As you first notice, there is a big change in the interface in SolidWorks 2008.  With this interface change SolidWorks is trying to increase your productivity by minimizing your mouse movements.  However, I have found that some users still prefer the older methods.  Are you annoyed by the little icons that appear whenever you click on something?  Do you want to have them back into the right click menu as words and not just icons?  To revert back to the older set-up, go to Tools>Customize.  There is a section for Context Toolbar Settings.  If “Show on selection” is checked, whenever you click on a face, feature, sketch, etc., an in-context

Check out this article written by Jim Krivoshein in our latest CATI TechLink Newsletter.  It explains all of the difference between the toolbars in 2008 vs 2007.  It explains the new toolbar features and how to make changes to them, it even shows how to get the right click menus back the way they looked in 2007 if that is what you want. http://www.cati.com/articles/articles_2008/Tech0308JK.html Design Better Keith Schaefer

A cost effective conversion tool to pull data from a CATIA?  I have fielded the question from customers on the support line time and time again.  “My customer has sent me parts in the form of a CATIA file, how can I open the file and use the data?”  Up to this point the answer has always been a translator from a third party vendor.  Most of these translations have been done on a file by file basis, or a more costly file translator has been purchased.  While talking to some other support techs a few days ago it was brought up that the new Adobe 3D may have a

Round To Nearest Fraction I have been looking for this for a while. But in the past couple weeks I have gotten a few questions on what happened to the check box in the units properties for “Round to Nearest Fraction”.  If you are looking at your drawing and you have mixed dimensions (Fractional and Decimal) and want to change them all to fractional you need to go under Tools>Options>Document Properties>Units. Make sure your length is set to Feet & Inches, Decimals – None, Use whatever denominator you would like and the next box is the “More” box. If you click on the three dots you can check either to

Hello everyone.  In the past couple of releases of SolidWorks I have received questions from several different companies about how to save from a sheet metal part directly to a DXF or DWG file that you can take to a laser or plasma cutter.  When the question came again today I figured that maybe if I add this little bit of info to the blog some users may find it useful.  Previous to SolidWorks 2008 I would have called this a limitation, or shared a macro with the customer that allowed them to do just that.  SolidWorks 2008 now allows us to do exactly what those customers were asking for