Hi, new to SW, stuck already! Wheels?!

Hi,


I've been playing with solidworks (2004) for a few weeks and have completed every tutorial it comes with, plus some off the web, several times over. I thought it was time to try it out for myself to see if it was going to be any good for what I actually want.... and immediately I have come unstuck! I cant seem to grasp the "approach" rather than the tools more than anything. My first project is to produce wheels for a car I am designing, these wheels have a round center part inset from the outside edge of the outer, and then 16 spokes attaching the center to the rim - an example of them (not identical but close enough) can be seen here


http://www.oz-alloys.co.uk/popup_image.php?pID=1019118


I really dont know where to start and would appreciate anyones thoughts on the sequence to produce these and ANY advice on working out processes in general!


Many Thanks.

Model first whole tyre as a cylinder. Then cut it with revolve to yuo
can get outer surface. You have outer surface of poles and you have to
cut holes between them (poles).



Tip: use symmetric constraint in scetching.



Cylinder:







I have cutted cylinder with revolced surface (surface still visible):





I have used extrudecut to cut first one hole and then revolved pattern to multiply it.









Hope this helps. This is very hard part for a beginner.

Many Thanks Muovimies! That was indeed extremely helpful - I was approaching it in totally the wrong way by the look of it! Here's mine following yourmethod -


Still got a bit of working out to go, but much more progress than I've made over the last few day!

OK - next question on this..... I need wheels of 2 different sizes, one to be 235mm wide, one to be 295mm wide. In one of the tutorials it showed how to make 2 versions of something, so I set up some measurements with equations and relationships thinking I could just then change one dimension and have a second part, but the cutouts dont go right when I change the dimension - any idea where I'm going wrong?

Can't say what is wrong because I really don't know what you have done.



You really don't need relationships and equations if you want to make
only one or two more versions. I think you should try them only if you
would make something like 10 different versions and still using
configuration table would be easier.



Just do new configuration and and change manually every sketch/feture
dimension in this version. "use only in this
configuration"-button in dimensions and features (for example extrude
direction and leght).



Or you just could save whole model with a new name and change those
dimensions for good. Then you don't have to play with configurations at
all. I usually don't use configurations in complicated changes between
different versions. Configurations are exellent for example varying
bolt lenght or number of holes in plate but they are not so good if you
only need two different versions and have to change virtually
everything.

Thanks again, in that case I'll just do as you suggest and save as a different model and edit in the new drawing.