SolidWorks Fillets

The section of Chapter 7 in my new book that covers fillets is 27 pages long. I’ll try to summarize it here in a blog post short enough for you to read while eating lunch.

I have found fillets to be one of the best developed areas of the SolidWorks software. This is thanks in no small part to the Parasolid kernel, I’m sure. If you are realistic about what you expect to get from fillets, there is more functionality here than you’re ever going to use.

One thing I have heard people wish for is a user-drawn profile. This capability does not exist, but you can do the same thing with a sweep, for the most part.

Fillets shouldn’t be used for shape creation, you should use other features for that. Fillets should generally be put at the bottom of the tree, and you should avoid making dimensions or relations to fillet edges.

Here is an outline of the various functions of the SolidWorks fillet feature. Not all options are available all the time, some depend on other options you have selected within the current feature:

• Constant radius fillet
  • Multiple radius fillet – allows different edges to have different radius fillets on them, all in a single feature
  • Round corners
  • Keep edge/Keep surface
  • Keep feature
  • Symmetric/asymmetric
  • Profile: circular/Elliptic/Conic/Curvature Continuous
• Variable radius fillet
  • Smooth/straight transition
  • Zero radius
• Face fillet
  • Face fillet with Help Point
  • Single hold line fillet
  • Double hold line fillet
  • Constant width fillet
• Full round fillet
• Setback fillet
• Setback fillet with variable radius
• Fillet options:
  • select through faces
  • keep features/keep faces
  • round corners

Most of these I think are self-explanatory, but some require some visual aid to explain.

Round Corners

Keep Edge/Keep Surface

Keep Feature

Asymmetrical Fillet

Profiles

Constant Width

Setback Fillet w/variable radius