PartDesign Pad

Introduction
This tool revolves a selected sketch or 2D object about a given axis.

For all the following explanations of this command the example sketch below will be used:

Angle
This controls the angle through which the revolution is to be formed e.g. 360° would be a full, contiguous revolution. The images in the examples section demonstrate some of the possibilities with specifying different angles.

Axis
This option specifies the axis about which the sketch is to be revolved. This option takes three arguments, which are passed as numbers to either the x, y, or z boxes in the tool. Adding a value of 1.0 to only one of the boxes will cause the tool to make the revolution about that axis. Example revolutions 1, 2 and 3 in the examples section demonstrate scenarios where the example sketch is revolved about either the x or the y axis. Adding a non-zero value to more than one of the axes will cause the part to be revolved by a weighted amount in each axis. e.g. an x value of 1 and a y value of 2 will mean that the revolution about the y-axis is twice as strong as that about the x. This is fairly difficult to comprehend, Example Revolution 4 shows an example where more than one of the boxes has a non-zero value.

Base
This option specifies the offset in either the x, y, or z axis and accepts any number as an argument to each field. For the sketch example on this page, entering a value of -100 for the y field will offset the sketch by -100mm in the y-axis. The difference between a y-offset of 0 and -100 is illustrated in example revolution images 1 and 3 (below). Image 1 has a y-offset of -100, and image 3 a y-offset of 0.

Placement
Once a sketch has been revolved, it is transformed in to a revolution part. This section controls the placement of the part with respect to the coordinate system. NOTE: The following options do not affect the physical dimensions of the part (as the above did), but merely its position in space.

Angle
The Angle argument specifies the angle to be used with the axis option (below). An angle is set here, and the axis that the angle acts upon is set with the axis option. The part is rotated by the specified angle, about the specified axis. A usage example might be if you created the revolution as required, but then needed to rotate the whole part by some amount, in order to allow it to line-up with another pre-existing part.

Axis
This option specifies the axis/axes about which the created revolution part is to be rotated -NOT REVOLVED (the exact value of rotation comes from the angle option (above)). This option takes three arguments, which are passed as numbers to either the x, y, or z boxes in the tool. Adding a value to more than one of the axes will cause the part to be rotated by the angle in each axis. For example, with an angle of 15° set, specifying a value of 1.0 for x, and 2.0 for y will cause the finished part to be rotated 15° in the x-axis AND 30° in the y-axis.