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.

I’ve been slammed at work lately, but knew that I should come up with some sort of a post. How about a bunch of random SolidWorks tips & tricks.

• Holding ‘Ctrl’ and dragging a part in an assembly will copy the part. This is true if you click on the part in the tree or the graphics area. You can do the same with a sub-assembly out of the tree.
• Hold ‘Ctrl’ and dragging a plane will create a quick parallel copy of said plane.
• Dynamic Line/arc creation – Hover over the line endpoint to switch to the arc tool, or press ‘A’ to alternate between the two.
• F9 will hide the FeatureManager, F10 will hide the toolbars, F11 hides all.
• F5 turns your selection filter toolbar on and off. F6 clears enabled filters.
• Holding down ‘Shift’ while dimensioning arcs will auto dim to ‘Max’.
• If you use the ‘Shell’ command without selecting a face, you’ll create a hollow part.
• Use Multi-mate to speed up mate creation in assemblies.
• Did you know that you can rotate, in 3D, a view in a drawing?
• Use a surface cut to quickly remove half of a model.

Ok, that’s it for now. Just a quick post!

GO SOX!

You like that title? I did when Richard told it to me. It’s also the title of a new presentation I’m working on. Richard had done a similar presentation back in ‘04 and, realizing it was right up my alley, bequeathed it unto me. After much updating, it’s almost done. I’m hoping to be presenting it at the next SASPUG meeting. I thought though, that I’d give you, my loyal reader (the check is in the mail), a peek into this incredible presentation by sharing some of the info in it over a couple of posts.

CAD Hurts!

Seriously, it can. It can cause headaches, bruising (from banging your fist on your keyboard) and serious amounts of stress. All CAD systems experience SSC (slowdowns, stalls and crashes). A lot of what you experience can depend on what you know or don’t know.

Many of the common denominators for SSC are your OS, the maintenance on your hardware and software, how you go about creating your models/assemblies/drawings and by simply not getting any help.

Like any other software package, SolidWorks will only work on certain operating systems. Yes, I know that’s somewhat short-sighted, but that’s the way it is. The current version of SolidWorks runs on WindowsXP (32- or 64-bit) or one of the Vista Business versions (32- or 64-bit). If you work some geek magic to get SW to work on a Mac, or any other platform, you’ll be SOL when it comes to tech support.

Is your network up to the task at hand? While everyone knows that you shouldn’t work across your network, most pull from, and save to, a network drive. If your network is maxed out, SSC, and data loss, are bound to show up. An easy test: Get in early and download/upload a good sized file, tracking the time. Do the same during the middle of the day and at the end of the day. If there’s a noticeable difference in the times, you might want to look at upgrading. If it’s at all possible, you should have a dedicated engineering server. You don’t need another department’s issues corrupting your data.