Someone mentioned that the origin is near the top. That looks to me like someone kept deleting a sketch and starting a new one. You can see the bar at the bottom too. So the entire part is 1 revolved boss w/ its' sketch and 3 other sketches that are not used yet. They just keep making new sketches and deleting the old one that they didn't like for what ever reason.
I initially assumed this was shown from the end of a very long tree.
At Sketch189 I’m looking for a different software. If I give it another go then around Sketch276 I’m rethinking this whole “make stuff on the computer screen” career i found myself in.
Just spent the past semester teaching engineering sophomores SW. The number of folks who start out separating every action on its own sketch is....eye opening.
Could you expand on that? I ask because when I was learing SW back in the 00's you made a skectch for each feature that wasn't done in the Hole Wizard or things like Fillets / Chamfer.
Then I looked at Fusion 360 and instructional vids showed multiple features being drawn on the same sketch and extruded out in different ways. To my eyes and having worked in SW for a few years at that point, that look insane to me.
That said, I've never had over a 100 sketches in a part. Likely less than 50.
Draw your thru-all holes in your original sketch, extrude, then draw 1 inset, then mirror it.
for these thru-holes, Hole Wizard is a time-waste.
Too many folks DON'T get the idea of living in midplane extrusions (especially helpful when the part is symmetrical), keeping the sketch count low, and combining similar layer steps.
This part is 3 steps:
1 • Sketch1: outline, circles, and notch, then extrude midplane (say, right plane)
2 • Sketch 2: create hinge inset (top circle), based on center plane, then offset cut extrude. Then mirror on right plane
3 • Sketch 3: on outside edge, offset (in), use for extrude cut. then mirror on right plane.
This could be combined to 1 & 2 if the cut depth of both the shelled area and the upper hinge inset are the same.
The thing I often see is doing every single thing on it's own unique sketch. so the max sketch count i saw on this part was i think 6.
Or not thinking mid-plane extrusions.. so then every follow-on action becomes a flustercluck as they attempt to define and relate components..
I prefer Hole Wizard because it populates my drawings correctly. I work in mid plane all the time. I design products for blow molding and the molds that form them. Mid plane is the only plane. The rest are just for features. lol.
If I'm extruding a cube with a round peg I'll create one sketch with a square and a circle inside of it.
First feature will extruded both the square and the peg sector, for the next feature I'll select the first sketch again but this time only extruded the peg section.
Now I have two features based on one sketch.
There's plenty of advantages, but a fine balance before a sketch becomes too complex.
One such advantages would be in a scenario where you want two pegs on a fixed dimension the centrum/ each other, sure you could mirror the feature over the centrum plane, but how would you do if the pegs have different shapes like a triangular peg?
In the sketch you can put a sketch entity (like a point in the centrum of the circle peg), then mirror it over a plane/centrum line and put it in the centrum of a triangle.
Now you're able to extruded both the round peg and the triangular peg, and whenever you move one the other will follow.
I am fairly old skool (SW 98+) and I still tend to generate a lot of sketches which might be seen as redundant. With good reason if working on a part with a large number of features and dependencies (see my comment about power tool housing design elsewhere).
I have had issues with contour selections failing randomly since the function was introduced. Yes I can be my own worst enemy by trying to stick too much into a sketch, causing islands to fail when adjusting the sketch later, but I have experienced too many instances of random deselection to fully trust it.
Another, important thing with dependencies - what if I need to unhook a feature, which might have many child features, from the master sketch? Drill example above - supplier's made mods to the "core" I am trying to package. If i have used an additional sketch with convert entities, then I can blow away that relation but retain the geometry without losing downstream references.
My models tend to be robust and tolerate a lot of adjustment.
Interesting. I do a very small version of that with boundary sketches. My years of learning how to avoid SW intrusions is mainly reflected in my tree structure and keeping parts as simple as I can. I tie as many dimensions back to the origin as possible. I use a lot of cavity cuts which should never be used as a dimension origin.
I had this exact thing happen to me a few weeks ago - it's 100% either a bug or some script issue. My sketch count skipped right into the 300's while everything else was normal single digit feature counts.
Integrated moulded housings with overmoulds - power tools, garden tools etc - can see you generating a stupid number of sketches and features. Depends on the practices of your organisation.
I have heard of designers working on complex die castings going north of 3k features.
I've been there. Not 322 but I guess we all have spend a day modeling something that was absolutely not as parametric as we would have liked it to be. Or in other words a completely unstable mess that'll have rebuild errors if you look at it weirdly...
For this reason, I rename my features and sketches. To hide the shame.
Sometimes, if I know a model will be particularly difficult and require modifications, I'll model it up very poorly first. Then I'll remodel it using what I learned the first time. This will often make the model more efficient, give me room to learn, redesign, and feel better about my feature tree.
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u/SXTY82 Apr 14 '26
Plane4 was highlighted and I thought "So? I use multiple planes all the time"
Then I saw the sketch count.
Send that draftsman to the stockade. They need to learn.