Jeff's Tool Shed

If your 2008 command manager looks like the one in the picture, here’s a fix I stumbled across:
• Turn off the command manager (RMB in the toolbar area).
• Drag any remaining toolbars into the graphics area.
• Turn the command manager back on.

I don’t know who, what or why, but this fix worked on my machine. 

Go Pats! 

See you at SolidWorks World!

I’m constantly (well maybe not constantly) trying to think of things to write about here. I always hope to be able to write a post that that will make the SolidWorks community, en masse, slap their collective foreheads and yell, "Doh!" Then it dawned on me that there are users out there who would love to just hear about something that will help them, while not being so awe-inspiring to others. To that end, here’s my tid-bit for this week:
A question was posed on the SolidMentor forum (you’ve heard of SolidMentor before, right?), about creating a hole wizard hole that isn’t perpendicular to the first surface it’s going through. How do you do it? Simply create a plane perpendicular to the axis of the hole and cut away! Granted, there are those (Charles ) who would argue that this isn’t a proper machining technique, but it does work and will get you the end result you desire.

For those of you who don’t read SolidSmack, a blog written by Josh Mings, you have to go check out his latest post. He has this video posted of a Japanese game show that is, essentially, Human Tetris. Need a good laugh? Head over to SolidSmack and check out the video! Josh is a master at finding obscure, yet pertinent, stuff and posting about it. Seriously, you need to check out his blog.

GO PATS!!

The folks over at i.get.it.com are running a promotion to help all of you SolidWorks users get up to speed on SolidWorks 2008 for only $25. With over 250 enhancements, that comes out to less than $0.10 per enhancement. Seems like a great deal to me! Just click here to get all the details.

Man, I don’t know where to start. When you’re dealing with as powerful and versatile a tool as DriveWorks a SolidWorks gold partner), there’s obviously going to be a lot of information to learn, but damn! My mind is almost completely fried, and I still have more to learn today, plus taking the certification exam at the end. I hear that Dan, the DriveWorks AE training us, isn’t opposed to bribes, I just need to figure out how to expense it.
The one thing that’s really amazed/confounded me so far is the vast amount of data input required. However, the benefits of all that input greatly outweigh the time and energy spent. To be able to take a complex, customizable assembly and generate the necessary models, assemblies, drawings, edrawings, quotes, etc., in minutes is a huge cost savings overall.
I don’t know that I can adequately express how much more impressed I am by DriveWorks and all it can do. If your business involves creating customizing, do yourself a favor and get in touch with your local DriveWorks reseller. Just go to www.driveworks.co.uk and select the ‘Reseller’ button. If you’re going to SolidWorks World 2008, DriveWorks will be there. Stop by their booth and tell them that I sent you.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the first day of a 3-day training course for DriveWorks, a SolidWorks Gold Partner. I’ve written about DriveWorksXpress quite a few times in the past and have touched upon DriveWorks (the big brother). From what I’ve seen, and learned, today, this is one powerful tool. For any of you that have played around with DriveWorksXpress, you have know idea of what the full-blown version could do for you.
We’ve only messed around with the basics so far and I’m already really impressed. This program is so powerful and robust. It’s even moreso if you know VBA. You don’t need to know VBA, I’m just sayin’…
I’m going to write more over the next few days as I get my mind wrapped around everything I’m learning. Know this though: if your company does custom parts/assemblies based off of master parts/assemblies, you are doing yourselves a HUGE disservice by not using DriveWorks. Once case study talked about taking their simple, 45-minute design time down to 1 minute. One minute!

Let’s talk some more about SolidWorks 2008 improvements, shall we?
SolidWorks has taken their "Autodimensioning" to a whole new level. No matter how you’ve actually dimensioned your model, you can automatically create geometric dimensions and tolerances according to ASME Y14.41-2003 3D specs. After applying said dims and tols, you can easily tell if the model is fully dimensioned (constrained) with the click of a button. Green means it’s good, red means it’s over-constrained and yellow means it’s under-constrained. Once you’re done here, you can easily create your drawing, or publish an edrawing, with all the pertinent dims and tolerances. How much easier is this going to make your life? With just a couple of button clicks, you can have a fully detailed drawing ready for manufacture!