How to Measure a Surface Area, Volume or Mass in SOLIDWORKS?

SolidWorks Tricks20 comments

Sometimes it’s necessary to measure the surface area, volume or mass of a product. For example, in order to calculate the amount of paint it’s useful to know the surface area. We all know how to measure the surface area of a simple shape like a cube. But it’s get more complicated when you’ve to calculate the surface area of an organic shape, like the Citrus Squeezer.

Or perhaps you’ve designed a bottle and want to know what the volume is. Or you want to measure and reduce the weight of your newest carbon race wheel. Luckily SOLIDWORKS has a useful tool to calculate material properties like this in a few clicks. I will show you how it works.

Click here to download a SOLIDWORKS file of a citrus squeezer.

Go to Tools > Mass properties or click on the Mass properties icon

In the Mass properties box, you can find many material properties.

The surface area of the squeezer is 40091mm2 as you can see in the orange rectangle.

As you can see in the Mass Properties box in SOLIDWORKS, the volume of our model is 169301 mm3.

You can also see the Mass of your model. It’s important to set up a material first to get the right properties.

Another great value is the “Center of mass”

This information will tell you where the center of your product is.

Center of mass: ( millimeters )

X = 0.00

Y = 204.73

Z = 0.00

The information above tells you that the center of your product is 204,73 mm above the origin of this part.

Click here to download the SOLIDWORKS citrus squeezer model.

Here’s also a video about measuring a surface in SOLIDWORKS.

In this example video, we will calculate the surface area of a vertical stabilizer of a Boeing 747-8. This can be useful when, for example, you want to calculate how much paint you need to paint a surface.

Click here to start modeling the Boeing 747 as shown in this video in SOLIDWORKS.

Cheers,

Jan

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How to Measure the Weight of an object in SOLIDWORKS?

Leave Your Response

20 comments. Leave new

Luis Arroyo

11:18 pm

Your Comments

Very interesting your course information will be useful to me in my designs, I thank you enough for the information.

Thank you very much.

kamal rasool

6:37 am

Dear sir,

i m kamal from pakistan, working as a process engineer in a precised parts manufacturing industry. i have 2 years of experience of using solid works. i always search the tutorial to increase my potential of using solid work’s, and your course information is very helpful for me in this aspect.

thank u very much.

Swapnil Bingewar

7:49 am

Hi Jan,
Thanks for the information.
Its really useful knowledge sharing.

Thanks You..!

Harshal More

11:49 am

Hi Jan,

first of all, thanx a lot for sharing this information, and i hope that definitely i will receive more information in this aspect.

Jan-Willem Zuyderduyn

9:34 am

Hi everybody, thanks for all the positive comments! I really appreciate it. I will write many other SolidWorks tutorials the next months.

Eng.Murad DWeik

8:55 am

but if you have only the 3d design from surface & you need to calculate the weight , you can’t use the tools mass properties to calculate the weight of the product , as the icon of be disable ! – so what you will do in this case ?
thanks!- Murad. From –Palestine.

Jan-Willem Zuyderduyn

9:32 am

Hi Murad, thanks for your message. A surface model doesn’t have a volume or mass (it’s just a surface without a thickness). To get the weight of a surface model you first need to add a wall thickness. Go to Insert > Boss/Base > Thicken to add a wall thickness. Afterwards you can follow the steps as shown in the tutorial.

JAY

4:48 am

Your Comments
Sir .

It is useful thing , if you explain about moment of inertia ,it may so useful , and ,where it can applying in real world ,

Reza

5:52 pm

Hi jan
thank you about your information , all the information are evry useful

Villa

9:57 am

Thank You Very Much..!!!
I m Student Dip.Design in Malaysia. This information very useful for me. i just completed this tutorial..

Jan-Willem Zuyderduyn

10:04 am

You’re welcome! 🙂

Fahime

9:50 pm

Hi jan
Do you have a solid model of F16 falcon?

Fabian

8:58 pm

Thank you, Jan. Your work is very commendable and has been helpful. Please keep the good works alive.

ashok ranade

3:00 am

i am always impressed with your tutorials to get new hints while learning solidworks. thanks a lot.

madhavan

8:46 am

How to measure the multiple parts of surface area? For Eg: I want the surafce area of Chassis. It consists of Center housing, transmission case, Engine and so on….From this how do i calculate the surface area?

Jan-Willem Zuyderduyn

12:33 pm

Hi Madhavan, go to Tools > Mass Properties > Surface area to see the surface area of multiple parts or bodies. Cheers, Jan

amin

4:32 pm

hi jan
i m mechanic engineer student i have model of car in catia and I need calculate area surface of my model(my model make by a lot of part some of them overlap) I need your help

Hung

7:28 am

Thank you so much! It’s an useful information for me.

Syed Shahryar

10:35 am

thanks

Tanya Swanepoel

7:47 am

Hi, we have to re-metal White Metal on bearings all the time. We want to use Solidworks to calculate the mass correctly that we need to quote and purchase, but it seems to be very difficult as it is a cylinder so it is not calculating correctly. What can we do to calculate it correctly in Solidworks?