SolidWorks Tech Tip: A Little ‘Added’ Performance
One tip to get a little extra performance out of your SolidWorks system is to turn off your Add-ins. For those that don’t know, Add-ins are software extras bundled with different packages of SolidWorks or supplied by third-party Gold Partners. They let us pull parts from a huge pre-defined library of bolts, screws, washers and [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: How Smooth is Smooth?
One of the hard things about designing in SolidWorks is getting a feel for how your part feels. 3D printers help with this somewhat, giving you touchable prototypes in a few hours, but for really smooth consumer products that have to feel perfect in your grip and reflect the light just so, there’s a quick [...]
SolidWorks 2012 Launch Events – We need your input
The launch of SolidWorks 2012 is right around the corner, and the engineering and marketing team here at CAPINC would like your help to make these events the best yet! We’d like to know what topics and technical presentations you’d like to learn more about. (We will present the “What’s New” as well) Please comment below with [...]
Practical Flow Simulation at Highway Speeds
Ever since I’ve had my Miata convertible, I’ve wondered how much worse gas mileage I get with the top down than with the top up. So I decided to use a few hours this weekend and our favorite Flow Simulation tool to find out. First came making the model. I took two pictures of my [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: The best font for CAM (Part 1)
This week’s blog post comes from another question we got many times at the Eastec Tradeshow, and have gotten from every one of our customers who deals with granite: “What is the best font in SolidWorks for CAM engraving?” Now, most of them aren’t really asking for a ‘best’ font, they’re asking for a super [...]
Seeing inside your flow model: It’s possible!
Bench testing the airflow through your prototypes is a tried and true, reliable, necessary step in the design process of many automotive, aerospace and industrial applications. You don’t know what your throughput is until you hook the hose up and hit the green button. But have you ever wondered what’s really going on inside that [...]
A free SolidWorks license?
Would you like a FREE license of SolidWorks? This conversation came up recently at our booth at the impossibly huge Eastec Tradeshow and many times over my years on Tech Support. It’s an idea that’s been with SolidWorks since the beginning, but many folks still don’t know about it. When SolidWorks first came onto the [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: How to change paragraph line spacing
I just had a case that taught me something about a box I always ignored in SolidWorks. To change “Paragraph” line spacing (term used by Microsoft products) to a note: 1. Select the note 2. Uncheck the “Use Document Font” check box and hit the “Font” button. 3. In the “Choose Font” window change the [...]
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: Renaming Imported Assemblies
Have you ever downloaded a really cool assembly from a free site like 3DContentCentral.com or grabcad.com, only to have it open in SolidWorks with a silly naming convention like “Imported-1.sldprt”, “Imported-2.sldprt”, for a hundred part files? This type of auto-naming can happen when SolidWorks is importing a file from one of the common neutral formats [...]
