How To Copy a Surface in SOLIDWORKS?

I frequently get the question of how to copy a surface and export it into another part with SOLIDWORKS. Actually, it’s quite easy so I thought it will be nice to write a short tutorial about that. For this example, I use the beautiful poly-carbonate design chair of Eric van Helmond.

Click here to download the model of this Chair.

Open the Chair in SOLIDWORKS

Go to File > Open and select the Chair 

As you can see in the Feature Tree (Solid Bodies map)  it’s a model with 2 Solid Bodies and no surfaces

Let’s say that we want to copy the surfaces of the 4 legs of the chair.

Click at the first chair leg surface, hold down the Control key and select the other 3 legs as well.

Go to Insert > Surface > Offset or click at the Surface Offset icon 

Change the distance into 0 mm

Click OK 

And voila, you’ve just copied the 4 surfaces of the chair legs!

You can find the 4 surface bodies in the Surface Bodies map of the Feature Tree.

Now we’re trying to import the 4 surfaces of the chair legs into a new file

Save your Chair first 

Create a new part

Go to File > New > Part 

Go to Insert > Part or click on the Insert Part icon

Check the Surface bodies box

Click OK  

The model is Fixed automatically in the new part

Well, that’s all! You’ve just imported the 4 chair legs successfully!

You can use these surfaces as references as a basis for your new part (for instance the counterpart of a mold)

Click here to download the model of this Chair.

Did you like this tutorial and are you eager to learn more? Then you should really check my SOLIDWORKS Boeing 747 course. In this video training course, I will show you how to model an incredible Boeing 747-8 in SOLIDWORKS from scratch.

Click here for a free video to start modeling your own Boeing 747-8 in SOLIDWORKS.

Cheers,

Jan