Drawing Archives - Page 18 of 29

Plug for Enhancement Requests

In past articles, I’ve mentioned some enhancement requests (ER’s) for SolidWorks. Most (All?) of the enhancement requests I’ve made are now SPR’s, which are slated for some action at some time in the future. To get the ball rolling on these requests, I’d like to invite others to vote for these changes in the Customer Portal. I’m not going to provide links to my requests, as they wouldn’t work anyway with the Customer Portal’s java script. I will mention a brief description of each change, and bold keywords which may be used to easily find the open SPR’s in the Customer Portal. These are my requests, many of which I’ve talked about prior to submitting them to the ER system.

Support new ASME Y14.5-2009 symbols on drawings and models.
Option to force captilization (note the misspelling) of annotation notes on drawings (original article).
Add CR (Controlled Radius) symbol (original article).
Support External Threads as an actual feature similar to Hole Wizard (original article).
and a new one (no SPR yet), the ability to auto insert angle dimensions and values in sketch mode, just as we can already do with linear dimensions. (This was inspired by a recent article by Deelip Menezes, in which he apparently misjudged SolidWorks dimension capabilities in sketch mode, but ended up finding a good candidate for an ER anyway.)

I have other SPR’s, but these are the ones that are actually enhancement related (as opposed to bugs or workflow annoyances). Please visit the Customer Portal soon. Choose “Enhancement Requests”. In the ER search field, enter the bolded keyword(s) for each of the requests above. Then pick and vote for the associated SPR.

Tutorial: Tag your features

tagsclipart In this article, I’m covering a topic of tags, which I briefly addressed in my recent breakout session at the SWUGN Summit – San Jose. What are tags? This website has tags that are assigned to most of its articles. Not just blogs, but many types of documents have tags which are used to increase searchability and enhance content filtering. SolidWorks added tags functionality in SolidWorks 2008. In SolidWorks, tags can be assigned to documents and features.

Instructions to assign tags to features:

In the view pane or FeatureManager design tree, select any feature.
In the status bar, at the lower right of the SolidWorks window, click the Tags icon.
Tags box will pop up near the icon and will include any tags already in use for that feature.
Type new tags into that field, separating each with a semi-colon. (Once a tag is typed, it is applied. There’s no “OK” button to accept.)
(Click on the Tags icon again to close the Tags box.)

Tag Location

Then, to use the tags:

In the filter field (at the top of the FeatureManager design tree), type-in the desired tag.
This will automatically filter out all features which do not contain that tag nor match that text in their description.
To redisplay all features, click cancel x in the filter field.

filterlocation

SWUGN Summit San Jose coming up quick!

If you are in the Northern California area, you’ve may have already seen an email from one of the SolidWorks User Groups about the upcoming SWUGN Technical Summit at the Embassy Suites in Milpitas. SWUGN Technical Summits are day-long SolidWorks based conferences scheduled about once a month at different locations throughout North America. Each summit generally offers the choice of 10 sessions within 5 time slots. Each session offers a detailed look at particular SolidWorks related topics which are geared towards all levels of experience. The San Jose summit is on March 23, 2010 and will feature presentations by SolidWorks Product Managers, local independent SolidWorks and VAR experts. Among the presenters are a couple of first-timers, Gabi Jack (Bay Area) and Alex Ruiz (driving up from SoCal). I’ll be presenting a session on advanced customization techniques. If you’d like to see a particular customization topic covered in my session, leave a comment here. Right now, I plan to talk about customization of hole callouts, Hole Wizard holes, Shortcut Tool, Mouse Gestures, and Sheet Metal Gage Tables. (I’m also thinking about the Custom Properties Tab Builder, but that is a topic all to its own, so I may save that for another time.)

The cost to attend the SWUGN Technical Summit is only $40. This is a bargain by almost any measure. Similar types of conferences can cost $800 or more. Check out the SWUGN Technical Summit website for session details and registration.

OK, and now for some fun. At the San Jose summit on March 23, 2010, the first person to come up to me and says “SolidWorks Legion is awesome, dude” will earn a free CSWP test of their choice (does not include the new CSWE test). The second person who says that line to me will earn a free SolidWorks hot-cold insulated mug. Don’t try to be the first person and repeating the line twice. 🙂 Also, SolidWorks employees, VAR employees and other presenters are not eligable to earn these items.

Deleting a Row from General Table

This question came up on the SolidWorks Forums today and after answering it I thought of sharing it up.

You have inserted a General table in the SolidWorks drawing and accidentally added one extra Row. Now you want to get rid of that line. As usual you’ll right click on the specific Row you want to remove from the table and clicked on the Delete.

But to your surprise, you can only see the option to delete the entire table and no Row. You may feel bit frustrated with that.

Now here comes the trick to delete the Row from the General Table.

1. Click on Table and you’ll see some thing like in the picture below.

2. Click these small arrows to show the Table Header. (Check, the pointer has changed).

3. Your table should like this.

4. Click on the table again.

5. Select/ highlight the Row (by clicking on the number. See the color change). Now right click on the row number, go to Delete and select Row.

6. Hurray, the unwanted Row has gone. If you want to hide the table header, click on the table again. Now click on those small arrows (look at step 2) again and your header will hide.

Drawing: Detail View with blank detail circle

**UPDATE Sept 2016**

As with many old tips for SOLIDWORKS, this old tip is now outdated. As of SOLIDWORKS 2017, there is an option for detail and crop views within their PropertyManager called “No outline” that allows you to turn off the view outline. No more need for the fancy workaround below.

**Original post, now outdated**

An interesting drawing question recently came up on the SolidWorks Forum. How does one create a detail view were the detail circle is hidden? Jennifer Reid gets props for coming up with a great solution for newer versions of SolidWorks (I’ve modified her original post for clarity):

Open the document that will have the blank detail circles.
Go to toolbar Tools>Options>Document Properties tab>Line Style.
Click the New button.
In the Line styles field, name the new line style something like “None”.
In the Line length and spacing values field, enter “A,-1,-1”.
If desired, Save the new line. This is not necessary.
Click OK button to apply this new line to this document.
Then goto toolbar Tools>Options>Document Properties tab>View Labels>Detail
Set Circle and Border to the blank line that was just created. (It shows up as a blank line at the bottom of the line style drop down lists.)
Click OK to apply changes.
On the drawing, ignore the dashed line for the detail circle and detail border. This is just a guide that does not appear when the drawing is printed.

The full conversation is found here.

Enhancements planned for SolidWorks 2011

There were a lot of new SolidWorks 2011 functionalities that were demonstrated in today’s general session. There’s a long list of improvements. SolidWorks presented most of these improvements as part of an on-stage skit, so it was difficult to keep track of all the discussed changes. However, this is my best attempt to give a nearly complete list:

Parts

Revolve will be extrudable “up to surface”
Defeature feature allows for the removal of internal features of a part to protect IP.
Real View is “fully customizable”
Display Manage that controls settings such as color, transparency, etc.
Photoview 360 now has a preview menu within SolidWorks Works
Animation can be pre-rendered
Further improvements have been made to memory usage and optimization
Within Non-linear simulation, planar simulation allows the user to run simulation on a 2D slice of a part to save time; also, that 2D slice can be projected back to the 3D part.
Feature lock!

Drawings

Dimensions spaced evenly and in the right view (on new views, or to correct existing views)
Thumb wheel to change spacing of dimensions
Dual dimensions allowed in hole table
Weld tables now available in drawings
Weld callouts can be automatically added to a drawing

Assemblies

Chamfers and fillets can be used for weld prep
Cut sweep allowed
Weld gaps with actual geometry
Walk thru function, just like video games
Multiple piping enhancements