy the sketches out of your drawing and into you part. Not as quick as copy/paste, but something to try. If its an ASCII dwg you could always investigate it in wordpad.

RFUS

 

[fcsuper]

If possible, try importing the dwg into new part instead of copying directly into the sketch of an existing part. This will allow you to slect mm as your units in the "Units of imported data:" area, which is visible after clicking the "Next>" button twice (instead of "Finish"). I believe the scale should be determined by your unit of measure. From there, you can copy the new sketch as a normal SolidWorks function. I'm not sure of any other methods to do this.



Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA

http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Be safe ... re-draw it. I never trust anything drawn by an ACAD user.


SW07-SP3.1
SW06-SP5.1

 

[ctopher]

Not only a ACAD user, but anything imported DXF. I 99% of the time redraw it.

Chris
SolidWorks 07 3.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 04-08-07)

 

[fcsuper]

I would like to point out that I generally agree with CBL and Chris' warning, but for some rare items it is easier to just pull the sketch in an fix it within SolidWorks.

Matt
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA

http://sw.fcsuper.com/index.php

 

[AnnaWood]

I will go along with Matt too....

It all depends on the origins of the DXF/DWG files. We get a lot of DXF/DWG's that has been translated from another 3D CAD system. Our customers work in the whole gamut of CAD systems that are out there.

Knowing how the DXF/DWG came to be, lets me know if I redraw or use the data as is and do a direct import.

If the data is known to be bad, yes we will re-draw. But 99% of the time for the DXF/DWG data I deal with I can confidently use it directly in my SolidWorks models. Luckily for us we have good customers, both internal and external that give us 2D data we can trust.

FWIW,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP2.2, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I wish I could say the same, Anna.


SW07-SP3.1
SW06-SP5.1

 

[MadMango]

Scale or Copy function did not work, but I was able to get Sketch Tools>Modify to work with scaling down the sketch. Strange.

I agree that I don't trust 2D drawings either, but in this case, the drawing was of a customer vehicle. A Misubishi train. Too much to redraw.

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