Category: How-To

SolidWorks how-to guides

My road to becoming a presenter at SolidWorks World

My presentation at SolidWorks World 2011I have now been to four SolidWorks World conferences.  My first was in 2008.  As with most attendees, my first time was overwelming.  So much information is packed into such a short time frame.  There are three general sessions and up to 11 opportunities to learn in breakout sessions. 

The real value in SolidWorks World are those breakout sessions.  Nowhere else is it possible to learn from first hand interaction about so many different SolidWorks related topics in one place.  Yet, the topics aren’t just about SolidWorks itself.  One of the most helpful sessions I’ve attended was about how CAD can work within an FDA regulated environment.

This inspired me.  I wanted to present my own breakout sessions to share my knowledge.  What could I talk about?  Well, I know drawings very well.  In 2008, I submitted my first presentation proposal on drawings for SolidWorks World 2009.  It was rejected.

In the meantime, I started presenting locally at the SolidWorks User Group meetings.  I did two presentations (written about here and here) that covered SolidWorks World 2008 at the Tri-Valley SolidWorks User Group and the Silicon Valley SolidWorks User Group.

I also started presenting at the SolidWorks User Group Network Technical Summits.  In Los Angeles, CA in 2008, I gave a presentation on advanced drawing tips and tricks.  In San Jose, CA in 2010, I gave another well received presentation on advanced SolidWorks customization techniques.  If someone cannot make it to SolidWorks World, I recommend attending a Technical Summit when is in their area.

I didn’t submit any breakout session proposals for SolidWorks World 2010.  It turns out that I ended up being a co-presenter of sorts for the Stump the Chumps II breakout session.  Jeff Mirisola organized this presentation.  My role was small, but this was my debut on a breakout session stage at SolidWorks World.

I was again inspired to submit my own breakout session proposals for SolidWorks World 2011.  To my delight, both of my proposals were accepted.  However, I soon realized that my time would be limited again.  I had to make the hard decision to withdraw one of my proposals.  This allowed me to focus on making sure my one presentation was high quality.  My presentation was Establishing CAD standards within a SolidWorks Environment, written about here.  (I’ll talk more about the content of my presentation at a later time.)

My presentation was well received.  I was approached by many individuals over the next two days at SolidWorks World 2011 to thank me for the presentation.  This was an unexpected bonus that made the whole endeavour very rewarding.  I’ve given back to the same community that has benefited my growth so much.  I hope that I will be able to give two presentations at SolidWorks World 2012!

SolidWorks question: why does opening a part cause others to open too?

Have you ever opened a particular SolidWorks file that caused other SolidWorks files to automatically open as well? This can be very frustrating if you want to open a signal part, but then 5 other parts load with it.  Most people who encounter this behavior figure out that there are external references that link the files together.

Over the years, I’ve seen people give several types of responses for this behavior in SolidWorks. Some people simply live with the undesired behavior. Others may say, “the file is corrupt,” or “there’s a bug in SolidWorks.” Some people spend hours trying to resolve the cause of the behavior without success (me being one of them, many, many, many years ago).

The answer?

SolidWorks is doing what it is supposed to do when you open one file, and then other external referenced files open automatically with it!  This is intended behavior.  It is also behavior that you can control at the system level.

There is a setting in System Options that allows you to tell SolidWorks how to handle external referenced files.  It’s at Tools pulldown>Options…>System Options tab>External References.  At that screen, the fourth line from the top says, “Load referenced documents:” followed by a drop-down field with the following choices:

  • Prompt – ask the user before opening referenced files
  • All – open all referenced files every time
  • None – never open referenced files
  • Changed Only – only open referenced files if there is a change

As far as I have seen, Changed Only appears to be the SolidWorks default choice for this setting.  To tell SolidWorks not to open external referenced files, change this setting to None. Save the setting by clicking OK button.

loadextrefs

That’s it!  I know, this seems like such a simple solution for something that may have been particularly frustrating.

Rotating a Drawing View

Sometimes one need to show a rotated view in the drawing. If is available in the standard view, once can simply place it as desired. If there is no view as required, one may go to part or assembly and create a new view orientation and then use that in the drawing. To avoid that one can simply rotate the drawing view as required.

1. Click on the view or select the view you want to rotate.

2. Click on Rotate View on the heads up tool bar or standard tool bar.

3. You’ll now see a Rotate Drawing View pop up window.

4. Fill in the desired angle value (I have used 90°). You can also key in a negative value.

5. Once you have keyed in the desired value, click on Apply and view will be rotated.

6. Then click on close to exit the command and you’ll have a rotated view.

How to overline text on a SolidWorks drawing

Occasionally, a SolidWorks user may need to state a number or variable as approximate within an annotation note.  The mathematical symbol for this is an overline.  Overlining text is not readily supported by SolidWorks.  One solution is to draw a line over the text.  This is undesirable due to the messiness that comes about when trying to associate notes with sketch entities.  Another solution is to create a new custom symbol within the Gtol.sym file.  This takes time.  Also, the symbol has to be manually shared if the drawing is opened on another computer.  

 Here is a quick and dirty trick for creating overlined text on SolidWorks drawing:

  1. Start an annotation note.  
  2. With the note active and your typing cursor placed at the desired location within the note, click on the Stack button from the Annotations toolbar.

    3. stackicon

  3. Choose the style with the division line across the center.
  4. Choose the bottom alignment option.
  5. Type your overlined text in the Lower text field.
  6. Select OK.

stackwinww

 The one drawback to this trick is that it will force spacing above your line of text.  This may only be a concern if one tries to use this technique within the general notes.

Turn Toolbox parts into regular parts

Management of Toolbox parts can be a headache, especially if they are used in a PDM/PLM environment.  There is a little known fact that may help some CAD administrators with their Toolbox file management issues.  By default, any files from the Toolbox are flagged with a hidden property called “IsToolboxPart”.  To make SolidWorks forget that a part is from the Toolbox, this property must be set to “No” for each individual file.  SolidWorks has a small utility buried deep in its folder structure that does just that.  It’s called “Set Document Property”.

 setdocprop

To access it, run the file at this location “C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\Toolbox\data utilities\sldsetdocprop.exe” in most cases.  Once the program is open, it’s fairly self-explanatory.  Good luck!