When working in SOLIDWORKS and creating your own symbols for use in Annotations such as Notes, Dimensions and Tables in Drawings, it is important to understand what is controlling these symbols and how to modify those symbols for your own use. Let’s start by taking a look at some common symbols: When adding these symbols in a Dimension, we can see the syntax typed out in the Dimension Text Box. So where is this syntax defined and how do we […]
Here is a quick trick for dimensioning arcs and circles in SOLIDWORKS. When creating Smart Dimension and clicking on the circles, SOLIDWORKS will attach the dimension to their center points. The SOLIDWORKS setting that controls how the dimension is attached to arcs and circles is called “Arc Condition.” Selecting the dimension, and viewing the property manager, we can easily see our options. By default, the arc conditions will be placed with the “Center” condition. The “First Arc Condition” corresponds to […]
It’s here! SOLIDWORKS 2022 Beta 1 is now available. It’s time to take SOLIDWORKS 2022 for a test drive, check out the new enhancements and participate in the Beta program. What is the Beta Program? Participating in the Beta program is more than just taking the next release of SOLIDWORKS for a test drive. It’s about connecting with the BETA community, interacting with the SOLIDWORKS R&D team to provide your feedback on the new functionality and flexing your SOLIDWORKS skills for […]
Engineers can have a weird sense of humor… I was recently working with one of my colleagues in SOLIDWORKS when he opened up a new drawing template. What I saw was both hilarious and intriguing to me. His drawing didn’t look like a regular old drawing… it had a different background that looked something like this: This made me realize that us engineer’s have an appreciation for the small things, the details, the inside jokes, that lay people might not […]
We’ve all been there before. You receive a neutral file from a customer and – upon opening it – several surfaces have failed to translate. No worries, you say, I can use the Import Diagnostics tool. You run Import Diagnostics, but there are still several surfaces or gaps that fail to be healed by the automatic patching tool. Now, you’re stuck! Some designers avoid this situation at all costs. They are parametric design modelers, not surfacing experts. They want practical […]
When you create a section view in a SOLIDWORKS drawing, the faces through which you are cutting will be displayed differently than the faces beyond the section plane. This is often achieved through hatching. The hatching is usually a series of inclined lines running across the cut faces, though the style depends on the material being cut. Drafting standards dictate what pattern to use for a particular class of material, so from the hatching you can identify the type of […]
Docking stations are great. They let us take all the advantages of having a desktop PC (multiple monitors, nice peripherals, etc.) while having a portable laptop that we can take on the road if we need to. This article will hopefully help provide guidance for IT buyers who are trying to outfit their engineers, draftsmen, and so on with an adequate office setup. What goes into buying a docking station for SOLIDWORKS? Are they all created equal? Unfortunately, the process […]
Using Blocks in your SOLIDWORKS Drawings is a great way to re-use symbols and other sketch collections, so you don’t have to constantly draw them over and over. But what if you need those re-usable blocks to contain customizable information? Customize Blocks An often-overlooked capability of blocks is the ability to include editable Attributes. This allows you to designate any Notes in the block as a unique Attribute with its own Name and Value. You can then edit this Attribute […]
Today I would like to present a couple of techniques to add watermarks into your SOLIDWORKS drawing files. The first method will show how to insert a static watermark into the drawing sheet format assigned to a specific layer. The second method will show how to insert a parametric watermark into the drawing sheet format that is driven by a custom property of the drawing. Static Watermark For a static watermark I will be inserting the text of the watermark […]
I recently came across a question in a SOLIDWORKS forum and I’ve gotten many similar questions while providing tech support or during training classes. So I’d like to address this question, “Is there a way to select all my surface bodies or solid bodies in an assembly?”. I realized this question comes up often because there isn’t a specific option for this under the select tools that are commonly used for assemblies. There is a fast and easy way to […]