How to Change Orientation of Imported Geometry

Change Orientation of Imported Geometry

 

The View orientation of Imported Parts when imported into SolidWorks may not be what is desired for our design. So we can end up with a view that is twisted or at some obscure angle or with an Origin that is away from the actual part and this can make it difficult to insert into an assembly or create a drawing for the part.

Let’s understand this with the below example. Here we can see that when we imported the part, the tab is at an angle. We want the tab to be vertical.

We select a face or a plane that will be one of our three Standard Planes and start a new Sketch. As shown below we create two lines that are perpendicular to each other.

 

 

Now we select the Coordinate System command from Features toolbar as shown below.

 

Here we select the intersection of both lines as our origin. Then we select the lines and make them along X axis and Y axis. If they are in the opposite direction then we can use the Flip option.

 

As shown below a new Coordinate system is created.

Now we save the part as a Neutral format (Parasolid, STEP, IGES etc.) file using the newly created coordinate system as the Output coordinate system.

Once saved we reimport the part and as shown below it uses the new coordinate system and the tab is vertical.