Saving a sketch for later use

[leebrazel]

Im sure there is a simple proceedure to saving a sketch in Solidworks for later use, It was very straingtforward in Pro E,





Many thanks

 

[Mihail]

1) If you need to close SW before you finish a sketch is very simple: SAVE the part. When you wish to continue, open that part and... continue with EDIT SKETCH option.


2) If you have a part and you wish to use it's sketch to build another partis not necesary to save the sketch alone. Start the NEW PART. Open the old part. Tile the windows (to see both parts: old part wich contain the sketch and tha new part - empty or not). Select, in the new part, the plane for the sketch. In this moment you can drag the sketch, from the tree manager (old part)in the new part window. Use CTRL or SHIFT key when drag (I don't know what is the diference) to drag the sketch WITH dimensions. If you drag WITHOUT CTRL or SHIFT the sketch lose it's dimensions. I think that is the better than save the sketch because you can forget the files names but you remember easy a part with a sketch like you want.


Also, you can use COPY - PASTE. Select the sketch in the tree manager (old part), press CTRL+C (Copy), select a plane in the new part and press CTRL V (paste). The sketch will be copied in the new part, in the selected plane but... with NO dimensions


3) If you wish, for your personal reasons, to save a sketch in a separate file, see 1) (with a complet sketch, of course). My SW (2007) do not allow me to COPY or DRAG the sketch from this file (maybe in the new versions this is possible). First is necesary to build a feature (ie EXTRUDE) using the sketch. Why ? I don't know. After I build this feature, I delete ONLYthe feature, NOT the sketch. AFTER this operations SW allow me to work with the sketch (see 2) ).


Hope this is ahelp foryou. And... sorry for my english.


Good luck !