Self-Supporting Angles with FDM Looking to save some time when printing with FDM? Generally, in 3D printing processes when there is some of overhanging feature, support will be required to be underneath. The time it takes to switch between support material and model material can add up to a lot by the time the build is finished. However, when using the FDM process, there is a degree of self-supporting angles that can be utilized to greatly reduce printing […]
Two of the big questions we get every year about this time on the support line are: My subscription/maintenance expires on XX date will I still receive the new release of SOLIDWORKS that is coming out soon? I have downloaded Pre-Release 1 and when I try to install it I get a message that says I am not entitled to this version, WHY? To answer the questions we first need to establish what the cutoff date is that SOLIDWORKS has […]
Yesterday I covered how to change the orientation of an imported part (http://blog.cati.com/2011/02/how-to-change-the-orientation-of-an-imported-solidworks-part.html) so today I thought I would cover how to change the orientation of a model created in SolidWorks. There are 2 ways to do this on a feature based model and both have their pitfalls. The first method is probably the one with the most potential for failure of other features in the part and that is changing the Sketch plane that the base feature is created on. […]
The Support call that I found interesting yesterday was the customer who called in andasked, "Why is there an (SS) at the end of my material name? This is causing confusion on the shop floor especially when the material is Aluminum." Asking around the Support group no one seemed to have the answer to the question so weasked SOLIDWORKS why this was and below is the reply we received from them. “Please note that some materials in the SOLIDWORKS Materials […]