The Vent feature in SOLIDWORKS is a great way to add any sort of vents for airflow through sheet metal and plastic parts. It’s a very simple way to create a vent opening, spars and ribs as needed. Today, we will be looking at how to easily automate this based on a sketch in SOLDIWORKS.

First, you’ll want to sketch some 2D profiles to see what you want the vent to look like. This could really be any shape, but here, we will draw a rectangle with some strengthening ribs and spars. With the vent feature, you simply pick your flow opening from the sketch, and you will see that as you’re picking geometry, SOLIDWORKS is automatically calculating the flow opening area as well as the percentage of flow. You can then continue to add other geometry, specifying thickness and offsets for each – for example, some vertical ribs and some horizontal spars.

The vent feature isn’t just limited to linear geometry either. You can create spars and ribs that are lines, arcs or even splines, so really any geometry that you’re looking for with your vent feature is achievable. And just as before, as you add geometry, that flow opening is automatically being calculated, so you can really optimize your design to fit both your structural design needs as well as your flow opening needs.