How Do I Make My Feature Manager Design Tree When Using SOLIDWORKS CAM/CAMWorks Add-In? After engineering is completed on the SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD side of things your part needs to be programmed for manufacturing by using the seamless integration of SOLIDWORKS CAM and/CAMWorks. With SOLIDWORKS CAM activated inside SOLIDWORKS you may not be able to see all your CAM buttons. Taking the time to manually drag the edge of your SOLIDWORKS Feature Tree every time to make it wider can […]
When you see this symbol in an open SOLIDWORKS file, you know that it is from an older version. Maybe it is something you created long ago, or maybe you got it from a vendor or customer who is on a version older than the one you are using. Either way, that is all that tells you. But what if you want to know what version the file was last saved in? Here, we will look at a couple of […]
If you find yourself in a situation where you need to work remotely, you may have questions on how to access your work license of SOLIDWORKS from home. Depending on how your company’s SOLIDWORKS assets are licensed, Machine Activation (Standalone) or SolidNetWork License (SNL), the answer to that question is different. Our goal is to bring the options into one location so you can choose one that works most effectively for your situation. A note about SOLIDWORKS installations This post […]
Have you ever seen any of these sheet metal issues with SOLIDWORKS? These are some pretty common sheet metal issues. With the first image above usually one or the other of these situations will occur. You’ll either end up with a flat view of your bent part or, more commonly, you’ll wind up with a bent view of your flat pattern. Understanding how SOLIDWORKS works with sheet metal parts can help us determine what is going on. When you create […]
We all know how important workstation video cards are to the overall performance of SOLIDWORKS. For years we have gone out to the SOLIDWORKS website to look up the certified driver for our system. https://www.solidworks.com/support/hardware-certification This page allowed users to fill out specific information about the make and model of their machine. They could then find the specific driver SOLIDWORKS tested for that configuration. This was a very manual certification process for the SOLIDWORKS hardware team. It became hard for […]
SOLIDWORKS Rx and the SOLIDWORKS Resource Monitor are terrific resources to maximize your SOLIDWORKS performance. When running low on resources or having graphics card issues, you can quickly see what the issue is and resolve it. In theory and in practice, this can be great. However, sometimes we in Tech Support hear, “How do I get rid of these annoying pop up messages? I just want to get some work done in SOLIDWORKS!” First of all, there is a reason […]
When SOLIDWORKS has been recently updated to a newer release, sometimes we receive questions about symbols not showing up correctly (most commonly, the diameter symbol). Symbols that once showed up correctly, now appear as a short description/syntax. So how did this happen and how can this be fixed? SOLIDWORKS has many different paths/file locations for many different items within the software: one of which is a Symbol Library File. Sometimes we see that after an upgrade, the File Locations on […]
Configurations have been a part of SOLIDWORKS since the beginning release in 1995. They allow you to create several different iterations of a component or assembly without needing to create new documents. This could be done by manually creating them and changing values or using an Excel design table. In SOLIDWORKS 2001+ (anyone else remember plus releases?!) Nested Configurations (now called Derived Configurations) were added to the core of SOLIDWORKS. This allowed you to create a child configuration where all […]
If you’re unaware of the SOLIDWORKS Spin Box, it’s the Thumbwheel or Slider at the bottom of the Modify Dimension Dialog box that comes up when you double-click to edit a dimension. The Spin Box acts as a “fine-tuning” for adjusting your dimension value by certain increments. Tech Tip: You’ll see the Thumbwheel when editing non-bounded dimensions such as linear dimensions and the Slider when editing bounded dimensions such as angles (between 0 and 360 degrees). The Thumbwheel and Slider […]
Commonly with my blog posts, the idea begins in Technical Support. Last week I was talking with a user about the Custom Property Tab builder. Specifically, what controls the list of available properties? I’m not going into the details of the Custom Property Tab builder in this post. If you’re interested in learning more, look at this CATI blog post by Dennis Barnes: SOLIDWORKS Property Tab Builder. He’ll walk you through the steps of creating your own Custom Property Tabs […]