SOLIDWORKS Archives

15Oct 2020 by admin 4 Comments

OneDrive and SOLIDWORKS file management

Administration, CAD, Software, SOLIDWORKS, TOOLBOX

Nowadays OneDrive or any other cloud storage is essential part of computer software. General office applications are moving step by step to cloud. For some users it's continuing with old habits, just saving files to synced folder on windows and for them what happens next is magic. Transitioning CAD files to cloud is much more painful and takes longer to implement. Not to forget, there are already some fully (or semi) cloud-based CAD systems (Onshape, 3DExperience, Fusion). As switching to cloud CAD is longer leap than most of users today are willing to do. Quite often there are questions also about security, where are my files and what happens when interned is down ( quite rare but still a possibility) In this post we however focus more traditional cloud based…

11Dec 2018 by admin 2 Comments

CAD, PDM, BOM, and ERP

Administration, CAD, Software, SOLIDWORKS, Tech, Uncategorized

CAD, PDM, BOM and ERP – four three letters abbreviations that most of engineers have heard more than enough of. There are lots of rumors, sales messages, and wishful thinking in the social media and communication channels resulting in a thinking model that has nothing to do with reality and that only has a purpose to help sell more products without the functionality, that they claim to have. This article is written to state our opinion on how these things work in real life. Hopefully this helps readers to avoid following will-o'-the-wisps. (more…)

16Jul 2018 by admin No Comments

Wooden beams as weldment profiles

CAD, Features, SOLIDWORKS, WELDMENTS

Summer is there. I assume, that lot of us has some building project in waiting what need kind of wooden construction. Before taking steps with real tool, I recommend to draw out what are planned to do (and preferrably agree with your wife :-) ). Generally is nice to use weldment tool in SOLIDWORKS to model particular object and then get right cut list before taking saw or visiting local building material shop. One simple problem what appears is that out of the box SOLIDWORKS do not have any wood material profiles in library. Generally wood material is pretty local, depending from county, supplier, local shop preferences or fact that some material are waiting in your garden… Wooden material profile template Here is one simple weldment profile template (SW 2016 version). This…

08Jun 2018 by admin 3 Comments

Mirroring – A lot of headache behind simple concept – Part 1/3

Administration, CAD, Features, SERIAL NUMBERS, SOLIDWORKS

Mirroring and symmetry are like some sort of an ancient code that is visible everywhere in the world. Most living creatures are somewhat symmetric. This also holds true in the technical world, where objects have a tendency to be symmetrical. There are many places in even simple design that need symmetry -for example using both left and right-hand components. Due to this, the first reaction may be that this is going to be easy and let's get to it, but since we're working in a not-so-perfect CAD-PDM world, it's best to be prepared and to build a common understanding of how these things are handled. (more…)

14May 2018 by admin 1 Comment

Some thoughts on external references

CAD, Features, PDM, SOLIDWORKS

Both, External References and In-Context design are excellent modeling techniques to make the lives of the engineers much easier. However, they're riddled with details that every user should know and that every CAD admin or company has to take into consideration when letting the engineers use these features. In this article, I'll share some thoughts and from real life, particularly from the data management side of things. (more…)

28Feb 2018 by admin No Comments

Who will win: SW Composer vs “WordCAD”?

CAD, SOLIDWORKS, Tech

If you're active in the industry, then chances are that you've heard of SOLIDWORKS Composer. This is a tool for generating graphical content for all kinds of manuals and marketing materials. Logically, it should be first choice for the SolidWorks user according to the marketing message. Social media is filled with nice examples and success stories on how the use of this software will benefit you. Situation in reality Generally technical writing is just a formal need in most companies. The youngest engineers or even the trainees get tasked with writing instructions, manuals and with making "a couple of renderings" for marketing department. All experienced engineers will avoid this job so much as possible because it's very time consuming and usually takes a lot more effort than may seem…

30Jan 2018 by admin 3 Comments

Serial Number Generation Tool

Administration, CAD, SERIAL NUMBERS, SOLIDWORKS

First of all, I would like to thank Teyfik Eren Erez for a nice tool that generates the serial numbers. This tool generates a new file name (from serial number generator) for SOLIDWORKS files and is designed mainly for either small teams or a single designer. The user only has to fill out the boxes for the prefix, the suffix and the assembly. However, in this article, I would like to explain how to use this tool according to the variables system proposed in the “CAD Administration Handbook for SolidWorks”. All the rights for this program belong to the creator and the latest version can be downloaded from here (mirror). We've used this tool ourselves and have experienced no issues, however use caution and test it out, before going all in…

15Dec 2017 by admin 4 Comments

Millions wasted in the industry – and how CAD Administrators can put an end to this

Administration, CAD, PDM, SOLIDWORKS

It is no secret that millions are wasted in companies due to random reasons. When it comes to wasting intellectual resources in engineering and machine building, one of the root causes is often a poorly set up CAD system and the unclear engineering procedures which stem from it. In this article, I'll discuss some topics, which can cause significant losses by the end of the day. In such situations, it is often not the fault of the system but rather principal approaches, attitudes, and behaviors that must be changed through the system for better results. (more…)

23Nov 2017 by admin 6 Comments

Fasteners – success story or nightmare

Administration, CAD, PDM, SOLIDWORKS, TOOLBOX

The fasteners library, often referred to as the Toolbox in the CAD world, is one of those simple things in CAD systems that needs to be managed by the engineering team. In reality, this "simple" tool turns out to be not so simple at all and there are consequences for the entire company when its importance has been underestimated. This article will give you some background information, and lists a few different approaches and options you have when trying to optimize it. (more…)

04Nov 2017 by admin No Comments

CAD Administration Handbook for SOLIDWORKS

Administration, CAD, PDM, SOLIDWORKS

We'd like to announce the arrival of one exciting book! The CAD Administration Handbook for SOLIDWORKS aims to make SOLIDWORKS' CAD setup more unified than it is today! It's focused on helping you set up a complete and sustainable design system (templates, libraries, serial numbers, etc.) without having to dwell too deep into all the available features and functionality. It's a unique collection of both best practices and working examples and essentially a CAD administrator survival guide! (more…)