Steering Wheel Advanced Techniques

By Tushar Suradkar

It is common knowledge that the Steering Wheel is the Synchronous Technology enabler and a versatile tool for performing direct edits on both synchronous and imported models.

Here’s the minimal anatomy of the Steering Wheel:

When it comes to manipulating geometry using the Steering Wheel, there are two approaches :

Manipulate the geometry by moving, rotating its faces.
Manipulate or re-orient the Steering Wheel so that the geometry modification becomes easier.

The following is a quick recap of the various ways in which the Steering Wheel can be re-oriented:

Move the Steering Wheel where you want it by the Origin.
Shift + Origin to move while preserving the orientation.
Shift + Bearing for angle around the other axis.
Ctrl + Bearing for an angle in the plane of axes.
Shift + Tool Plane to flip the orientation.
Origin + drag to an edge to align with.
Shift + Bearing + select a point to orient.

This article discusses the following three cases:

Moving holes or any feature in a direction set by using existing geometry in the model.
Aligning holes in imported geometry which due to the imperfections in its originating program or errors introduced during the import process may not align properly and pose problems during assembling.
Moving features, like holes, in this case, to stop short of a certain distance to an existing feature which may not be possible by using traditional methods.

These three techniques were part of my presentation at the recently conducted Solid Edge University SEU 2018 which was held as part of the larger Siemens PLM Connect event in Phoenix, Arizona between June 4-7, 2018

All the above examples are demonstrated in the video below which has my voice-over, cool background music and some graphics effects for easy understanding.

Sound ON and enjoy the video…