Preview Options for the Trim Surface Feature

The Trim Surface feature is an essential tool for surface modelers. It is a tool to trim away any surface bodies that are used for reference when creating organic shapes. For SOLIDWORKS 2016, there have been enhancements made to clearly see what bodies you can potentially keep or discard.

In this example where I want to model a water jug, I have gotten the model up to the point where I need to trim away some of the excess surface bodies.

Going into the Trim Surface feature (INSERT > SURFACE > TRIM), the property manager still has the familiar window where we need to select all the faces we want to keep or remove for the final model. Usually you pick the option that is easiest to select. In this case, it’s easier for me to choose the faces that I want to keep.

First thing I will do is select all the mutual faces and select Keep Selections. Now I will utilize the new 2016 Preview options to filter on what surfaces to visually include or exclude in my graphics area. We now have the option to view Included, Excluded, or both included and excluded surfaces. In this scenario, I will filter using the Excluded surface option, and then select the faces I am keeping.

We can then turn on the Show Included Surface filter and see what we are left with for our kept selections.

If we turn on the filter to show both included and excluded surfaces, we can see the kept surfaces in yellow and the excluded surfaces in blue.

These new filters make it a lot easier now to see what surfaces you want to include or exclude in your overall surface model. SOLIDWORKS also included a convenient Create Solid option to convert the surfaces to a solid once the software recognizes there in an enclosed volume.

Overall, this is a great enhancement feature added to the Trim Surface making an even better experience during surface modelling.

Check out my YouTube video to see how this feature works here!