Mirror command in Solid Works

Mirroring capabilities

You may mirror bodies, facial features, and faces in sections. You may mirror assembly characteristics in assemblies.

To reflect a feature

1. Choose one of these:
   • Click Mirror in a section or choose Insert > Pattern/Mirror > Mirror from the Features toolbar.
   • Click Assembly Features in an assembly, or select Insert > Assembly Feature > Mirror from the Command Manager's Assembly tab.
2. Choose a face or a plane in the graphics section and then click Mirror Face/Plane.
3. Decide which objects to mirror.
   You can choose a body inside a single body or many bodies in a part, or you can choose features, the faces that make up features.
   • To mirror features in parts or assemblies, choose one or more features from the graphics area or the fly out in the Feature Manager design tree and then click Features to Mirror.
   • To mirror faces in sections, use Faces to Mirror and choose the faces that make up the feature you wish to reflect in the graphics area. Faces to Mirror is helpful with imported models when the feature itself was not imported, simply the faces that make up the feature.
     1. Select the feature from the Feature Manager design tree and choose Features to Mirror to mirror features in multibody sections.
     2. Select Geometry pattern from the Options menu.
     3. Choose which bodies the feature should affect under Feature Scope.
   • Select a body in the graphics area and choose Bodies to Mirror to mirror the complete body in a single-body or multibody section.
4. After choosing "Bodies to Mirror," the following choices show up:
   • Combine solids: You can construct a mirror body that is linked to the original body but is a different entity if you choose a face on a solid section and uncheck the Merge solids check box. The original portion and the mirrored part combine into a single entity if you choose to merge solids.
   • Knitted fabrics: Selecting Knit surfaces will knit the two surfaces together if you want to mirror a surface by joining the mirror face to the original face without crossings or gaps.
5. Instead of solving the entire feature, choose Geometry Pattern if you simply want to reflect the geometry (faces and edges) of the features.
   When you want to reflect characteristics of one body onto another body in a multiday component, you must use this option.
   The feature's construction and rebuilding are expedited by the geometry pattern choice. The faces of features that are blended with the remainder of the component, however, cannot be used to construct geometric patterns.
   Only Features to Mirror and Faces to Mirror support the geometric pattern.
6. Select Propagate Visual Properties to reflect the SOLIDWORKS colors, textures, and aesthetic thread data of the mirrored entities.
7. Click

How to utilize the mirror tools in SOLIDWORKS

The totally associative nature of the outcomes not only expedites the initial design process, but also enables symmetrical design modifications. After all, a mirror is a kind of pattern; it only has one copy, which typically reflects the copied object.

Let's begin with the very first step, the drawing

In part design drawing, there are two mirror tools: Mirror Entities and Dynamic Mirror.

Because it is simple to access on the command manager, Mirror Entities is the most popular. You launch the tool after creating the initial sketch entities. Using the mirror tool, which can be a sketch line, part edge, or plane, pick the sketch entities and copy from one side to the other. As a result, the newly generated entities and the original drawing points have a symmetric relationship.

The fact that Dynamic Sketch is absent from the command manager makes it a tool that is less frequently utilized. If you find it useful, you may modify your command manager to add it.

The first step in a dynamic sketch mirror is to create a line and designate it as a mirror tool in advance. Next, more sketch entities are added. When you add additional sketch material, the line will be marked with a doubled hashed line, which will dynamically copy and add symmetric entities to the other side of the line. A second tool selection will disable the dynamic mirror command.

Since you will be able to link the two sets of sketch information to one another and the dimensions will now be symmetric, I advise adding your final relations and dimensions later.

Here is the final product of our mirror-extruded tap handles with additional fillets.

This technique, as you can see in the example above when features are placed in mirrored positions, works well for symmetric drawings of complex sections or modifications.

Mirroring a feature or body is another way to introduce geometry changes in mirrored places.

To enable mounting of this cabinet for our vanity, let's make some holes.

We may mirror this feature to the opposing sides of the component over the relevant reference planes by taking this last Cut-Extrude for the mounting hole.

We can even add a second reference plane in SOLIDWORKS 2022, eliminating the need for a second mirror feature and allowing us to have four holes.

You can select to integrate the resultant bodies from body mirrors IF they contact or to produce separate bodies to keep using multiband modeling techniques. Please be aware that it is inappropriate to tick the "merge solids" option for bodies that do not contact.

Let's see how an assembly with symmetrical pieces is put together last. Components might be mirrored to speed up final design assembly.

A couple extra settings are available when mirroring components. I wanted to mimic the component location, as you can see, thus I chose a slightly different handle design.

You will find options for your mirror on the next page. The simplest option for me to add a second instance of this handle is to move it up in my BOM listing and place it above the Right plane.

Based on orientation, there are also more choices available:

In the end, you may even make a new configuration or new file based on the mirroring of the portion or parts in the opposite direction.

In SOLIDWORKS, it is simple to produce opposite-hand copies of components.

Engineers frequently require a component in the opposite-hand configuration. At the assembly level, the Mirror feature is a frequently utilised technique.

When defining this feature, you have the option of creating an opposite-hand version. This is excellent, but occasionally you want to make a variant that is opposite-handed or without the need for an assembly. I want to demonstrate how to directly build opposite-hand replicas of parts in this tech blog.

Utilizing the Mirror

You may make a part that is the mirror image of an existing component using the Mirror Part feature. The original version is automatically used to create the mirrored version. The two components will thus always match.

Making a mirror image of a section

1. To mirror a part around a model face or plane in an open part document, click it.
   This step is essential because without it, the Mirror Part function won't work.
2. Select Mirror Part under Insert.
   The Insert Part Property Manager appears in a new part window.
3. Select any group of elements from the source section under Transfer to add to the opposite-hand version. In this instance, I choose one of the following alternatives for the sheet metal portion of step 1:
   • Having solid bodies is plainly important for having solid geometry.
   • Data from the whole wizard is helpful when making a sketch so you can accurately size the holes.
   • Information about flat patterns and sheet metal is transferred in this way. Because you can immediately flatten the version on the other hand, this is quite helpful.
   • Transferring the specified content
4. (Optional) Select Break link to original part under Link if you wish to separately alter the characteristics of the mirrored section without changing the original component.
5. Choose Propagate from the original part under Visual Properties if you wish to preserve the original section's look in its entirety.
6. Press OK. The mirrored portion is visible.

Conclusion

As we've seen, making an opposite-hand version of your component files is rather simple. Additionally, you can make these files beforehand rather than using the assembly mirror function.

To avoid having to duplicate the flat pattern, it is a good idea to include the sheet metal information in the mirrored component for sheet metal parts.