Making a Chain

The other day I was modeling this bicycle, and I was trying to remember how to make a chain. I’ve made chains before, and knew there was a hard way, and an easy way, but I couldn’t remember what the easy way was.

So I did what any one of you would do: I googled it. And Wow. I know a lot of people rely on YouTube for SolidWorks help, but wow. What I found was just bad. The first one in the list was a 50+ minute unintelligible video that said it was about how to create a chain, but you couldn’t prove that by me. It was full of impertinent information, incorrect information, rambling, fumbling, redoing, etc. It was just bad.

The second one on the list was much shorter, but equally full of stuff that wasn’t useful. All I really needed was to jog my memory. Fortunately I accidentally saw it in the component patterns menu, and then it came back to me. Of course!

So I made my chain, made a 6 minute video, edited out all the crap, and posted it. So the next time I forget how to do this, I’ll be able to remind myself. And maybe some other people. Check out the video below.

I haven’t YouTubed in a while. After the last book (Mastering…) I had to create about 100 videos in the space of a couple of weeks. That’s coming up with a topic, making necessary models, recording the video, and editing. I don’t need to tell you that I was burned out after that. But now I’ve maybe forgotten a little of the pain of hours and hours of video editing. So maybe I’ll give it a shot again.

Plus, I’ve got a bonus for those of you who read down this far. I’ve recently started working on a new Dezignstuff Episode! This one is not a topic I’ve mentioned for a while, but it should be done in about a month. And this one will probably be free… What do you think it is going to be?