Category: News

SolidWorks 2010 Usability: Hole Wizard improvement

The SolidWork Corp team has made usability one of the key themes for SolidWorks 2010.  One of the areas that has frustrated almost every user since the beginning is that the user is required to select a surface before entering the Hole Wizard command in order to place their holes on a 2D sketch.  Hole Wizard would automatically assign a 3D sketch when no surface was preselected.  Having holes unnecessarily placed in a 3D sketch can create certain issues, such as difficulty with hole callouts on a drawing.

This is no longer so!  With SolidWorks 2010, there is no default sketch assignment to hole placement when starting the Hole Wizard command.  The user selects their surface within Hole Wizard when they are ready.  If they select a flat surface, Hole Wizard automatically assigns a 2D sketch.  If they select a non-flat surface, Hole Wizard automatically assigns a 3D sketch.  The user also has the option to manually select the 3D sketch option.

Before this improvement, Hole Wizard surface selection has been one of those areas that traps almost every user when they first start out.  (You can always identify a rookie simply by the fact that a 3D sketch unnecessarily appeared in their Hole Wizard feature on a part, such as a flat plate.)

Not only is this a welcome usability improvement that reduces frustration and inconsistent modelling, it is also one that will save many little bits of time for most users.  It will also improve the SolidWorks learning curve ever so slightly.

SolidWorks 2010 Runs Faster? Maybe! (Tune-up II)

On Monday, I announced that SolidWorks 2010 has had a tune-up.  The code in certain areas of the software had been getting a little long in the tooth, and long in the rebuild times too.  For SolidWorks 2010, the team at SolidWorks Corp set out to clean up some of the more inefficient code that’s been dragging SolidWorks down.  I’m not yet sure how successful they were in this endeavor.

Some of the areas have affected in this clean up (not a complete list):

  • the Knit Surface algorithm, which not only includes the Surface-Knit feature, but also all other features and commands that utilize the algorithm;
  • Multibody parts and related commands, mostly noticeable on a large number of solid/surface bodies;
  • Weldment cutlist update (body comparison)
  • Equation performance;
  • Delete Face feature.

Unassuming 2009 example modelI set out to see just how much improvement one might expect from a simple example of Delete Face.  (Reminder: I’m using SolidWorks 2010 Beta 2.)  I found a rather basic model example available in SolidWorks 2009.  Within SolidWorks 2009, I used Delete Face to delete one random surface.  The options I used were Delete and Fill/Tangent Fill.  It’s a self repairing deletion that would normally be used on something a bit more complex than a flat surface.

Average rebuild times (s):

  • SW 2009 w/o Delete Face:  .360
  • SW 2009 w/ Delete Face:  1.330
  • SW 2009, just Delete Face: .937
  • SW 2010 w/o Delete Face:  .390
  • SW 2010 w/ Delete Face:  1.210
  • SW 2010, just Delete Face: .823

The Delete Face feature does indeed have improved rebuild times, but with the options I choose, it’s not by much.  Then, I discovered something weird.  In SW 2009, I reloaded the model and found the Delete Face average time was 1.60 (for a total of 2.00)!  After suppressing the Delete Face feature and rebuilding a few more times, the total average rebuild time was again 1.33.  What the heck?  So, I tried this out in SW 2010.  First rebuild was a whooping 3.17 seconds for just the Delete Face feature! After rebuilding more, it settled down to average 1.31 (totalling about 1.86)! Only after the same suppression, unsuppression trick did the times return to what is shown in the table above.

This leads me to question: are there are different algorithms being used based on how SolidWorks becomes aware of a feature?  It is very strange behavior witnessed in both SW 2009 and 2010, though 2010 still does show some minor improvement for my overly simple test.  I’m going to dig further into this for upcoming articles.

SolidWorks 2010: Dimension Palette and Styles

Dimension Palette is a great new function in SolidWorks 2010 that allows the user to edit most commonly accessed aspects of a dimension, right from the main drawing view pane.

Simply highlight or LMB click on a dimension. A ghost image of its Dimension Palette will appear nearby.  Move your mouse cursor over the ghost.  This forces it to fully materialize.  (I’m reminded of Ghostbusters for some reason.)

Dimension Palette

From that point, many of the dimension’s attributes may be directly edited, such as tolerance style and range, dimension accuracy, and tolerance accuracy.  Also editable is text above, right, left and below the dimension.  Additionally, formatting is editable, including dimension position and justification, reference parenthesis, and inspection obround outline.  To aid in use of these new functions, small pop-up hint fields appear as the mouse cursor moves over each element.

Finally, the user can also quickly apply saved Dimension Styles (formerly known as dimension favorites) to the dimension.  This can be accessed by clicking on the gold star icon in the upper right of the Dimension Palette. Dimension Styles are much more automated than the old dimension favorites.  Not only does the user have access to any saved Styles, SolidWorks will also restore recently used formatting changes as Dimension Styles.

Dimension Styles

This means, when the user makes a change to a dimension, SolidWoks will automatically save the user’s change as a Dimension Style.  Automatically saved Dimension Styles will show up in the Recent tab of the Styles window.  These Styles only reside in the current drawing.  (In order to use these Styles in another drawing, the user will still have to save the Style in the same way dimension favorites have been saved in previous SolidWorks releases.)

To replicate the same changes to multiple dimensions, the user simply has to edit one dimension (preferably through the Dimension Palette).  From that point on, to apply those same changes to other dimensions, the user need only select the Dimension Styles button for affected dimension and select their previous change from the Dimension Styles window.

Basically, the user can paint any various dimension formats as Styles to any following dimension.  This is a very cleaver execution of a long standing Enhancement Request to allow dimension formatting to be quickly copied from one dimension to another.

Don’t quote me on this, but if I remember correctly, the current limit on the number Dimension Styles stored in the Recent tab is ten.  This may change at some point.  One added function I’d like to see within the Styles window is the ability to delete Dimension Styles from the Recent tab.  As always, with any great new functionality comes even a greater number of new requests for improvement.

SolidWorks 2010 tune-up

There’s something different about SolidWorks 2010.  It’s hard to put my finger on it.  It just seems to be a little …oh I don’t know… snappier or peppier.   That’s strange.   I mean, there are obvious improvements in such areas as user interface, reliability and predictable feature results, but there’s something else.

Well, I lie, I know exactly what is different.  SolidWorks has had a tune-up.  There’s a ton of really old code in SolidWorks that’s been acting like built-up sludge in an old 4-cylinder 1.0 litre engine that was stuffed into a 1969 Mustang Fastback.   (I know that the analogy is wrong on so many levels, which is the point.)   Some of that old code has now been cleaned up.  It’s not a magical change in every area.  But there is improvement on certain types of solid model features.  Due to the code clean up, those features will rebuild (much) faster.  This is accomplished without SpeedPak or Lightweight memory hacks, er I mean tricks, er I mean shortcuts, I mean…nevermind.  SolidWorks will naturally rebuild models faster now.   Finally, this is the improvement many of us have been requesting for years!  We still have the advantage of SpeedPak and Lightweight, but now the actual features themselves will rebuild faster with more efficient underlying code.  To realize the improved rebuilt times, each solid model must be saved as SolidWorks 201o format.  (Even SolidWorks 2010 will still rebuild older files inefficiently until that are saved in the current format.)

I hope to have a list of improved features soon.  One feature where I’ve seen significant improvement is Delete Face, which used to be memory intensive with long rebuild times.  It now rebuilds much quicker.