Jeff's Tool Shed

Back in June, I posted a quick SolidWorks T & T post that seemed to be well received, so I figured I’d post another one.

• ‘Ctrl’+8 will change view to Normal to. Hitting it again will flip to the opposite side.
• F5 turns your filter toolbar on/off. F6 clears enabled filters.
• To created geometry without snapping, hold down ‘ctrl’ before or after dragging to disable inferencing.
• Repair broken sketch relationships by dragging, or manually repair by using relations.
• Name your features, it’ll make your life easier down the road.
• If working in a multi-user environment, enable multi-user environment to receive update notices (Tools->options->collaboration).
• If you use variations of the same part, you owe it to yourself to check out DriveWorksXpress.
• Always use fully defined sketches. Trust me.

Tips & Tricks sessions are always popular at SWUG meetings and at SolidWorks World. It looks like there’s a least 5 different T&T sessions at SWW’10. If you’re planning on attending, make sure you get there early, you’ll want to be able to take notes.

This week, let’s talk about your PC. There are things you can do, and should do, to help keep your PC running smoothly. Hopefully, a lot of this will be old news for many of you.

Keep your hard drive clean. Clean out your temp directories and defrag monthly. I like to use ccleaner to take care of my temp directories. It’ll get rid of all those unneeded files as well as  clearing out unused registry files, cookies and other memory fluff. I know that there are other products out there, so feel free to add your favorite in the comments section.

Speaking of hard drives, don’t skimp on size; not that that is easy to do these days. As with so many things PC-related, bigger is better. Even with that super-mega-sized hard drive, be sure to not let it get too full. The more free space the better. The more crap that’s on there is the more crap that has to be gone through to find what you’re looking for. That equals slowdown.

I know that I’m as guilty as the next for repeating this but, don’t go cheap on RAM! SolidWorks still says that the bare minimum required is 512MB, unless you’re using ‘09. Not. RAM is cheap, people, so don’t go cheap! You can get 4GB of RAM for ~$60 on newegg. There’s no excuse for not doing it, unless your PC just can’t take that much which brings up a whole new set of questions. For those of you using 32-bit machines, you can still benefit from 4GB of RAM by enabling the /3GB switch. This involves editing your boot.ini file. Google “3GB switch”, you’ll find plenty of info out there. I’d rather not disseminate the instructions. The last thing I need is to mistype something and have someone email death threats because they can’t get their computer to boot up.

Be nice to your computer. Turn it off when you’re not using it; it saves energy and releases memory. Make sure you keep all your drivers up-to-date, both for hardware and software. Stay away from “semi-professional” software. They can overwrite or delete files you need as well as cause driver conflicts.

Just a short post this week. Have a great weekend and GO SOX!

I’ve seen this come up a lot in various SolidWorks forums, so I figured I’d go ahead and post a little something about it.

When you need to insert a cut on a bend in sheetmetal, you need to use the Fold and Unfold commands, not the Flatten command. If you use the Flatten command, your cut feature will end up suppressed when you unflatten the part. To unfold a part, simply click on the ‘Unfold’ button. A dialogue box will pop up requesting a fixed planar face and the bend(s) you want to unfold. Click on a planar face, then the bend(s) you want to unfold. You can also have SW grab all the bends automatically. Once done, hit the check mark and your part will unfold and you’ll be able to create your cuts. When you’re finished with the cuts, hit the ‘Fold’ button. A dialogue box will pop up asking for the same stuff as the first one. Simply make the same choices you made when you unfolded the part, hit the check mark and you’re done.

I hope this helps!

Do you have multiple seats of SolidWorks? Are you maintaining them individually? Silly Admin, create an image! It doesn’t matter if they’re network licenses or not, maintaining them through an administrative image is the way to go.

We only have four seats of SolidWorks, but I maintain my three seats of Office Premium (the fourth is a stand-alone Office Pro) through an admin image. It doesn’t take too much more time on the front end to get everything set up, but the amount of time it saves you not having to deal with service packs individually is worth it. Even setting up batch files to install Cosmos, SolidWorks Explorer, or PDMWorks (enterprise) is fairly easy. I know virtually nothing about HTML, API, or any of that stuff but, with a little help, I was able to do it.

As a CAD Administrator, you owe it to yourself to learn how. Click here to get the basics. Have more questions? Contact your VAR or you can email me.