If you’ve been using SolidWorks for more than a couple hours you know you parts are created by stacking up a bunch of features on the left side of the screen. It’s a veritable tower of sand, held together by the spit of fully-defined sketches. Based on what you do in that stack, the FeatureManager…

I hope you’re squared away on your resolutions because you won’t find any of that hulabaloo here. We’s about to get busy with some good ol’ SolidWorks tips that will have you rockin’ into the new year faster, and dare I say more efficient, than ten rabid squirrels burying nuts in a bin of squash.…

Don’t you just love the magnificent spectacle of an exploded assembly in SolidWorks? It’s like everything in the world has been revealed and facial hair has become a thing of the past. And let me tell ya, when you’re exploding stuff you want as little facial hair as possible cause that’s just gonna distract aerodynamics…

Last Week Albert Whatmough gave us some insight into successful SolidWorks Training. He knows a thing or two about using SolidWorks and making training videos too. You can watch several SolidWorks tutorials and also see some lesson overviews of the well-thought out course he offers here. This is one of the latest.

It always starts with a line. Some of you cross that line and go really crazy adding extruded fillety curviness and such. That’s exactly what we’re doing today and there’s even a sweet video to show ya some technique and one way to work inside SolidWorks 2008. Start with a line What could you create…

This post was guest blogged by Albert Whatmough at Inspirtech.com For one reason or another, engineers, designers and trades people are constantly faced with the demand to continue learning new CAD applications. Depending on their current level of expertise, the ideal training solution can change. The various methods of learning a CAD application can be…

Getting through a project in a multi-user environment is one of the greatest challenges an engineering company can face. There’s this PDM and that PDM, this process and that process, and it quickly turns into a community of gopher-heads popping up to have each other check stuff in ‘real quick’ while schedules dwindle into the…

A little while ago I did a cannonball into the serene waters of assembly design and gave you 3 Unique Solutions to Modeling in SolidWorks. It was almost a taunt, because I just jabbed at the concept. Well, here’s a little bit more of a jab. Something with a little more pepper… and some delicious…

Don’t you just love some seriously beautiful wallpaper to customize your programs with? Sure, you can customize your SolidWorks background, but that’s so SolidWorks 2007. Now, in SolidWorks 2008 you can even add a custom image to your drawing background. In fact…are you ready… it already comes with… a crinkly paper background. Yeah, pretty hard…

Just wanted to let you PDF-on-crack users know I recently did an article for the Adobe Acrobat User Community to show the throngs of people out there using Adobe Acrobat 3D 5 Time Saving Benefits of Adding Acrobat 3D to Your Engineering Workflow. I literally take a standard workflow, tear it apart and neatly locate…

Wouldn’t it be nice to automate all the modeling you do in SolidWorks? There’s ways to do this but when you’re first implementing SolidWorks or need to add some methods to speed up model creation there’s a way to make adding features quicker. It’s through Library Features and this will show you what they do…

Everybody likes to know what they are getting. When it comes to organizing files on your computer it’s not any different.Using a smart numbering system may seem like a good ideas at first, but it invariably leads an organization down the wrong path. Why? Simply put, things change. This material become that material, that changes…

I cam across an issue today where a composite fiberglass part had been modeled with no draft (angled faces). Production stopped because they couldn’t make it by the print and get it off the mold. A hostage situation ensued, the problem was corrected and production cheered the results. All was well, except for the unapologetic…

“That guy looks relaxed. what made his life so easy?” – He just implemented SolidWorks and knew how to do it. Becoming familiar with a CAD system can be a source of frustration and stress. That’s what turns people into bitter old people. We don’t want that. While some may find switching to SolidWorks from…

I love sitting and waiting for a 50MB file to open, don’t you? Gives you plenty of time to take care of some bills and catch up on politics. File loading is one of the most inefficient times of the day because it invariably leads to 20 minute conversations about the best truck hitch to…

Modeling in SolidWorks is pretty dang easy. Sure there’s little bits of wisdom that come with using it, but an installation and a day later and you’re on your way. The sheet metal features in SolidWorks are a little different. There more like trying to do a back flip. It looks easy, I can picture…

Concept models are a lot like cooked meat and pies. “Hey butcha! that looks like some tasty meat there; give me 5 lbs and a pie for the kiddos!” You see what you’re getting, you take it home and have a delicious and satisfying meal. And like a butcher shop, concept models take away all…

SolidWorks is known for it’s exceptional 3D design functionality, but what if you want to take some of those amazing products you’ve created and get them printed for a display, brochure or screenprinted t-shirt? You can get a print quality image straight from SolidWorks and it’s simple as saving a file. Technical stuff Typically a…

With all the crazy stuff going on in the world it’s kinda nice to get away once in a while from the all the busyness and concentrate on the details that really matter, like catching up with old friends, spending time with family and cleaning up your part geometry. Yes, I know cleaning up your…

Warning: This involves changing registry settings in the .sldreg file created by the Copy Options Wizard, so before doing this be sure 1) that you know what you’re doing 2) that you’re comfortable doing it 3) that you’ve made a backup of your Options. Oh, and SolidWorks probably won’t recommend doing this. When you upgrade…

Notes in SolidWorks didn’t use to be so easy to use. Now, there’s actually a lot you can do with them and SolidWorks 2008 is going to bring some new things, like adding balloons to notes. Here’s some tips for notes that only take a nimble finger 2.9 second each. Move right along To move…

If you feel frustrated each time you have to re-create a drawing, you’re not alone. All of a sudden, five other configurations and five other drawings are needed, all the same. Typically, you may open the part, start a new drawing, rinse, repeat. But, with just a few steps, you can save tons of time…

Sometimes working with a SolidWorks BOM may seem like you’re bouncing away on a trampoline just fine, when all of a sudden your leg slides right through the springs on the side as your head slams against the metal support bar… more or less. The SolidWorks BOM (Bill of Material) is actually pretty cool. It’s…

It’s one thing to have a 24″ or 30″ monitor to spread your work across, but when you’re working on a smaller monitor the toolbars and sidebars can take up half the screen. This little tip can change that and make a big difference in how you work. Quick Usability I like quick ways to…

With Vista spreading like hazy mist, XP may not be around much longer so I thought I’d get this little tip out to you before we’re swimming in the elegance of a new “desktop experience.” I thought about this when Rob Rodriguez mentioned his computer upgrade and one of the tweaks he does called the…

You know the things in life you’ve always dreamt you would have the chance to do? If creating an Isometric Section View in SolidWorks is one of them, get ready to mark it off the list. Actually, dreaming about something like this may be a bit odd. Harnessing frustration might be a better term. Similar…

Developing a way to layout your models can be daunting. It’s kind of like having shards of glass thrown at you by a very small man with beady eyes named Karl. A modeling methodology defines how you construct your models and keeps it consistent across the models and the company. For this reason alone, it’s…

The measure command is probably the single most used tool in the arsenal of SolidWorks Tools. But, if you’re slappin’ holes and fillets all over your models and someone ask you to measure a minimum distance between holes, what do you do? I’ve seen some start a sketch and proceed to lay out lines and…

Here’s a handy little tip that 4 out of 5 tech support guys recommend for getting a quick perpendicular- to-tangent relation in SolidWorks. This is really simple, but I don’t see it used too often. It can help you avoid a bunch of steps, as well as prevent unnecessary construction lines and geometry. To create…

If you’re wondering what one of the basic things you can do to make creating parts, assemblies and drawings easier without pushing it off onto someone else, I may have a solution for you. Steps that prevent repetitive tasks can usually be some of the most simple. While things in SolidWorks are not always so…

There’s nothing quite like a fresh-squeezed glass of OJ in the morning, unless you’ve had a traumatic experience in an orange grove and you’re deathly afraid of oranges. Then, not so good. That’s probably pretty common. So instead, I’ve got some fresh-squeezed tips for new SolidWorks users, although just about anyone could use them some…

Many times I will be cruising along on an assembly and realized I should be slapped hard for not taking time to do a few things that will make my work much easier. Yeah, my assembly is looking like that thing from John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and the room is getting dark. So, to keep…

In the realm of somewhat useless but cool stuff you can do to customize SolidWorks, I recently did a post about making your own background. This can in actuality be very useful for two things Making things on your screen easier to see Giving a custom feel to product presentations So, in light of all…

There’s lots of things that can make a team efficient – collaboration, coordination, communications, 24” monitors, donuts. But there’s one thing that can make a team of SolidWorks users take those first three things and spread them like a warm stick of butter. It has to do with standardizing SolidWorks settings in your group. At…

And when I say snot, I mean all that messy undefined-ness. That is some nasty stuff and can make your part sick I tell you. Sick, sick, sick. There is one thing that can help you though. One Command to dimension them all, One Command to relate them, One Command to bind them all and…

I want my drawings to be as clear as possible, but I also want the least amount of views and pages to get the information across. This can be difficult when there are parts weaving in and around each other. So, imagine if you could combine two views together to reduce a bunch of extra…

You can customize lots of things in SolidWorks from backgrounds to toolbars. But did you know you can spice up your background with your own custom image? It’s not that hard either. Here’s how you can do it.

SolidWorks is so easy to get started in, you can spit parts out like a factory without even thinking about it. However, one of the most important things to understand when starting out in a 3D modeling program is knowing how to build a part for how it will be used and how design changes…

Allright, so the last person that opened up your 1,000 part assembly hid a bunch of stuff and now it’s looking like a barren wasteland of nuts and washers. Before you spend hours traversing through sub-assemblies and revealing your wrath to that person, take a look at this. Step 1 With a quick flick of…

Matt Lombard will love you. Order from here. I just got mine and it ‘s the best SolidWorks book out there.

When you’re sitting at home alone gazing into the light fixture and wondering if you caught all the changes in a drawing that was just released, here’s an absolutely simple way to wake up early, go in before anyone else finds out and do a drawing file comparison. Make a .PDF of the first drawing…

A while back SolidNotes had a post that talked about the Select through transparency option. I thought it was interesting and didn’t have this blog up at the time, so I’d thought I’d write on it now. This tip will allow you to get some better performance and allow you to do some things you…

Can you imagine that just about everything in front of you right now has had a dimension on it at some point. Everything except that apple over there to the left. the Big Guy upstairs has an automated routing programs for that kinda stuff. Everyone probably has some opinion about how to dimension something, but…

I know, you’re looking at your sketch that has more relations than the cast of Grey’s Anatomy and wonder how in the heck things went south so fast. Well, it has nothing to do with your social skills or being raised in the country, those things just need a little lovin’. This means it’s time…

So, it’s really lame when you have to make sure to update notes and properties that have dimensions entered in manually. Well, there’s a way to grab a dimension property so you can use it in different places. Nice thing is, if the dimension changes you don’t have to remember where you put it to…

What if you could throw a bunch of dots around the world and replicate yourself wherever they landed? Yeah, imagine that one. Pretty cool. Well, it’s possible. Not so much with you, but with little feature thingies you put in your models. Ok, I feel the disappointment setting in, so chin up little camper, Sketch…