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. Here is the list of topics covered in this month’s Blog :

1. Enhanced ‘Open’ Dialog box in 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS

2. Why does a Toolbox component not show a maturity state as ‘Released’ when saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform?

3. Mate error caused in an Assembly configuration due to option “Purge Unused Feature” at Part Level

1.Enhanced ‘Open’ Dialog box in 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS.

-by Kaivalya KHISTI

The improved open dialog box in 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS (SOLIDWORKS® Connected) enables you to search and open content located on 3DEXPERIENCE platform as well as your computer more easily.

You get access to content stored in Bookmarks and My Content via the first two tabs. For accessing this content, you should be connected to My Session tab.

Clicking on the This PC button takes you to the regular open dialog box that you are used to, and opens files from the computer’s local drive.

Workflow:

1. Login to your 3DEXPERIENCE® platform.
2. This enhancement is implemented in the R2022x FD04 release. Hence, ensure that the version of SOLIDWORKS Connected on your computer is up to date. If not, update the application.
3. Once update is complete, launch SOLIDWORKS Connected.
4. Explore the Open dialog box.

2. Why does a Toolbox component not show a maturity state as ‘Released’ when saved to the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform?

-by Vinod KALE

One of the reasons for this behavior is that the component used in assembly is not an original Toolbox component, but a normal part added with a Toolbox flag. To demonstrate this behavior, refer the below procedure:

A. First, add Toolbox flag to the normal part using as shown in below image:

1. Create a screw like structure in new part document.
2. Navigate to below location in Windows Explorer [C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp [version]\SOLIDWORKS\Toolbox\data utilities]
3. Run the process ‘sldsetdocprop.exe’
4. In Set Document Property dialog, define the toolbox state for the part: Select ‘Property state: Yes’
5. Browse the part using Add Files and click Update Status
6. To check if a listed part has the Toolbox flag, click on Show Selected Property button and it will display warning shown here.

B. Make sure the Toolbox settings section of the Standard Libraries Management widget of Collaborative Spaces Configuration Center is set to ‘Released’.

C. Save the normal component with Toolbox flag, to 3DEXPERIENCE platform:

1. Create a new assembly in Design with SOLIDWORKS
2. Insert this component into an assembly
3. In MySession tab, save both files to platform. Observe the maturity state display as In Work instead of Released.

D. Add this component with flag to Toolbox:

1. Launch Design with SOLIDWORKS®.
2. Enable Toolbox add-in
3. Go to Tools, Options, Hole Wizard/Toolbox, Configure
4. Select Customize your hardware, right-click on any Toolbox Standard and select Add File
5. Browse the normal component having Toolbox flag
6. Save the changes in Toolbox and click OK
7. Then right-click on the Toolbox component in FeatureManager® design tree, select Edit Toolbox Components and click OK without making any changes.
8. Notice the maturity state display correctly as Released.

3. Mate error caused in an Assembly configuration due to option “Purge Unused Feature” at Part Level

– by Akhil C

Purge Unused Features is a great tool which allows the SOLIDWORKS® users to eliminate unwanted/unused features/sketches or reference geometries.

As I mentioned this is a great way to eliminate the unwanted features from a Part, but if not used wisely, it may lead to problems.  If the features you eliminate from a part are used in an Assembly, (for example : A reference plane from a part could be used in an Assembly for mates), then this might lead to mate errors in the Assembly. I would like to discuss one such workflow, which might go unnoticed by the user and later cause problems.

Problem Statement: When I open an Assembly everything looks fine and once I switch Assembly configuration, I see that some configurations has mate errors.

Please see the following video for the detailed explanation of the workflow.

In the example we discussed we saw that the mate we created was suppressed in one configuration and the issue went unnoticed until I activated the other configuration.

This seems to be simple and intuitive, however this could go unnoticed if the Assembly has lot of configurations and only few of the configurations uses such plane/features- which the user purged at the part level).