Which key do you hold down to “shift” drawing views around on the sheet without having to click exactly on the bounding box of the view or on the edge of a part or assembly in that view? Once, again the “ALT” key comes to the rescue. Simply hold the “ALT” key down then left [...]
2Aug10
“ALT” Reality Part II
13Jul10
“Alt” reality
Do you sometimes feel as though you are living in an alternate reality? Well, if you know me, that doesn’t seem so strange. Using the “ALT” key in SolidWorks can bring you great joy and help you achieve SolidWorks bliss.
The first cool use of the ALT key is in the realm of large scale design. If you have [...]
Is there any way to alter the output line color of a DXF save for sheet metal parts from white to any other color? The answer is yes and you don’t have to be Magellan. Use the SolidWorks DXF Entity Mapping to save your company many hours of time. To export a [...]
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 [...]
28Apr10
SolidWorks Title Block Tips
A question that pops up from time to time with our customers is how to create a Title Block. More specifically, the description field. Many times, a description for a part on the drawing will not fit on one line of text. This is in many cases rectified by adding another field [...]
Ask a hundred engineers wow they would go about the process of generating a hole pattern with lots and lots of holes, and you will get a hundred answers. So this is just my two cents, but a penny saved is a penny earned.
The technique that I am going to show you describes using the all powerful “Fill [...]
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 [...]
21Jan10
I’ve got the power!
In my webcast today on Event-Based Simulation I showed how SolidWorks revolutionizes the way controls and CAD modeling work together. This approach allows you to directly integrate your models with the behaviors you desire, bringing mechanical and electrical design to the forefront while maintaining machine controls flexibility. EBS accomplishes this in a novel [...]
13Jan10
Create a new view in a Drawing
Have you ever wanted to to change the orientation of a view in a drawing after you have inserted a view? There is a little know function that allows a user to rotate / pan or zoom in a model view in a drawing. Typically one can use this function to add a [...]
12Jan10
Be a CTRL Freak: Part 2
One of my customers contacted me and gave me a great CTRL key tip when it concerns the user interface. It turns out that you can add a toolbar on top of docked toolbars without docking it, just hold the “CTRL” down and drag any toolbar from graphical area to the empty [...]
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