Why Can’t I Just Get My Sketch To Move?

We have all been tasked with modifying SOLIDWORKS models, and as long time SOLIDWORKS users we like to think we’re pretty good at it. But sometimes we want to move a sketch to a different location on the sketch plane and can’t seem to free it up enough to get it to move. Well, there is a long existing Sketch tool to help with that. You probably know of it but might not be aware of how well it helps here. It is the Display/Delete Relations tool. That tool is taught in the Essentials Class, but with so many tools introduced in that class, it wouldn’t be surprising if it was overlooked.

Let’s take a look at this sketch.

There are 57 Relations in this sketch and it is not held in place with two simple X-Y dimensions, it was locked in to geometry in the background. We could take an educated guess, start selecting sketch entities most likely to hold in position and remove Sketch Relations to try and free it up. Or we could take a more direct approach. When we launch the Display/Delete Relations tool we see all 57 relations. But there is a Filter at the top and if we use the Drop Down list to select External, we will see any relation that ties this sketch down to geometry outside this sketch

This filters the list down to 5 Coincident relations (ignoring the grey reference dimension).When selected from the list it will highlight in the graphics area. Delete all 5 and sketch will definitely move. On the other hand, we could target just a couple, but sifting through 5 dimensions is much more efficient than sifting through 57.

Hopefully this helps the next time you are tasked with modifying a sketch

Jay Pinheiro
Application Engineer Manager
Computer Aided Technology