What is Autotrace and what is used for?

Adan Isais

23 Jan, 2012 06:17 AM

This is a tutorial for autotrace, you can found it in any SolidWorks versions

1. Step 1:

   Well, we start with this picture found on internet
   

   

2. Step 2:

   Then we activate the add-in, we click "tools - add-ins" and select "autotrace"
   

   

3. Step 3:

   Then we open a new sketch and insert the picture using "tools - sketch tools - sketch picture"
   

   

4. Step 4:

   When we insert the image, in the options panel, appears some arrows to follow autotrace steps
   

   

5. Step 5:

   When we click next, we have some tools for image treatment, like area selection, show a preview, show trace geometry, adjust luminosity, image contrast, color tolerance and recognition tolerance, this are useful to filter the lines we want for our sketch
   

   

6. Step 6:

   Then select the area to begin the new trace
   

   

7. Step 7:

   Finally we see that the trace are automatically generated
   

   

8. Step 8:

   Just click accept to have the new sketch geometry
   

   

9. Step 9:

   Even is a automatic tool is not perfect, this depends on picture quality, contrast, size, and other factors