SolidWorks EPDM Admin Tech Tip: Undo Checkout
Hopefully your users will remember to check in their documents regularly, and particularly when they will be out of the office. What happens when this is not the case and someone else needs to work on them? Enterprise PDM protects documents from update if they are checked out by another user. Here I’m logged in [...]
SolidWorks EPDM User Tech Tip: Remember to check your documents in!
Enterprise PDM provides a secure vault for your documents and the check-out / check-in process prevents more than one user from making updates at the same time. Until you check your changes back in, other users are unable to see them and they don’t have the ability to apply other changes. Since one of the key benefits of Enterprise PDM is multi-user collaboration, documents that are unnecessarily checked out can introduce bottlenecks.
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 [...]
Turkey with All the Fixin’s (A Simulation Tech Tip… or 4 or 5)
Almost without fail, in every single Simulation class I teach, someone asks me, “What’s the difference between Fixed and Immoveable?” They’re asking about two options in the Fixture dialog (often referred to as boundary conditions or restraints). It occurred to me this week: Who better to explain fixins than a Thanksgiving Turkey! So, I fired [...]
SolidWorks Tech Tip: The Most Addictive Functionality in SolidWorks… Mouse Gestures
When I first heard about Mouse Gestures, I immediately thought of an innapropriate hand gesture from that loveable Disney character… But it turns out, Mouse Gestures are about this: Introduced in SolidWorks 2010, when you hold down your Right Mouse Button and drag, a magical ring of commands appears! When your cursor passes over one [...]
SolidWorks 2012 Uninstall Changes
It’s like a robot vacuuming your house, it’s that easy now. New in 2012 is the advanced options. It does the tedious clean up you had to conduct previously. As usual the uninstall process begins from the control panel (Programs and Features > Right Mouse Click > Uninstall) which kicks off the process as usual [...]
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 [...]
SolidWorks Simulation Tech Tip: How to prevent leaks
Have you ever needed to conduct a Flow study on a product assembly that has already been modeled in loving detail, including manufacturing features like clearances, gasketted fits, sheet metal hems and bend reliefs – and the resulting housing leaks in a hundred places? Configuring and editing this model to simplify, idealize, and close off [...]
