Do you know about the Dynamic Mirror tool in SolidWorks? No? Well, stick around and I’ll show you.
The Dynamic Mirror tool is a sketch tool that allows you to dynamically mirror (duh) as you’re sketching. To use it, you first have to find it as it’s won’t be on your sketch toolbar, or ‘S’ key menu, by default. Hit your ‘S’ key, RMB on the menu and select customize. Go to the ‘Commands’ tab and select ‘Sketch’. There you’ll see the Dynamic Mirror icon:
Just drag and drop it to either the ‘S’ menu or to the sketch toolbar.
Now that you’ve got the button, let’s talk about using it. It’s quite simple, actually. Just like the regular ‘Mirror Entities’ command, you’ll need a centerline. It can either be a sketch, or an existing edge. Simply highlight it and click on the ‘Dynamic Mirror’ button. Start sketching and with each click of your mouse you’ll see a mirrored entity of what you just sketched. While you can, in fact, sketch on both sides of your centerline, you’ll want to stick to one side or the other to prevent overlapping geometry. Once you’ve finished with whatever you wanted to mirror, you can turn off the dynamics but clicking on the button again.
Dynamic Mirror is a great way to quickly, and easily, create symmetric sketches.
