Hello to all,

Welcome to the new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News! This monthly news blog is co-authored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.

SOLIDWORKS Manage: Bill of Materials Enhancements

By Rohit Magar

SOLIDWORKS Manage offers more capabilities for managing and exporting Bills of Material. SOLIDWORKS Manage adds a new Bill of Materials features and editing functions for convenient BOM item manipulation.

Cut, Copy & Paste

In SOLIDWORKS Manage users can now cut or copy and paste the BOM items from any record to any other record if the new parent record is checked out. The new clipboard commands are available via the ribbon and the context (right-click) menu, as seen in the illustration below.

Add New & Add New From

These new commands allow you to feature new items directly from a BOM view, without the necessity to navigate to different windows or maybe closing the present BOM. Click ‘Add New’ and use the ‘Add New’ dialog box to add a new item to a BOM. If you have permission, you can select records from multiple objects. Click ‘Add New From’ and use the ‘Add New From’ dialog box to add a new item using the selected item as the source record. This is similar to the ‘New From’ function available in other areas. This saves time and effort. These options are available on the ribbon bar and the context menu.

Dissolving an item

‘Dissolve’ is one of the foremost powerful enhancements to dissolve an item in a BOM, it removes parent sub-structures and promotes their child items into the current level that is under an editing state.

This option opens the BOM in a new window. Records with children have a check box. If selected, the children will be brought in the target BOM being edited at the same level as the parent, while the selected parent will be removed.

Options Available under Dissolve:

If items exist in the same target level, then:

Add as duplicate items: Note that this feature must be enabled by the administrator for this BOM variant.

Increase quantity: If an item exists, it will increase the quantity.

Ignore: Item will not be added if it exists.

Copy Custom Values:

• This option provides the functionality to copy Custom BOM values from another BOM. If you want to prevent overwriting existing values, select this additional option.
• Do not override custom values for existing items

Copy Manual Quantities: Copies any manual changes to the Manual Quantity column.

NOTE: Assemblies that originate from SOLIDWORKS cannot be dissolved. This needs to be done from within SOLIDWORKS.

Multi-Level ‘Copy From’

The Copy From command now allows you to select the children that should be copied with the parent item. Until version 2020, all children would be copied.

Replace with New and Replace with New From

These commands are similar to Add New and Add New From, but instead of inserting new items, they will replace the selected record.

BOM Display Options

A BOM can be Displayed as a Grid (Multi-Level) or a Tree (Explorer) style. Additionally, in Manage 2021, the BOM items can be exported in Tree Style.

Grid (Multi-Level)

Tree (Explorer)

How to extract SOLIDWORKS Toolbox components tree in single text file?

By Mahendra Savita

Saving toolbox components tree might help users to go through with all components available in toolbox, category wise in single text file. Which is easy to handle and available to share details about available toolbox components (Default and Custom).

To extract complete details in a single file with the help of command prompt. Follow the below steps:

How is the pitch for shaded cosmetic threads calculated using Toolbox Hole Wizard data?

By Shreyas Bhagwat

SOLIDWORKS® uses digits defined in thread description after last hyphen to determine pitch of cosmetic thread.

For example:

To get the pitch for size ANSI_INCH > Tapped Holes > Tapped Hole > Size = 9-16, where thread description is ‘9/16-12 UNC’

SOLIDWORKS finds the text between the last hyphen or dash (-) and first space or first non-numeric character after the last hyphen. If there is no space after the last hyphen, SOLIDWORKS uses the entire text.

In our current example, the numeric text is 12. This number is considered as threads per unit. Since the unit for thread is inch, we divide 12 by 25.4 and use 0.472440945 as the threads per mm. Inverse of this number is used as the pitch. So, for this example, the pitch would be 2.1167mm.

Please find more such examples stated below:

For third case, the text is truncated after ‘4’, as x is not digit. For 4th case, the text did not start with any digit, and for 5th case, there was no hyphen, hence, default value – 1.0 mm is used for pitch. The appearance for each case is shown below.

If you wish to create custom thread description, make sure to either add the custom text before standard thread description [Example: 2ABC 9/16-12 UNC] or do not use hyphen in thread description after unified thread specification (UNC/UNF/UNS). Instead, use space, underscore, or any other symbol to add custom description [Example: 9/16-12 UNC 2ABC].

Note: Thread description must contain a hyphen to get the correct pitch. Without hyphen, default pitch of 1.0 mm would be considered.

Create a Toolbar Button or Menu Item in DraftSight that Executes a Custom Command Sequence

By Gauri Jagtap

If you are using some combination of commands or command sequence or command option over and over, you can easily create a custom command that will execute your combination of commands with a click of a button or a menu item.

You can create custom commands in DraftSight using basic command macro syntax. Command macros can be created quickly through the Customize dialog and allow you to define your own custom commands. These commands can be executed from toolbars and pull down menus.

Here, I will explain the basics of command macro syntax so that you can create your own commands. Good thing here is that no programming knowledge is required!

For this example, I have scripts that will toggle between Sheetmode and Modelmode while working on Sheet Viewports. We generally use SHEETMODE/MODELMODE commands in command line or double click in sheet space to toggle between modes. However, with this customs command you will be able to toggle between Sheetmode and Modelmode when using zoom in viewport.

After creating custom commands, using command macro we will create toolbars buttons for easy and quick access to this custom commands. Below are custom command strings for Sheetmode and Modelmode

^C^C_sheetmode

^C^C_modelmode

You will notice that the command expression starts with special characters ‘^’ and ‘C’, the combination of these characters is to ensure that any running command is cancelled before invoking the new command or command sequence.

To create a custom command string:  start by writing out your combination of commands and options as you would enter them on the command line and then add any necessary special characters. Here is the list of some basic characters that are required to create custom command:

To create a new custom command you can try following:

1. Enter CUSTOMIZE in the Command Window or go to Tools > Customize Interface.
2. In the Customize-commands dialog box, in the ‘commands’ option, click ‘Add Command’ icon at the right side of the window.
3. In the Name field, enter your command name (Right click > Rename).
4. For Command string, type a command string for respective command.
5. Click ‘Apply’
6. Follow same process for all commands and click ‘OK’.

To create a toolbar or menu bar entry:

1. In the same Customize dialog box, click on ‘Interface’ Option.
2. Expand any option. E.g. Toolbars.
3. Create new toolbar by right click of mouse where you want to place the new command. Rename the Toolbar.
4. Click ‘Show command explorer’ to search new commands created.
5. In Command Explorer, select new commands created in above step and drag it to the new toolbar
6. Click ‘OK’.

To create Buttons:

1. Right click near the tool area and click on options ‘Toolbars.
2. It will open a dialogue box, select newly created toolbar and click ‘OK’. Your buttons for respective commands will appear.

Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base

When I click ‘New Inspection Project’ in the SOLIDWORKS® Inspection add-in toolbar, why is there no template listed from Project Template Selection PropertyManager? How can I bring the template back?

To get more information, see Solution ID: S-079716

How do I insert a SOLIDWORKS® Composer file (.smg) into a Microsoft® Word document?

To get this information in detail. see Solution ID: S-079698

How does the dxf/dwg output image relate to the actual position of the model?

The dxf output image always follows the XY coordinate axis in the ‘Output Alignment.’ The direction of the x-axis in the ‘Output Alignment’ always puts the image in the horizontal right. To get more information, see Solution ID: S-079666

That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News. If you need additional help with these issues or any others, please contact your   SOLIDWORKS Value Added Reseller.