Little known uses for the POINT tool (pt 2)

A lot of people think that the POINT tool (you know, THIS thing * ) in SOLIDWORKS may not be very usefull other than for the Sketch Driven Pattern command…
If SO, you are missing out on some cool things it can do !!

As mentioned in part 1 of this blog (posted on Aug 30th), there are 2 different types of POINTS in SolidWorks.
There are the ones that you can make when you are IN a sketch and then the ones you can make when you are NOT in a sketch !
For this little known POINT functionality, we are talking about the one when you are INSIDE of a Sketch.

You may have noticed in the past, when in a sketch, if you Dimension to a sharp corner and THEN add a Sketch Fillet after the Dimension, that would get rid of that corner, it adds a nice little “virtural sharp (intersection)” where the sharp corner USED to be, and keeps your Dimension attached to it !
Really nice, RIGHT ??
But what if you Fillet FIRST ?
Or what if the geomerty of your sketch doesn’t really make the sharp corner that you need to Dimension to in the first place ?

Any guesses ??

How about the POINT tool !?

Yep. While you are in the Sketch, ctrl+pick (any) 2 lines, and then hit the POINT tool.
Just like magic, it will make a VIRTUAL SHARP for you ! AND you can then of course Dimension to it.
You can even change/choose what the Virtual Sharp looks like…
Got to Tools–Options–Document Properties–Virtual Sharps
(didn’t you WONDER what that was for ??)

Stay tuned… there may be a Pt3 to this blog if I can figure out any more stuff to do with the points !