[Noyrt]

How do you change solidworks so that the top plane is always Z and the front plane is always Y. I don't understand why this is backwards in solid works. When milling machines are Z up/down, Y front/back.

It causes problems trying to assign coordinates in the CAM software and I always have to make a separate coordinate system in solidworks to use with the CAM. It's annoying...

Any help appreciated. Thanks
Tryon

[cygnus x-1]

How do you change solidworks so that the top plane is always Z and the front plane is always Y. I don't understand why this is backwards in solid works. When milling machines are Z up/down, Y front/back.

It causes problems trying to assign coordinates in the CAM software and I always have to make a separate coordinate system in solidworks to use with the CAM. It's annoying...

Any help appreciated. Thanks
Tryon

The simple answer is that SW was not designed initially with machinists in mind. The convention comes from the days of drafting on a table where X and Y were on the plane of the paper, and Z would be normal to that plane. Generally in drawing you would draw the part from a front view, therefore the top plane would be normal to the Y axis. In machining the convention is different, with the Z axis thought of as up instead of Y. This bothered me at first too, but the thing you come to realize pretty quickly is that before long you will need to machine parts from more than one orientation anyway, so no matter what you will have to deal with changing coordinate systems. The exception might be if you only cut sheet parts in 2D.

When designing parts I always try to start so that the main profile of the part will be normal to the front plane. This does make machining job setup a bit faster, although once you become proficient it's really not a big deal if you have to reorient. What I also do (usually) is put the part to be made into an assembly first and mate it up so that it's in the orientation I want for machining. Putting your machining jobs in an assembly has several advantages:

- You can model in fixtures and vises and use them for reference in the job setup
- You can machine as many parts as you want in one setup
- It's easier to update your jobs if a part changes. Just replace the part in the assembly and relink your tool paths
- You can use assemblies as templates for common machining operations.
- You have more control over how parts are oriented in the assembly


Well that was a bit more than the original question you asked but I thought it might help.

C|

[Noyrt]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try working out of an Assembly more. Haven't used that too much. Need to explore it more.

Tryon