SolidWorks Blog

PDMWorks Enterprise: Who is it for?

I have received many questions regarding the newly released PDMWorks Enterprise PDM product.

·         What is it?

·         Who is it for?

·         How can I learn more?

Good News! The SolidWorks website has recently been updated to highlight the features and benefits of PDMWorks Enterprise. Select on the link below to learn more:

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/solutions/PDMWorksEnterpriseFeatures_Benefits.html?pid=1145

Additionally, select the PDMWorks Demos link to view narrated videos of PDMWorks Enterprise.

Enjoy

Fielder

Search for the refined user

Back in August I wrote about the new innovative Search capabilities included in SolidWorks 2007.  Many of you gave the new Search a try and found it to be a very handy tool.
So I thought I’d expand on it’s capabilities a bit more.

Did you know that you can refine your search using keywords?

If you select on the arrow next to the SolidWorks icon in the search bubble, you will be presented with a list of your last used searches and at the bottom you will see ‘Search Keywords’. Selecting the arrow will produce a list of keywords that can be used to refine your search. So, if you are looking for a document that starts with the number 140 and you know you want a DWG file, simply type in 140 in the search bubble, then select the keyword ‘FileExt’ and type dwg and your search results will only return those item which matched your criteria.

To learn more about this capability simply review the SolidWorks on-line help topic ‘SolidWorks Fundamentals > Search’.

Fielder

What's Changed

Many times in the course of modifying designs you look at two versions of a design and wonder…. ‘…these look exactly alike – what’s changed?...”

You could have kept a log of changes in the Design Binder or if you use PDMWorks you could have noted what changed when you checked the new version into the vault. But, in the rush to ‘get the job done’, these tasks often get missed.

Not to worry! SolidWorks Utilities ‘compare’ features provide the ability to view differences between designs. These compare utilities include:
• Compare Documents. Compares the properties of two SolidWorks documents (including two configurations of the same model or different PDMWorks versions). You can compare two documents of the same type, or of different types. This utility identifies differences in file properties, document properties, and so on.
• Compare Features. Identifies differences in solid features between two versions of the same part. This utility identifies unique and modified features in both versions of the part.
• Compare Geometry. Identifies geometric differences between two versions of the same part. This utility identifies unique and modified faces in both parts. It also computes the common volume of the two parts (or assemblies) and the volume of material added and material removed.

These handy tools can save you from doing tedious forensic analysis of complex designs. To learn more about this capability simply review the SolidWorks on-line help topic ‘SolidWorks Utilities’.

Fielder

Fix it instead of throwing it away

From time to time I get some interesting thoughts shared from other product managers at SolidWorks.  Below are some thoughts from Mark Biasotti another product manager here at SolidWorks.

Enjoy

Fielder

One of the mottos that I like to espouse when describing SolidWorks and how it works for our users is that you “trash nothing, but change everything” or in other words – why throw away perfectly good work when you can just repair it.

Now I’m going to take a chance here and digress to a subject that I’ll bet that you can relate to. Because many of you are mechanical engineers and have that innate instinct to fix things, I know that your basement is full of appliances that have been thrown by the wayside just waiting for that time when they will be rescued and make their way to your garage workbench for repair.

So I offer the following for all of you weekend warriors that have honey-do’s in an effort to make you a hero to your family even thou you spend long hours during the week apart from them in front of SolidWorks.

Last week I was met by my daughter in the kitchen, un-toasted bagel in hand, informing me that our 3 year old toaster no longer worked. No problem as I grabbed it and took it down to the basement and grabbed the 2 slice model that I had replaced 3 years prior. Happily, my family was toasting thru the weekend only to be faced with another quorum of my wife, daughter and son waiting for me in the kitchen Sunday morning stating that the toaster I’d hauled up from the basement also had busted.

With visions of rows of unused toasters in my basement (because yes, I’m one of those that can’t stand the thought of throwing anything out working or not) I decided that I’m not going to let corporate America’s subversive plan of pre-planned obsolescent get the better of my pocketbook and also do a little something to minimize the trash heap, throw-away society that we’ve become.

I’m willing to bet that many of you reading this have had a toaster that stopped working long before your naïve’10 year life expectancy estimation. Fear not, the problem, in most cases, is simpler than you think. Because 99% of toasters use the same technology, there are only a few suspects of issues that can fail. Most modern toasters have some electronics for regulating the time that your toast stays submerged for golden perfection; you set a dial on the side and leave it unaltered for perhaps years. The timer is most likely a small printed circuit board with a few discreet electronic components. It’s not probable that this would become defective, especially within a few years, no, the culprit most likely, would be the heating element and a broken connection between the element and the electronics.

So, with a spare hour or two yesterday, I took apart my toaster (the original 4 slice model that broke) and sure enough, a corroded connector that was attached to one of the heating elements had come loose. If you have or have had a non-functioning toaster, I’m willing to bet this is your problem also.

Fortunately, I was able to easily repair the unit and my daughter was happily back in business toasting bagels.

The following are a few observations to help you get more life out of your toaster. First off, remember what I said about pre-planned obsolescence? Well not only do they build this into their products (I’ll withhold the brand name other than to say it is a well-known expensive European company that rhymes with “cups”) but also prevent you from getting into it by putting it together with non-tamper proof fasteners call “blind Torx” headed screws. This coupled with the ubiquitous warning label “No useable parts inside” should really say, “throw me away, but stay loyal to OUR brand and buy a new and improved one.”

Anyway, a Blind Torx is a star like pattern type of head but with a post in the middle of the hole to prevent the average user from unscrewing it. Blind Torx drives are not something you just pick up at your local hardware store, so do yourself a favor and purchase one online at any industrial tool outlet like JC Whitney or McMaster Car – do a Google on Blind Torx driver and you’ll surely find a set of drivers that you can purchase for under $15 dollars.

Once you’re inside the unit, inspect the ends of the heating elements that run lengthwise through the unit. You’ll probably find the heating element wire that is suppose to be connected to the asbestos insolated wire, going to the heater control board, broken. The heating elements are most likely connected in series, so like old-fashion Xmas tree lights, if one goes out they all go out a.k.a. toaster not toasting.

If this is the case, go to your local, well-stocked, Ace Hardware store and look for high-temperature spade connectors and crimp elements. You can usually find these in the specialty hardware section – you know the rows of boxes that have all sorts of odds and ends of special application hardware. Do not use standard spade connectors and crimp couplers as they can not withstand the heat and will quickly erode. Once you’ve secured your hardware, gain access to the end of the wire element and with a needle nose pliers and straighten a ¼ inch section. Now strip off a ¼ inch section of the asbestos wire and then recrimp the two back together with a high temperature crimp coupler. Also, while your in there, replace any spade connectors that might be damaged with the high temperature ones that you purchase.

Chances are this is all you have to do to get your toaster working again and save yourself $40 bucks to boot and  just like SolidWorks – “Trash nothing, but change everything.”

Mark B

Better Visualization with Sketch Ghosting

One of SolidWorks forte’s is “Delete nothing – Change everything”. As you might know, you can go into any sketch which is used for a feature, for example an extrusion, and if that sketch is unconstrained (no sketch relations or dimensions) or partially constrained, you can drag sketch elements and thereby change the shape of the sketch. Built into both SolidWorks 2D and 3D sketches is a clever and useful device called “Sketch Ghosting”. When moving a sketch element, SolidWorks retains, temporarily, a grayed ghost image of the sketch element’s original position before you moved it with your mouse cursor. Once you let up on your left mouse button, the ghost image is eliminated.

This is particularly useful for Consumer Product Designers when using sketch splines. Because of the sometimes ambiguous nature of splines and the fact that they are not usually driven with dimensions, it is very important when making changes to them, to understand the delta changes, sometimes very subtle. Ghosting of the spline helps the designer to understand the way that the spline has change when they move spline end or interim points.

Sketch Ghosting can also be very useful for simple line geometry. When used with the Move/Size feature in SolidWorks, you can double-click the sketch of an extruded cut feature and move the sketch with the ghost showing and when you let up on the left mouse button, the feature updates dynamically.

Fielder

Focus on your Designs – a few quick tips

SolidWorks 2007 has gone a long way to allow you to focus on designing not on CAD rules One way is by dealing with two of the most commonly performed operations in MCAD: viewing and selection.

Model Interaction

Let’s start with viewing and what we did with 2007 to help eliminate excessive viewing operations. After using 2007 for a while, you’ll notice that you more successful at getting around in your SolidWorks Window when working on your part or assembly. This is due in part, to a change that was made to zoom and rotate. You’ll notice that when you now zoom in 2007, the area of interest that is zoomed to is always centered on the placement of your cursor. This makes it extremely easy to zoom in on detail without having to pan or re-center your view. You’ll also notice that this same principle applies to rotating your view. In 2007, view rotation occurs around the placement of where your cursor is, not the center of the screen. This makes it easy to rotate around areas of interest, especially when zoomed in on a small portion of the overall model or assembly.

Isolate

Once you are zoomed into your area of interest, chances are if you are viewing a complex assembly, some component or components will obstruct your view or make it confusing with modeling in context of the assembly. The Isolate command is very useful in situations like these. Simply right mouse button on the component (or shift select multiple components) in the Feature Manager or SolidWorks Window, can select Isolate.

What this will do for you is to “isolate” that component/s and hide everything else completely or with transparency or with wireframe. You can even save this isolated view for later use as a display state. This gives the user a quick and easy way to focus on the task at hand, without visual clutter getting in the way.

Selection Manager

Now that we have you moving around efficiently when viewing your SolidWorks view, let’s talk about the other most commonly performed operation: selection. For 2007, we have introduced the SelectionManager.

The SelectionManager consolidates 2006 functions formally known as Smart Select and Contour Select under one versatile selection mechanism. Although currently for 2007, we have not “rolled out” SelectionManager to all functions that can use it, it is best exemplified when using it in Sweep, Loft and Boundary features. Previous to Selection Manager, SolidWorks users often first build sketch features with predetermined lengths and combinations of geometry to represent profiles, guide curves, paths and curves. With SelectionManager this is no longer necessary. SelectionManager allows you to select and modify single or multiple sketch elements and/or model edges and change their length “on-the-fly” thereby eliminating pre-built features and reducing the amount of “over-head” needed to create surfaces and solid features.

These enhancements to SolidWorks are just a few of the ways that we are committed to getting CAD out of the way so that you can do what your really want to do and that is to design better products.

Fielder

3D Search

I thought this was a pretty interesting take on this new capability:

http://www10.mcadcafe.com/nbc/articles/view_weekly.php?articleid=305374

Reuse is something we always talk about at SolidWorks. The ability to check  existing designs for a component,  based on a desired shape, to use in a new design is interesting.  This could be very useful to companies with large centralized libraries of SolidWorks data.

Fielder

Screen Capture

One of the best things about SolidWorks is that improves its capabilities and utilities based on customer feedback and understanding how they work, even the little things they do on a daily basis. Sometimes, those enhancement ideas come from our internal developers and the day-to-day things that that they do. One of those ideas came recently from our Manager of Graphics,

Ron Bates

who constantly needed to quickly take screen shots of SolidWorks for his associates and his own development work but did not want to include the SolidWorks interface or the span of his multi-monitor system.

Many users have long been familiar with The Print Screen key that exists on most keyboards near the scroll lock and insert keys. This is a quick way to capture your windows screen and copy it to the clipboard. Alternately you can hold down your <Alt> key while clicking the Print Screen button to have only the currently select Window copied to the clipboard. Ron did one better with the Screen capture icon. It behaves much like the Print Screen with <Alt>  key but it excludes the SolidWorks user interface and only captures the SolidWorks window (viewport).

This can be a tremendous time saver, especially when needing to quickly capture a view of your SolidWorks model and paste it to another document or to a photo editing program like PhotoShop.

The Screen Capture function can be found in SolidWorks 2007 and later just underneath Menu/View at the top of your SolidWorks interface.

Fielder