Five Playlists On The CATI YouTube Channel You Need to Check Out!

July 30, 2021 by Brandon Nelms

The Computer Aided Technology blog is an amazing repository of in-depth, insightful, and inspiring technical content. There’s a wealth of content on nearly any software topic you can think of for SOLIDWORKS, Simulation, Composer, Visualize, Inspection, and more. During our training classes we try to make sure our customers are aware of this great resource, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves to highlight another great resource for technical content: our CATI YouTube page. Our YouTube page has tons of […]

DraftSight Network License Timeout

July 14, 2021 by Kris Dubuque

As a DraftSight Enterprise or Enterprise Plus customer, you are aware that the software uses a network license model. This gives customers flexibility to share licenses between multiple part-time users. As user starts up DraftSight, a license is reserved from the server to complete the work, they shut down DraftSight, and the license is automatically released for another user. This works great until someone forgets they have an application open and continue to consume a license although they are not […]

Patterns: Changing Instance size with the Vary Sketch Option in SOLIDWORKS

April 16, 2021 by Jay Pinheiro

SOLIDWORKS has always had many ways to create dynamic, powerful pattern features. Buried in the options since almost the beginning of time, and sometimes forgotten, has been a “Vary Sketch” option. Let’s explore this option a bit to show you some interesting ways to use it. For a little bit of background, for the Vary Sketch to work it does require that the Pattern feature use a dimension from the seed feature sketch as a direction reference. That dimension is […]

How to Quickly Create a 3D Sketch From a Solid Body in SOLIDWORKS

March 18, 2021 by Sara Hollett

3D sketching can be very challenging to do quickly. Whether you struggle with dimensioning, over-defining, or not sketching on the correct plane, I have a simple trick for you to try. I am going to show you a way to speed up the 3D sketching process and still work with-in the comfortable realm of 2D sketching. Here is how I took a single sketch entity and quickly made a 3D sketch of a decahedron. First, I placed a single line […]

Creating and Adding a Macro Button in SOLIDWORKS

March 11, 2021 by Jordan Puentes

Macros in SOLIDWORKS are a great way to save time from having to perform repetitive tasks. A single macro can range anywhere from performing a few simple tasks to complex programs that will change depending on user input. This guide will walk you through how to get started creating macros and how to assign your macro to a button on your user interface for easy access. CREATING A NEW BLANK MACRO To create a new blank macro in SOLIDWORKS, go […]

Disappearing Pop Up Menu in SOLIDWORKS? Re-Click Control!

March 8, 2021 by Laura Nickerson

To increase our productivity in SOLIDWORKS, we use those handy pop-up menus to: A single click can launch a pop-up menu, or, Control-select multiple items and releasing Control launches the pop-up menu. Inevitably, we move the mouse and that handy pop-up menu disappears. Rather than starting over… Instead, move your mouse back to the same general area of the lost pop-up menu and press/release the Control key again. This will re-display that elusive pop-up menu. Here is a short video […]

SOLIDWORKS – Vary Pattern Instances

March 3, 2021 by Craig Maurer

Have you ever needed a similar pattern of an object, but needed a dimension to slightly change? Or maybe increase in value every time it was patterned? There is a way to do this in SOLIDWORKS, and it is quite easy once you know the tool is there and maybe a little knowledge about how to use it. We are going to try and keep this as simple as possible to get the base understanding, but I am sure you […]

Why you should add Cosmetic Threads to your downloaded fasteners

February 24, 2021 by Jay Pinheiro

One of the benefits of working in 3D has always been the ability to verify that your assemblies will actually fit together when the parts hit the manufacturing floor. SOLIDWORKS has always had a great interference detection for parts that don’t move and even a collision detection for parts that do move. The issue with fasteners is that they are always designed to interfere. A bolt or a screw is modeled to the major diameter of the thread and the […]

How to Batch Print in SOLIDWORKS DraftSight

February 21, 2021 by Judy Marlo

Most often we create many drawings for a product or project. After we are done, it is time to print them out. No one likes the daunting task of open each drawing and print each drawing separately. DraftSight offers 3 ways to print: Quick Print, Print to file and Batch print. This blog focuses on the batch print option. Let’s check out how to use it… The Batch Print Command can be used without having any drawings open in your […]

Cost Optimizing Through SOLIDWORKS Costing

February 20, 2021 by Jordan Kleinschmidt

I recently moved to a small town outside the suburban metro/Minneapolis area. Thrilled by the offering of more space and a chance for a wood shop, I got to dreaming about what could be in the new space I call “home”. The first order of business – a custom desk for the new office space. My design intent was relatively simple. I wanted to 1) spend as little as possible, 2) fit both my office workstation and my personal workstation […]

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