The Motorcycle Gyrocam Project
*Special Note: The motorcycle rider in the video is Dana Seero!* I enjoy motorcycle riding and try to attend several track days each season. With the availability of many small, light camcorders on the market, it’s now pretty easy to record your sessions for playback and training. However, since they are attached to the bike [...]
The SolidWorks Performance Test
So the next time you feel like your SolidWorks is running a little bit slow, here’s a way to test it: the SolidWorks Performance Test. The Performance Test was introduced in the 2011 version as a way to put numbers to all the different combinations of hardware out there, so that we could compare it. [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Shortcut for Making an Offset Plane
Remember the promotion NBC Studios ran during summer re-runs? “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!” Well, after 14 years of supporting SolidWorks I forget which tips and tricks the average user might not know. Here’s an oldie-but-goodie that wowed my students in a recent Advanced Parts class. To quickly make an Offset [...]
6 Tips for Engineers – Microsoft Office Excel (the sequel)
In this video, we’ll cover 6 more tips for transforming Excel from basic spreadsheet software into a powerful engineering application. Customizable Lists Match Function Index + Match Conditional Formatting Protect Sheet Excel Solver Click here to watch the video! Share: Digg this post Share on Linkedin share via Reddit Share on technorati Print for [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Looking under the surface
Contract manufacturers often receive solid models in a neutral format, such as Parasolid, STEP or IGES. These formats preserve the geometry, but they have no feature history. This can make them difficult to edit using normal solid features. A way around these limitations is “direct editing” of the model, and recently there has been a [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Custom Weldment
It turns out that many SolidWorks users have applied their knowledge of SolidWorks for personal projects. For example: An Ultimate Deck. The best way to do this in SolidWorks is to make use of Weldments. However, there is some grunt work involved before we can get creative. SolidWorks Weldments has many standard profiles available to [...]
How to make your QA person very happy
So every now and then we come across add-in products which are very easy to use and which cut huge amounts of time from our customers’ processes. This makes us happy, because they are no-brainers to recommend to customers. InspectionXpert is one such product. InspectionXpert takes your dimensioned SolidWorks drawings and automatically creates a PDF [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Transformers (real ones, not action figures)
SolidWorks has a command to make a circular helix along a straight line. But how do you make a helix that isn’t circular and doesn’t follow a straight path? These shapes are found in many products, such as heat exchanger tubing, springs and wrapped wires. Let’s look at a model of a toroidal transformer where [...]
SolidWorks 2012 Improvements (sneak peek)
A bunch of us here at CAPINC attended the SolidWorks 2012 rollout event for the East area at Mohegan Sun in CT on Wednesday. First let me just say, “Wow!” Mohegan Sun has some amazing architecture. I kept staring up at the ceilings when we were walking around. Many of you will be joining us [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: Auto Recover and Backups
SolidWorks has two different methods of helping you to recover recent work in case an unplanned event causes data loss. Auto recover settings and Backup settings are both found under Tools – Options – System Options – Backups, and they do two different things. Auto recover helps you if there is a crash or other [...]
