Sketching Part 2 & Extruding

Now, you should have 4 circles drawn on your document. Those will be used as our hole patterns, but now we need to make a much more simple shape to use as the basis of our part.

Create a second sketch

Create another sketch using the top plane as a sketch plane. If you don't remember how to do this, refer to creating a sketch in Sketching Part 1

Drawing a square

Let's create a 25mm x 25mm square to house our part. I just picked a random(ish) size for this square, but note it is large enough to fit the holes in the pattern with enough padding to feel comfortable with the strength.

Once your square is finished, you can click the green check box and exit the sketch.

Extruding the square

Extruding is the standard method in any kind of CAD to take a 2-dimensional shape and turn it into a 3-dimensional solid.

Click the 'thicken' button (NOT the extrude button... dont ask me why) and select the square you just drew. You can leave it on the "New" option (instead of add, remove, or intersect).

Set the extrusion thickness to .125 inches. This is done in the input box labelled 'Direction 1'. Once you have set the thickness, click the green check box to exit the thicken tool.

Once your shape is extruded, you can orbit the camera location by right-clicking and dragging the mouse.