CATI Tech Notes

SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks and Info on Professional 3D Printing with Stratasys from the Technical staff of CATI

Creaform 3D Scanning: HandySCAN 3D Scanner Now Certified by Airbus

Posted By Ashley Gaalema

HandySCAN 3D Scanner Certified by Airbus     Metrology-grade 3D laser scanner is now recognized in the Airbus Technical Equipment Manual (TEM).   Creaform, the worldwide leader in portable 3D measurement solutions and engineering services, announced today that its flagship metrology-grade portable 3D scanner, the HandySCAN 3D, has been certified by Airbus and will be added to the company’s next Technical Equipment Manual (TEM) release.   This certification comes following the recognition of HandySCAN 3D’s specifications by the French National Laboratory for Metrology & Testing (LNE). Combined with Creaform’s powerful and easy-to-use VXelements software, the scanner can reduce measurement times by up to 80% compared traditional methods.   Metrology-grade measurements

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Posted in 3D Scanning

Stratasys 3D Printing: How Additive Manufacturing Will Change the Way We Think About Design

Posted By Ashley Gaalema

Additive Manufacturing and The Way We Think About Design     As 3D printing has become more and more mainstream, the traditional resource and skills barriers for manufacturing are all but vanishing. This trend is changing the very face of design.   For the first time, producing complex products is no more difficult, expensive, or time consuming than making simpler objects. 3D printing a block with holes, notches, and rounded edges is as approachable as printing a solid block once was. The 3D printers give designers unprecedented control over the shape and composition of matter. High-end 3D printers can combine multiple materials into arbitrary patterns at a high resolution, leading

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Posted in 3D Printing

SOLIDWORKS: Improving Performance in Large Assemblies

Posted By George Branes

Improving Performance in Large Assemblies     We all know how frustrating it can be when you have a project that has a deadline approaching and you need to get it done in a timely manner – but then there are hurdles to jump over. One of those hurdles can be dealing with performance issues while working with a large Solidworks assembly. Waiting around while your computer struggles can be unfortunate as well as very unproductive.     In this blog, I will talk about suggestions that can help minimize that performance impact to your machine and thus help improve your productivity. This will require planning and management beforehand in

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, Modeling, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: Modeling Gears for Assemblies

Posted By Bryan Pawlak

Modeling Gears for SOLIDWORKS Assemblies     The next component I want to take a look at in our discussion of files that slow down SOLIWORKS assembly performance is the gear. Gears are used in a lot of mechanical designs, and are often parts that are downloaded from the web and inserted directly into our assemblies.         There is a time and a place for detail. Having highly detailed parts for piece part manufacturing is perfectly acceptable and necessary. Placing highly detailed parts into large assemblies can cause severe performance issues.     Let’s take a look at a typical imported gear file.        

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, Design Validation, Modeling, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: Electrical – Shortcuts to Project Design, Data Reuse

Posted By Brian Do

Electrical – Shortcuts to Project Design, Data Reuse     How do we increase the speed that you are able to produce projects? In SOLIDWORKS Electrical there are many different methodologies that help us develop and design projects. As we build up projects, we inherently become faster and faster at design based on the tools we learned and the experience we gain from understanding where the tool are for design. The work you do in these projects, even if it’s just one, has data that we can reuse over and over again. Having this information will allow us to develop the next project faster. In schematic development, our basic goal

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, SolidWorks Electrical

SOLIDWORKS: Power Select!

Posted By Alex Worsfold

Power Select     Have you ever needed to select all entities that have a certain face color? What about all extrusions that have edge angles less than 45deg? Or how about all red faces that have convex edges that are part of a cut feature? Well, Power Select allows you to do all this and more!     Power Select is just ONE of many tools included in SOLIDWORKS Utilities which since 2016 comes standard in SOLIDWORKS!     Power select can be accessed from the selection tool on the default top toolbar.         Power Select lets you select Edges, Loops, Features, and Faces. You can

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: Opening a 2017 Version File in SOLIDWORKS 2016

Posted By Brian Reel

Opening a 2017 Version File in SOLIDWORKS 2016     With each new release of SOLIDWORKS we typically get the question of “Can I open a 2017 file in 2016?” One of my counterparts at CATI graciously posted this very topic a few months ago with great details on what you CAN and CANNOT do with this backward compatibility. You can read this article here.         What I am adding to this post is a scenario where a customer followed the steps listed in this Blog and still was unable to open a SOLIDWORKS 2017 file in SOLIDWORKS 2016 SP5. So we dug a little in the

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: Simulation – Use Those SOLIDWORKS Functions!

Posted By Kurt Kurtin

Simulation – Use Those SOLIDWORKS Functions!   SOLIDWORKS functionality can make life easier when working with Simulation.  You probably know them well, so why not use those familiar functions to your advantage?  Let’s look at a few. Simulation-specific configurations Interference detection check for simulation-ready geometry Split lines for boundary condition application   Configurations   Editing the geometry before setting up a simulation is usually necessary. By setting up a new configuration for the analysis, changes made there won’t affect the original design. This allows for several “what-if” scenarios. Notice in the two screen shots below how the “Default” configuration contains all the assembly components, whereas in the “For analysis” configuration the assembly is simplified

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, Design Validation, Simulation, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: eDrawings Markups

Posted By Courtney Roemer

eDrawings Markups   This Blog article will walk you through adding markups to a drawing, saving those markups, inserting them into SOLIDWORKS, and then removing them from SOLIDWORKS.   Publishing a Drawing to eDrawings   You will find this option in the FILE pulldown menu of your open SOLIDWORKS document, it will say “Publish to eDrawings”.     Once it is published to eDrawings, we can add markups with the option to add a comment. When directing someone to the view your markup is referencing, you have a few options; you can add a shape, text box, dimension, or even a picture.   To Begin My MARKUP   You will

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, General Info, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks

SOLIDWORKS: Renderer Selection in SOLIDWORKS Visualize

Posted By Aarya Engineer

Renderer Selection in SOLIDWORKS Visualize   Selecting the best rendering method for the job at hand is one of the most important decisions a user of SOLIDWORKS Visualize can make. The renderers and options that Visualize offers are best suited to different points in a typical workflow and can help the user greatly increase her or his efficiency. This article/case study discusses those renderers and the best times to use them.   Because Visualize leverages both CPU and GPU hardware, the “preview” of the render in the Viewport as you set up the shot is actually a real-time rendering. This means that what you see in the Viewport and what you

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Posted in Daily Dose.....of SolidWorks Support, SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks, Technical Publishing

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