In this post, you will learn how to use the Mirror command in Solidworks. Mirroring is another way that SolidWorks can create a “copy” of an existing object. Additionally, you must choose a plane to mirror parts.
In most cases, you will have to create your own plane to have the mirror done the way you need.
Here is a quick example of what a mirror does. (The line in between the mirrored parts is a the center of the parts)
How to mirror parts in Solidworks
First Create a New Part
We need to select the desired plane. click on the front plane and select sketch
Make a rectangle with the origin of the sketch as the origin of the rectangle and then click on Smart Dimension and give 200 mm for length and 100 mm for width.
Choose Extruded Boss/Base and give 20 mm thickness and also change the end condition to Mid-Plane. This is the best way to put the front plane at the center thus allowing you to use the standard plane for mirroring.
Click on the highlighted area as shown on the picture below and select a new Sketch.
Create a new sketch (triangular) on the selected surface. Select Line and then draw three lines of 80 mm.
Exit the sketch and switch your view to isometric. Extrude the triangle to a depth of 40 mm, click on the reverse direction, and click OK to see the extruded part.
Click on Extrude either by clicking on the extrude cut in the Feature manager or click on the extrude cut in the design.
Click on Mirror. If you do not have Mirror in your toolbar you can find it from Insert>> Pattern/Mirror
In Property Manager, we see it asking for a mirror face or plane. In our design field, we see our part which we can expand to view various things. Expand and select the front plane as this is the plane we want to mirror about.
As you can see, I have selected the Mirror plane in the extrude-section to have the Front Plane in the middle of base otherwise, I should have defined a new plane. Therefore, it is considerably important to use the command in a way to help us create the model the easiest way possible.
At this step, you might have noticed that you can create the whole around the right plane instead.
The advantage of using Mirror command is that it saves times as you probably know drawing all those features can be quite time-consuming. Moreover, the most important point is that if you change the original feature in a mirror, all of the copies also change.