Revolve Solid

Use Revolve to rotate a 2D sketch profile around an axis, generating rotationally symmetric solids. Revolve is ideal for creating shafts, bottles, flanges, turned components, and any geometry with circular symmetry.

Sketches

Select one or more sketch regions to revolve. A closed sketch encloses an area, and Zoo Design Studio exposes that filled area as a selectable region. For a solid revolve, select the region, not the individual sketch segments. Segments define the profile boundary, but the filled region is the cross-section that becomes the revolved solid.

The selected region becomes the cross-section of the revolved solid. Make sure it does not cross the axis of revolution, because that can create invalid self-intersecting geometry.

Axis Type

Choose whether to revolve around a sketch axis (X, or Y) or around an existing edge in your model.

Sketch Axis

If you chose "Sketch Axis" above, pick which axis to use in the sketch's coordinate system. The profile spins around that axis, so changing the axis changes the resulting solid even when the selected region stays the same.

Edge

If you chose Edge above, select a straight sketch edge or model edge to use as the revolution axis. The selected region revolves around that edge instead of one of the sketch axes.

Angle

How many degrees to rotate. Common choices:

Or any custom angle for partial features

Symmetric

Enable this to revolve equally in both directions from the sketch. Your specified angle gets split in half, rotating both ways from the starting position.

Bidirectional Angle

When creating a non-symmetric bidirectional revolve, this sets the rotation amount in the opposite direction.

Start Tag and End Tag

Tag the start face (at the sketch location) or end face (at the final rotation angle) to reference them in later features. This is mainly used for referencing faces from other objects or features, especially in code or scripts. In the usual point-and-click UI flow, you don't need to set these tags. This is mostly for advanced users who want precise control or automation.

Tolerance

Controls the small-distance threshold used to decide whether entities are coincident, intersecting, coplanar, or similar. For normal revolves, leave this at its default value. Change it only when troubleshooting very small or nearly coincident geometry.

Body Type

Choose solid for a watertight solid geometry, or surface for a thin shell with no thickness.

Parameter Reference

sketches: The selected profile or profiles. In the UI, select filled regions for solid revolves, not their boundary segments.

axis: The revolution axis. Use a local sketch axis such as X or Y, or select a straight edge/segment as the axis.

angle: The revolution angle. Defaults to a full 360deg revolve.

tolerance: Sets the coincidence/intersection threshold for very small geometry checks. Usually leave this at the default.

symmetric: Splits the revolve equally to both sides of the starting sketch position.

bidirectionalAngle: Adds a second revolve angle in the opposite direction. Ignored when symmetric is enabled.

tagStart: Names the start face for later reference.

tagEnd: Names the end face for later reference.

bodyType: Creates either a solid body or a surface body.

Prefer to learn by watching?

If you want to find out more in a different way, check out our video walkthrough:

Are you interested in code?

Zoo Design Studio writes KCL behind the scenes. Here’s an example of a solid revolve in KCL:

Want to find out more about the revolve function? Check it out in our KCL docs.