Mesh Enhancements for Plastic Mold Simulation The SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2017 mesh enhancements increase user convenience, enable more accurate runner simulation, and decrease processing time. When generating a mesh on a model that has had a mesh previously generated a new option is available to “use previous design.” By using the previous design, the user no longer needs to be concerned with mesh parameters when generating an identical mesh. Now a new mesh can be quickly generated in order to vary other design criteria like material or injection position. While the ability to vary runner diameters has been available in the past, there was only one
CATI Tech Notes
SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks and Info on Professional 3D Printing with Stratasys from the Technical staff of CATI
How to Justify the Cost of In-House 3D Printing
How to Justify the Cost of In-House 3D Printing The world of 3D Printing covers many different applications and technologies. Each technology, platform or material provides different applications. In order to create value and provide the right solution, you need to, Show how you can help solve problems / create opportunities within your organization. The more applications/departments (design, sales, marketing, etc.) you can use for justification, the greater the value. Generally speaking, not many companies open a checkbook to purchase such a capital expense. Below, you will find some steps or suggestions to help you put together your “ROI” and get that stamp of approval. Begin
Posted in Digital Prototyping, Rapid Prototyping
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: Feature Manager Design Tree Comment Enhancements – #SW2017
Feature Manager Design Tree Comment Enhancements Among the many new enhancements coming to SOLIDWORKS 2017 are quite a few improvements to the ability to add Comments to your models throughout your product design lifecycle. You are able to add Comments to all of the following Nodes in the Feature Manager Design Tree: Mates (All Types) Mate Folder or Mate Group Folders Sensors Material Annotation Views Blocks Solid Bodies Folder Surface Bodies Folder Sheet Metal Nodes Mate References To add a Comment to any of these Nodes, Right-Click the desired Node in the Feature Tree and select Comment > Add Comment. You can also
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: SOLIDWORKS 3D Interconnect – #SW2017
SOLIDWORKS 3D Interconnect SOLIDWORKS has a great new tool in 2017 that will allow you to work directly with third-party native CAD files! What exactly does that mean? Insert CAD data directly into a SOLIDWORKS ASSEMBLY without having to convert it to a SOLIDWORKS file. No translation Leverage legacy 3D data Work directly with Suppliers and Vendors When you open the 3D CAD part in SOLIDWORKS, it keeps the link with the original part. All Edge and Face ID’s are maintained By maintaining the link to the original 3D CAD part, changes made to the CAD data from the other CAD system will update
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: Costing – #SW2017
Costing I’ve spent a lot of time of over the last few years learn and expanding my knowledge of the SOLIDWORKS Costing tool and I’d like to share with you a couple of my favorite enhancements with SOLIDWORKS 2017. Preview “First and Last Sheet” When doing nesting with costing, you would get a preview of what the nesting would look like on a complete sheet of uncut metal, but you can preview the last sheet, helping you understand what the lot size will due and effect you yield on your metal. New Report options Many times you want to let your customers know what
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: Surfacing Preview – #SW2017
Surfacing Preview With more core power and performance, and new capabilities for emerging technologies, it’s never been easier to design and create with SOLIDWORKS. The design and development solution chosen by more than 3.1 million users worldwide. Here is a preview discussing some of the new key enhancements to surfacing. SOLIDWORKS® 2017 removes obstacles to creating complex 3D geometry with powerful new surfacing features that save time and avoid complex workarounds. New features let you: Create geometry on any surfaces, with improved wrap features. Drag and drop features into place, then decide whether to wrap it as emboss, deboss, or just a 3D Curve. Offset 3D Curve
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: Rollbacks Now Include Their References – #SW2017
Rollbacks Now Include Their References Rollbacks, what are they all about? Rolling back a file in SOLIDWORKS PDM is often a last resort for returning a file to a previous state or version (and I’d like to add that I always recommend against using it, as most the time you can check a file out, get a previous version, then overwrite the current version with the older version). Now, with all that said, one of the biggest pains can be rolling back individual files because their references can become all sorts of jumbled, and you’ll have version mismatches here and there, and it becomes a real headache, really
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: Importing and Exporting 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF) Files – #SW2017
Importing and Exporting 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF) Files For almost 30 years STL (Surface Tessellated Language) has been the predominate format for 3D Printers. So why develop something new? 3D Printers have made significant strides in development with accuracy, resolution, materials, colors, etc., but sadly the STL file has remained stagnant. The STL format simply wraps triangles or tessellates a surface; recording the vertices of the triangles in 3-Dimensional space, it does not record any information regarding color, material, texture, etc. When Microsoft sought to implement 3D printing support that would solve customers’ existing problems and address future needs, an important consideration was how applications should pass model
SOLIDWORKS 2017 What’s New: SOLIDWORKS Inspection – #SW2017
SOLIDWORKS Inspection SOLIDWORKS 2017 has brought the functionality of the standalone SOLIDWORKS Inspection application to the Add-in! Users can now manually select which dimensions get a balloon and which don’t. Previously, in the Add-in application, every annotation would get ballooned and then the user would have to deselect each item individually from being ballooned. This was a time staking process, if you only wanted a few of the annotations of the hundreds you may have in the drawing. The new user interface has the option of Automatic (same functionality as before) and Manual (select only the items you want). Once you create the project all you
SOLIDWORKS 2017 WHAT’S NEW: JAGGED OUTLINES – #SW2017
Jagged Outline In SOLIDWORKS 2017, detailed drawing views now have the option for “Jagged Outline” view. You can now have your Detailed Views to have Jagged Outlines, such as: Crop View Detail View Break View Crop View with Jagged Outline: Detail View with Jagged Outline: Break View with Jagged Outline: Setting the Line Font for Emphasized Outlines: To set the line font for emphasized outlines: In a drawing, click Tools > Options > Document Properties > Line Font In the dialog box, in Type of Edge, select Emphasized Section Outline Set your options. Click OK
SOLIDWORKS Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
