Ricky Jordan's Blog » SolidWorks Reviews

SolidWorks 2012: Drawing Enhancements

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:48:44 +0000

In many companies, Drawings are still were “the rubber meets the road”. Let’s take a look at what I think will be some of the more popular enhancements to the Drawing and Detailing area of SolidWorks 2012. I’ve tried to keep the descriptions short and sweet because like me, I’m sure many of you don’t have time to read a long drawn out article. So lets get started.

Magnet Lines

If you’ve ever used 3dvia Composer, this one will look really familiar. You can place magnet lines AFTER balloons are created or DURING creation if you use the Auto-Balloon functionality. Magnet Lines are invisible unless you select a Balloon that is attached to one. The most efficient process if you are adding existing Balloons is to drag the cursor over each balloon that you want to include WHILE you are drawing the magnet line. Once it is created, you can set the Magnet Line to show equal spacing between Balloons or non-equal spacing through the “Free-Drag” option. If you like your drawings to be neat and orderly, You’ll like this enhancement.

Here’s a short video showing Magnet Lines in action.

Auto-Insert Center Marks

If you don’t want SolidWorks to automatically create centermarks upon view creation (Option in the System Options), this option allows you to perform this action as you need it. This is a huge time saver for those parts with LOTS of holes. All you need to do is call up the Center Mark command and check one of the options under the Auto Insert group box. There are some options with this…one of which I haven’t been able to get to work. I would expect the “Connection Lines” option to automatically draw the connection lines between Center Marks that are vertically or horizontally aligned, but it has not worked for me as of yet. I’ll update the article once I get some more information on this. Outside of this discovery, this is another nice enhancement that can cut down on mouse clicks.

Highlighting Changed Dimensions

Simply put… Turn THIS ON! This will alert you as to when dimensions change in a saved drawing when you open it by showing the dimension is a different color. At the moment I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t want to use this. You have to turn this on thru the Tools->Options->System Options->Colors area. (Screenshot shown below.) The drawing must be opened to take advantage of this functionality. If you hover over one of the changed dimensions, a popup box shows you the previous dimension. If you change the model WHILE the drawing is open, you won’t see the color change. Once you save the drawing, the changes are accepted and the color change and indication of the previous dimension goes away the next time you open the document. (NOTE: I tried to print a PDF of the drawing WHILE the dimension change colors were in effect and the color did NOT show up in the PDF.)

Open Assemblies and Sub-Assemblies from Drawing Views

This one is a nice little enhancement. When you hover over a component you have the option to open the top level assembly, sub-assembly, or component itself. Previously you could only open the component itself.

There are more enhancements…and you can see the complete list online HERE.

That’s all for now…stay tuned….more to come!

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SolidWorks Electrical Routing – Part 3 (FINALLY!)

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:34:57 +0000

Almost two years ago I posted two videos to the site detailing the use of SolidWorks Electrical Routing. I had full intentions of producing a Part 3 but life as it does sometimes had other plans for me. Finally after several friendly reminders from readers via e-mail and comments on the site, I have released Part 3. Sorry it took so long…but I tried to pack it full of content to make it worth the wait.

Part 3 introduces the use of From/To Lists. While they do require a little setup…From/To Lists can drastically reduce the time it takes to model electrical cables in SolidWorks.

I was already talking a bit about bandwidth in the first two videos…so this one is going on YouTube. My apologies if it is blocked for you at work, but the bandwidth was getting a little expensive. One REALLY nice thing is that YouTube recently lifted the 15 minute video length restriction. This video goes over that slightly (18 minutes) so that enhancement kept me from having to break it up into two parts. The video is shown below. If you go to the YouTube page you can watch it in HD.

I hope you enjoy it. It was nice to dive into the details of Routing again….hopefully I’ll find some time to do some more videos again soon.

Stay tuned…more to come!

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SolidWorks Electrical Routing – Part 1

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:03:07 +0000

After talking about it for quite some time here on the site, today marks the first installment on a series of posts on SolidWorks Electrical Routing. In this first example I guide you halfway through the creation of an Electrical Harness using what I call the “on the fly” method. This particular method is often used when you don’t have any electrical wiring information to import in the form of a “From/To” list. In this example we have an electrical enclosure that contains several connectors along with some terminal block connections. We know in general where the signals are routing from and to, but don’t yet have any detail on the number of signals or any pin to pin connections. This is a quick way to get some accurate wire lengths.

I originally wanted to continue on and show how to manually insert electrical wires in this harness, but the length of the video would be almost doubled. We will save that for Part 2! In later posts I’ll go into some of the important details of the Routing package which include more information on the sub-assembly structure, Connection Points, Route Points, and special in-context capabilites that are only present in the routing package. To watch Part 1 simple click on the image below to load the video.

The videos on this site should be much improved now in the way the flash video loads thanks to a recent upgrade to Camtasia Studio 6. Let me know if you have any problems viewing it. I still have a few new things in store for the videos in the future as I get time to explore some new tools at my disposal.

Stay tuned….more to come!

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SolidWorks 2009 SP2!

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:56:03 +0000

Well, Friday night just happened to be the perfect time for me to upgrade our seats at work to SolidWorks 2009 SP2. Overall things went smoothly and I was on my way home in time for some awesome pot roast served up by my multi-talented wife.

So what’s new in SolidWorks 2009 SP2? Well, thanks to a head’s up from Lou Gallo and the guys at DDi, I heard about a new selection option that makes its debut in SolidWorks. You now have the ability to select “Connected Faces”. The option is available in the Right Mouse Button menu and presents the user with a flyout toolbar that offers multiple selection options for the surrounding faces of the selected face. Also new is the ability to publish models directly to 3Dvia.com. The option is available in the pull down menu under File.

Here’s a quick video showing off the new features!

Stay tuned….more to come!

UPDATE – 2-28-09: It looks like there is EVEN BIGGER NEWS when it comes to SolidWorks 2009 SP2.0. Click HERE to see some new options in Renaming Configurations!!

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First Look: PhotoView 360

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:04:54 +0000

Yesterday I posted a Sneak Peek of PhotoView 360 and today I am posting a First Look of PhotoView 360. PhotoView 360 Beta is now available for download at the Customer Portal so the rest of the NDA has been lifted. I can now talk about all aspects of the program. I honestly didn’t think it would happen this quick so you get the First Look review today which will highlight some of the features of the software. I’ll post some more in-depth stuff in the coming days. I’m sure my buddy Rob Rodriguez will be posting some stuff on his Blog too. Ok…let’s jump right in! Below is a screen shot of the main User Interface (UI) window of PhotoView 360.

As you can see the UI is VERY simple. The image you see above is the render preview image. This is a view of the model that you can rotate, pan, zoom, zoom fit, and box zoom. It is important to set your floor in SolidWorks as this is the floor setting that PhotoView takes. The nice thing about this is that it makes rotation of the model easy. There is no way you can get your model turned upside down. With PhotoView 360 you can apply Materials through a drag and drop interface. You also have several different Environments that can be loaded. Environments carry the background, floor, and lighting setups. Lets start with the Materials. When you click the Materials button shown above, a separate window containing the Material selections opens. The main UI window opens smaller than your full screen size. This is so that your preview window isn’t too large. The larger the preview window, the longer it takes to update. The Materials window is shown below.

You might notice that the Material categories look similar to Appearances in SolidWorks. That’s because PhotoView is designed to import most of the Appearance data setup in SolidWorks. In order for this to happen consistently, you’ll need to save your files in the SolidWorks 2009 format. PhotoView will open files from previous versions, but will most likely have no Appearance/Material data. Some of the Materials DO have textures and you have the ability to make some adjustments to those textures.

You have the ability to apply Materials to model Faces, Bodies, Parts, Assemblies, and Appearances in PhotoView 360. The Appearances part of this might throw you off a bit at first but I have found it to be very useful. When you setup Appearances in SolidWorks, your Appearances are applied in Groups. For instance, you may apply a single Appearance to many components in an Assembly. If you have done this, you can drag a Material over one of the components in that group with the Appearance mode selected and ALL of the components in that group will receive the Material in PhotoView. If you set your Appearances up right in SolidWorks, it can be a timesaver in PhotoView.

When you click the Environments button in the main UI, a separate window opens in a similar manner as the Materials window. The Environments window is shown below.

There are 15 default environments that come with the software. I have not gotten into the software enough yet to fully understand what changes can be made to these environments but it looks like the options may be somewhat limited. Double clicking an Environment box activates it for the model window.

I have prepared two separate videos that show PhotoView 360 in action. Click on the image below to view the first video which shows a model in SolidWorks followed by the quick setup in PhotoView 360.

The second video shows the actual rendering of the model. I did this to show just how fast the rendering is in PhotoView 360. Notice the two boxes in the video. Since I have a dual core processor, PhotoView 360 is taking advantage of that and is using BOTH processors to generate the rendering. Click on the image below to view the second video.

Below is the rendering produced in the second video.

Stay tuned….more to come!

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Sneak Peek: PhotoView 360

Ricky Jordan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:30:38 +0000

Over the past week or so as I have been reviewing a few of the enhancements of SolidWorks 2009, I have had to hold back what is perhaps my FAVORITE new addition to SolidWorks. Now that part of the NDA has been peeled away, lets talk about the newest product from SolidWorks. PhotoView 360. In case you missed it, Rob Rodriguez posted the first sneak peak on this product yesterday. Rob is without a doubt one of the most knowledgeable PhotoWorks users on the face of the planet and his praise of this product to me speaks volumes.

PhotoView 360 is the result of a partnership announced yesterday between SolidWorks and Luxology. So what is the best definition of PhotoView 360? I call it “Rendering for the common man.” Simply put you can open PhotoView and in most cases have a photorealistic rendering in under 10 minutes. It is my belief that with the introduction of this product, many more SolidWorks users will be producing quality renderings of their SolidWorks models. During the Alpha testing phase of the product we used PhotoView 360 to create some renderings for a client. He had no idea what package they came from but the client loved the images and IMMEDIATELY wanted more of them. Because of the ease of use and fast rendering speed, we could knock out quality renderings to show off concept models of consumer products in record time compared to our normal measures. If you have been viewing this Blog since my changeover, you have actually already seen the results of PhotoView 360. The Mach 4 racer that is part of my header was rendered in an Alpha version of PhotoView 360. Below is one of my first renderings of the Mach 4 which I was able to produce in less than 10 minutes.

After a bit of tweaking and material experimentation I was arrived at my favorite image thus far which is the one that was used in my Blog header. It is shown below.

Here are a few of the PhotoView 360 feature details I can reveal. I has a realtime rendering preview that is surprisingly fast. This allows you to see material and environmental changes quickly thus saving tons of time compared to PhotoWorks. The user interface is very simple and straightforward. You have several environments to choose from and the ability to apply a fairly large range of materials. Some Appearances applied in SolidWorks haven been transferring to PhotoView 360 materials in many of the Alpha builds we have tested. Since this product is still in Alpha, I cannot elaborate much past that and some of what I mentioned above is still subject to change.

With all the good that there is with PhotoView 360 (and there is plenty of it), it should be noted that this IS the first release of the product and there are things that it cannot do that still can only be done with PhotoWorks. As more information is made public, I’ll post what I can here and I’m sure Rob will be all over it with full coverage on his site.

Here is another example of how quickly you can get quality images out of PhotoView 360. The assembly shown below was originally modeled in SolidWorks 2001plus. It’s been quite a while since I opened it so I thought this would be a great test for PhotoView 360. All the parts of the assembly opened with a light gray color. I applied materials to the model and produced the rendering you see below in 9 minutes.

Ok…so I didn’t just render cars. Below is a rendering I prepared as a test for a new product we are developing at Dynetics. Again I was able to produce this rendering in minutes and the folks in Marketing loved it!

The last three images shown below are some examples of how you can vary material properties and the environment around the model to make the exact same view look different.

Stay tuned….more to come later on PhotoView 360 as well as more SolidWorks 2009 enhancements!

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SolidWorks 2009: Weldments

Ricky Jordan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:05:47 +0000

The Weldment functionality received some significant upgrades in SolidWorks 2009. The general result of these enhancements will be less time spent by the user generating Structural Members and less time needed to trim/extend components.

The first change we will take a look at is the ability to create multiple Groups within a single Structural Member. In previous versions of SolidWorks a Structural Member was limited to either a series of continuous sketch entities, or a group of sketch entities that were parallel. Basically those requirements have now been applied to hold true for a Group in SolidWorks 2009. You cannot mix continuous and parallel entity types in a single Group but you can create them as separate Groups within the same Structural Member. The major benefit of utilizing Groups are that all structural members within the feature (across multiple Groups) are automatically trimmed to one another. This results in LESS Structural Member features and also LESS Trim/Extend features. All Groups within a Structural Member feature must use the same Weldment Profile. You can rotate the Weldment profile and change the pierce point independently in each group. The image below shows a single Structural Member feature with three Groups. In previous versions this structure would have required at least 2 Structural Member features and several trim operations.

Another new feature inside Structural Members is the ability to create weld gaps and apply them to an entire Group or a specific corner. When applying weld gaps to a Group you can apply the gaps to connected members within the same Group and/or apply gaps between different Group segments. The next image shows applying a weld gap to an entire Group.

The next image shows how you can apply a corner specific weld gap.

Also new in SolidWorks 2009 is the ability to add “Inward” End Caps. When you add the End Cap using the End Cap feature with the Inward option selected, SolidWorks automatically trims back the Structural Member so that the End Cap’s outer face resides at the same plane that the Structural Member did prior to the End Cap feature. Also new with End Caps is the ability to select multiple faces within a single End Cap feature. The image below shows an End Cap feature during creation.

The Gusset tool now allows you to create an internal chamfer. This enhancement is shown in the image below.

Click on the image below to view a video demonstration showing the features outlined above.

Click to watch the video!

The Weldment Trim/Extend Tool has seen some enhancements as well in SolidWorks 2009. This tool will now split structural members when they cross. You can also extend members much easier and now have the choice to keep or discard members effected by the splits. You also have the ability to add weld gaps as part of the Trim/Extend process. Below is an image showing some of the new options in the Trim/Extend feature.

Click on the image below to see a video demonstration of the new Weldment Trim/Extend tool in SolidWorks 2009.

Click to watch the video!

Stay tuned….more to come!

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SolidWorks 2009: Split Feature

Ricky Jordan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:14:34 +0000

If you have used various commands to split parts in previous versions of SolidWorks you will especially appreciate the enhancements to the Split Feature in SolidWorks 2009. When you split a solid body into multiple solid bodies using the split feature, the software requires that you use a Trim Tool to direct how the parts should be cut. The screen shot below shows using the Top Reference Plane as a cutting tool to split a part into two separate solid bodies.

In previous versions problems could sometimes occur if you radically changed the Trim Tool or changed the it in such a way that additional solid bodies resulted from the split. If those individual solid bodies were saved out to a stock part, references on occasion could get dropped and your stock part was pretty much junk. SolidWorks 2009 has added the ability to recognize these solid bodies better when changes are made and gives the user the tools to properly reattach a solid body to a stock part in the event that the software gets it wrong. The result will be stock parts which are MUCH more stable. In Beta testing I have honestly tried my best to break a stock part and have not succeeded yet. The below image shows the warning given when you change a trim tool that results in additional bodies created.

The best way to see the benefits of this enhancement is to see it in action. Click on the image below to view a video demonstrating the new Split Feature functionality in SolidWorks 2009.

Click to watch the video!

Thanks for tuning in this week. Check back next week for more highlights from SolidWorks 2009!

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SolidWorks 2009: Instant3D

Ricky Jordan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:29:45 +0000

Instant3D was introduced to the SolidWorks community in SolidWorks 2008. Naturally in the first revision since then there are a few new enhancements which are sure to come in handy. Instant3D can now be utilized in Assemblies! Using Instant3D you can modify assemblies sketches, features, & mates! It works pretty much the same as it does in part files.

SolidWorks 2009 also introduces some new ways to manipulate closed contour sketch geometry using Instant3D. You now have a 2D coordinate axis that is available to drag geometry along axis directions. This seems to be best for concept work where you don’t have many relations or dimensions defined in the sketch. If you try to pull a feature based sketch by one of the axis and there is a relation holding it in that direction, SolidWorks gives you the option to delete that relation.

Instant3D has now made its way into the Weldment functionality. You can click and drag faces of Weldment Structural Members and set the change using the Instant3D Ruler.

Thanks to a tip from Matt Rece (the SolidWorks TTM from my area), here is a bit of an “undocumented” addition to Instant3D. You can now use Instant3D to change Offset, Translation, & Rotation based Move Face commands! Once you have created the command you can click the face that has been moved and drag the Instant3D arrow to re-adjust.

Click the Image Below to view a video demonstrating these new Instant3D features.

Click to watch the video!

Stay tuned…more to come tomorrow!

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SolidWorks 2009: CommandManager & PropertyManager

Ricky Jordan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:04:06 +0000

Some welcome options have been added to SolidWorks 2009 in the areas of the CommandManager & PropertyManager. First lets start off with the CommandManager. SolidWorks has added the capability to dock the CommandManger on the left and right sides of the screen. (You can still dock it across the top as before.) You can also add toolbars in the area to the right or bottom of the CommandManager. The toolbar will stay in a single consistent location as it will take a position next to the longest tab (icon count) in the interface.

The PropertyManager has also received some enhancements. You can now un-dock it from the FeatureManager frame and place it pretty much ANYWHERE which includes space on a second monitor. You can even dock it outside the SolidWorks application window as shown below. There is a push pin that will allow you to keep the PropertyManger visible at all times. If the push pin is not pinned it will only appear when it is needed.

Click on the Image below to see an Video Demonstration of these new features.

Stay tuned….more SolidWorks 2009 posts to follow!

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