Tips & Tricks
The Final Frontier: How Copenhagen Suborbitals Took Off
It’s no mistake that a New York Times headline from last September read "Space Tourism is Here". While the human race has already reached the final frontier, the majority of people have probably never ventured into space, let alone traveled
... ContinuedReduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Sketches
By CAPINC Applications Engineer, Laura Weismantel One of the ways you can save time while building a model in SolidWorks is to never model the same feature twice. There are many tools that can be used to achieve this objective,
... ContinuedSolidWorks World 2013 technical presentations are now available on our proceedings website
Maybe you couldn't make it to every session you wanted to attend at SolidWorks World 2013. Or maybe you couldn't make it to SolidWorks World at all, but saw a session on the schedule that you really wish you could
... ContinuedIt’s easy to convert that old legacy data to SolidWorks!
A lot of cutomers don’t realise how quick the process of converting legacy files into SolidWorks format has become recently. By using the tools incorporated into SolidWorks such as Import Diagnostics, Feature Recognition, and Fully Define Sketch, Legacy files can
... ContinuedSnapshots of PhotoView 360: Viewpoint
Photoview 360 gives the user the option of using a standard named view for the orientation of the rendering or a camera.
... ContinuedNew “Bounding Box” in SolidWorks 2013 (it’s not just for weldments!)
If you attended a “What’s New in SolidWorks 2013? rollout or even if you were a good user and read the “What’s New” guide for 2013, you hopefully saw something about the new automatic Bounding Box that gets created for
... ContinuedRevisiting Your SolidWorks Copy Settings
Most users run the SolidWorks Copy Settings Wizard after they have initially set up the SolidWorks interface to their liking. The problem with this is you turn on all the possible options you may use and leave them at that.
... ContinuedSolidWorks Dismissed Warning and Error Messages
One call that we get on a regular basis on the support line is a question of “I used to get this warning message when I did…. and now thing are not happening the way they did before–why?” More often
... ContinuedSolidWorks Composer: An Easy Way to Rotate Actors
I have to credit this trick to Scott Lidgey. When you are rotating an actor in SolidWorks Composer, you can control the amount of revolution and make sure it rotates at a constant velocity. The trick to this is to
... ContinuedRendering Liquids In PhotoView 360
So close…yet so far. This should look perfect, but it doesn’t. What’s the problem? It is not uncommon, when using PhotoView 360 to portray liquid in a glass, to create the liquid as a second feature in the part file.
... ContinuedSnapshots of PhotoView 360: Lighting
There are several different types of lights that can be utilized in SolidWorks.
... ContinuedSolidWorks Enterprise PDM – Using the Report Generator
The SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Report Generator can be used to search in a selected file vault for information that you can specify in one or more queries. A number of sample queries are distributed with SolidWorks Enterprise PDM and can be added to the report generator.
... ContinuedHow to Add a Custom Hole Size to the Hole Wizard Database in SolidWorks
SolidWorks Hole Wizard is pretty complete when it comes to industry standards for hole sizes, but what happens when you want a hole size that isn’t in the list? Not a lot of people are familiar with SolidWorks ability to
... ContinuedSolidWorks Electrical: What’s In the Black Box?
What’s in the Black Box? Let’s discuss how to represent certain objects in a SolidWorks Electrical schematic as a “Black Box.” A black box is a generic schematic symbol which can be used to represent any device or
... ContinuedSnapshots of PhotoView 360: Appearances
Read the entire series: (Part One: The Basics, Part Two: Appearances)
Appearances are usually one of the first properties added to produce a rendered image. They can add a color, texture, or illumination settings to an assembly, component, face, feature, body, or part. Applying appearances works in a hierarchy; assembly appearances will always override component appearances, and component appearances will override face appearances, and it continues down the list.
TIP: Adding appearances does NOT add mechanical properties.
When dragging and dropping appearances onto a part from the task pane, pressing ALT while dragging and dropping will enable the property manager for that appearance. This gives you the option of choosing your settings without having to edit the appearance to enable the property manager of that appearance.