SolidWorks Legion

SolidWorks 2010 Borders within Annotations

SolidWorks move towards quality has affected many areas in SolidWorks 2010, including annotation functionality. One of particular note is the fact that borders around text can now be added within an annotation note!

The following example has borders added to text using only this new method. No <> tag symbols where used:

Access to this functionality is in the same place as before, under the Border heading within the Note PropertyManager. The only difference is that the border selection now responds to highlighted text within the affected Note. In fact, it only responds to highlighted text now.

Because of this new functionality, some behavior has changed with making flagnotes. As of Beta 2, notice that they will no longer directly attach to a leader unless they are round (Circle border). Some may like this, others may not. Another behavior that might need to be taken into consideration when using these borders is that spacing between lines may be affected, as also shown in the example. Also, this functionality is not supported within dimension callouts.

SolidWorks World 2010 early registration offer ends soon!

There’s a special deal that can allow SolidWorks World 2010 attendees to save $200 on registration. It’s the Early Bird #1 special offer. Instead of paying $995, people who register early qualify for the price of $795. For those who are already planning to attend, this is a good reason to register sooner. For those who are on the fence about attending, this discount could make the difference. To take advantage of the offer, one must register by October 9. Hope to see you there!!!

Free Upgrade for Californians will end soon

SolidWorks has a special running right now for Californians. Right now, if a company or individual buys any seat of SolidWorks, they will upgrade that license to the Premium package at no additional cost (with the purchase of a subscription). Not a bad deal at all.

The Premium package includes many tools that can boost the power and capabilities given to engineers. Beyond SolidWorks itself, the package included feature recognition of imported models, standard hardware libraries, design checker, routing (for everything from pipes to wires), tolerance stack-up validation, non-linear dynamics simulation (FEA), and more.

The deadline is September 30, 2009. That’s not a lot of time left!

Here’s the details.

SolidWorks 2010: Minor tweaks I

One of the funny little things that SolidWorks used to do is that when one added a center mark to a hole (or set of holes) that are already dimensioned, it would not adjust the dimension extension lines to fit with the center mark.

In the march to quality improvements, SolidWorks has fixed this little oversight. Now, when one adds a center mark to a previously dimensioned hole, a gap appears between the center mark and the dimension’s extension line. The same is also true if one adds a dimension to a hole that already has a center mark. No more dragging extension lines after the fact.

Here’s the sample image from the What’s New file:

Woohoo!

External Threads in SolidWorks (where are they?)

~~One of the unexpected weaknesses in SolidWorks is that there is no External Thread feature.~~ For years, SolidWorks has had the Hole Wizard and related functionality for various types of holes, including threads. But there is [was] no feature for creating external threads. ~~I’ve always been baffled by this.~~

[All this has changed as of SOLIDWORKS 2022 with the release of the new Stud Wizard tool! The remainder of this article will be about my impressions before Stud Wizard tool from the original publish date. I will italicize outdated statements below. A new article will be posted at some point to review the new tool.]

Examples of Stud Wizard — From SOLIDWORKS 2022 Help File

So, when I saw that SolidWorks 2010 was improving the Cosmetic Thread annotation to allow the user to quickly choose a thread size from one of the thread standards (ANSI, ISO, etc), I had a brief glimmer of hope. I found out, this is one of those enhancements that is just too little, too late. All this new enhancement does is pull values from the Hole Wizard to add a Cosmetic Thread annotation. If an external thread is desired, the user is still left with having to create the OD of the thread as a separate feature.

Sure, one may not expect an annotation to make a feature. It just seems like an opportunity was missed. Instead of just having the Cosmetic Thread annotation read from the standards, SolidWorks should have included an External Thread feature.

In my view, this feature should work in several ways.

Allow the user to select an OD upon which the External Thread will be cut.
Or, allow the user to select a flat face from which the External Thread will extend.
Don’t require a precondition. Allow the user to select their method within the workflow of External Thread command.
Have the External Thread feature work the same way as Hole Wizard. The helix of the thread is not modelled, but have several modelling and annotation options available (model to the ID or OD, and choice to use cosmetic thread).

Although the addition of the standards lookup within the Cosmetic Thread annotation is welcome, SolidWorks should fully support External Threads as an actual feature. I created an ER for this topic this week, and invite others to do so as well.

[To see information about the new Stud Wizard (that works pretty much as I laid out above), see the What’s New for SOLIDWORKS 2022. For more information, you can check out the SOLIDWORKS 2022 Help File articles about Stud Wizard.]

SolidWorks 2010 Rapid Dimension

Adding dimensions to parts on drawings is now quicker in SolidWorks 2010 with the addition of Rapid Dimension. Once the user enters the Dimension command, Rapid Dimension allows the them to quickly position dimensions (almost automatically) as they are added. Not only will dimensions automatically space out correctly as they are inserted, they will be inserted at the correct location, even without that location in view.

Now, each time a dimension is added to a drawing, SolidWorks will pop up with a pie, divided into two pieces for linear dimensions or four pieces for radial dimensions. (Technically, these pies are called the rapid dimension manipulators.)

Linear Dim Pie

Each piece of the pie represents the direction (which side of the part) that the user can choose to place their new dimension. When the user selects the half or quarter, the dimension is placed in the correct location on that side of the part within the drawing view.

Rapid Dimension in Action

Two methods can be used to select the dimension location using the pie. The user can simply LMB click on the portion of the pie in the desired direction. The user can also use a mouseless method, by pressing tab to toggle between the pieces of the pie; then press the spacebar to select. Additionally, the user can choose the ignore the choices offered by the pie to manually place the dimension, just as they would in previous versions of SolidWorks.

The auto-spacing between dimensions is determined by the user’s settings in Tools>Options…>Document Properties>Dimensions within the Offset distances field. The ability to set default dimension line offsets has been in SolidWorks for quite some time, but it’s never been quite so useful as it is in Solidworks 2010.

Offset distances field

Within a few minutes of using Rapid Dimensions, many users will likely become instantly addicted to the new function, as it promises to be a major time saver when detailing drawings in SolidWorks 2010 and beyond.

Deleting Dimensions

One additional item about dimension placement is SolidWorks behavior when a dimension is deleted. If the user deletes a dimension or even just removes text from a dimension, SolidWorks has the ability to automatically realign the spacing of the neighboring dimensions to get rid of gaps caused by that deletion. The user has the option to turn this ability on by going to Tools>Options…>Document Properties>Dimensions to select the Adjust spacing when dimensions are deleted or text is removed checkbox.