Al Zullo
3DVIA Composer Tech Tip: Growing a Wire
Spring is finally here and all kinds of things are popping up, molting, sprouting, blooming, and growing…. By planting the seeds from your CAD system in the rich soils of your 3DVIA Composer garden, you can grow things too! Today, we’re going to “grow” a wire from its seed. There is a special video at [...]
How to Run Simultaneous Simulations
Starting with SolidWorks Simulation 2009, we have been granted the ability to run a Simulation study while continuing to work on other models in SolidWorks or even shut SolidWorks down while the Simulation continues to solve. We are also allowed to run multiple studies simultaneously. The best part is there are no special settings or [...]
3DVIA Composer Tech Tip: Actors Savant (aka Dummy Actors)
OK, so I’m stretching the word play a bit. My intended reference (found at merriam-webster.com) is the second definition of idiot savant: a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else. This is the perfect way to describe 3DVIA Composer‘s “dummy actors.” What is [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: The Re-Orient Xpress
Welcome aboard! Today’s path features several options for positioning and re-orienting your working models. While the features about to be discovered along this expedition are applicable to either fully-featured models or imported geometry, the main focus is on manipulating imported geometry. There are other, arguably better, methods for repositioning fully-featured geometry. Our journey begins with [...]
SNL License Order – Doling out a License
What is license ordering? It is the order in which a particular user will pull the various levels of SolidWorks (Pro, Premium, Simulation Pro/Premium) as the user adds-in the different components. For example, if a user adds-in Toolbox Browser, he could pull either a SolidWorks Professional or SolidWorks Premium license. The license flavor is dictated by the [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Derived Sketches
A derived sketch is a sketch that is a linked copy of a regular sketch. In other words, if you change the original sketch, the derived sketch will update. The changes will only update from the original sketch to the derived sketch, not the other way around. You may wish to use a derived sketch [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Coating/Plating Parts
This weeks tech tip question was submitted by Patrick Scheffer, Sr. Mech. Engineer, Xenon Corporation: Patrick asked, “Is it possible in SolidWorks to apply a coating/plating to parts? For example if I have a copper housing with nickel plating, can I specify how thick and what material the coating is? I’m mainly interested in providing [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Watermarks
Watermarks, Watermarks, Everywhere… This week’s tech tip comes from a recent hotline call taken by engineer Al Zullo. A customer asked him: “Can you add watermarks to SolidWorks drawings?” Usually, the SolidWorks Knowledge Base is a pretty good resource for questions like this (and one any subscription customer can access, if you’d like an answer [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Symmetry Plane Restraint
Question from Customer: A question just occurred to me, a silly one at that, but I could not find a clear answer looking through Simulation Help. For a model where a symmetry plane restraint is used as shown below- do I apply 50% of the force acting on the structure? Answer from AE: This is [...]
