Toy Birthday Cake: SOLIDWORKS Tutorial

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This tutorial involves creating five individual parts to be used to create a final assembly. The parts include a cake slice, candle, icing blob, balloon sign and a cake stand. The tutorial takes you through the process of importing a DXF to use as a sketch for revolving or extruding. All the DXF files used in the tutorial are available to download here 

The circular pattern is used to create the icing blobs from a extruded DXF sketch which has been extruded and domed on each side, once the body is patterned by 3 instances, it could be combined into one body. The candle part was created through a simple flower shaped extruded sketch, the extrusion was then flexed by twisting it by the top and bottom faces of the extrusion.

The balloon and cake stand are created by importing DXF files and using 3D features to bring them to life. You can create your own DXF files in vector programs to be used with SOLIDWORKS, or you can export DXF files from SOLIDWORKS models, this can be useful for creating accurate decal artwork for complex shapes and you want to ensure it fits. All the decals used in the tutorial are also available to download from here Decals were applied to most parts using projection mapping, which is a very flexible way of applying decals to parts. Other parts had simple plastic appearances added to them, specific colors were applied using their RGB values which you can add within the appearance.

All the finished parts were brought into an assembly and mated into place using coincident and concentric mates. With the final assembly an exploded view was created and exported to SOLIDWORKS Visualize to create a rendered animation which can be seen within the tutorial.

 

Jade Wilson

Jade Wilson

I am a 3D Designer and SOLIDWORKS Blog Contributor from the UK. I am a self taught SOLIDWORKS user, and have been using it to inform and create my designs since 2012. I specialize in the design of Ceramics, Home Accessories and Wooden Toy Design.