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 [...]
“Plotting” revenge with SolidWorks Motion Simulation
How do we find out how fast an “object” is traveling so as to inflict the most damage on your enemy using a trebuchet? We would need to create a plot of how fast that “object” is traveling when it reaches its intended victim. Well, to answer that question, we can use SolidWorks Motion Simulation. [...]
No power tools required, SolidWorks Toolbox Shortcuts
SolidWorks Toolbox has a plethora of available mechanical hardware for machine designers to choose from. In fact, the estimate is that there are over 2 millions distinct sizes of hardware to grab. In playing around with Toolbox today, I rediscovered a trick to rapidly insert screws into an assembly. The normal process to insert a [...]
Mates: The Wild Kingdom of SolidWorks
You don’t have to be Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom to appreciate the number of ways to pair parts together using “Mates” in SolidWorks. However, if we take a page or two from Darwin, we might make sense of the classifications of mates in SolidWorks. Let’s think of how Darwin classified the kingdom of plants [...]
SolidWorks Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
SolidWorks provides ways for you to get your assembly models to talk. You don’t even need to bring in Jack Bauer (a shameless and gratuitous “24″ plug). You will find that the SolidWorks AssemblyXpert will come to the rescue when your model is either behaving badly or not at all. The most common use for [...]
No more Virtual Components by default…
In SolidWorks 2010, there is a new option relating to creating new in-context components in an assembly that may reduce the blood pressure of many SolidWorks users. The new option is “Save new components to external files”. If selected, SolidWorks prompts you to name and save new in-context components to external files, like it used [...]
