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As the workplace transitions to a remote setting naturally, or out of necessity, being connected with your team is more important than ever. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers a great solution for not only the CAD users on your team, but everyone that contributes to the project during its lifecycle. The platform allows global teams to collaborate on projects together seamlessly from any device connected to the internet, thereby eliminating the need for dedicated physical workstations and location dependence in most cases. Being able to leverage skills and knowledge, regardless of where they are and what time zone they are in, gives your project the resource potential of a true 24-hour global workforce.

Every year, there is excitement and anticipation within the engineering and designing community as SOLIDWORKS releases new enhancements and features for the software. At TriMech, we have made it a tradition to put together a list to highlight our top favorite enhancements. With all the excitement it's sometimes easy to forget about previous updates that continue to make our lives easier and allow us to get the job done quicker. I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and refresh the updates from SOLIDWORKS 2017 and later that still impact our design experience as we use SOLIDWORKS. While there are a lot out there, I am going to highlight some of my favorites for you here.

Selecting the right 3D printing technology can be difficult, especially when you consider all the different key drivers in the decision-making process. Are you looking for a smooth surface finish? Maybe you’re looking for strong mechanical properties with a common, easy to use plastic such as ABS or ASA? Now, what if I told you that you didn’t always need to compromise here? With minimal amounts of post-processing techniques, you can achieve a smooth injection molded finish using FDM technology. Sure, parts are fully functional right off the print tray, but utilizing an additional post-processing step can help elevate your part to the next level, and really catch the end user’s eye. Like the flexibility that 3D printing provides, users have many different solutions for their post-processing needs, so let’s dive in!

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation makes solving complex fluid dynamics problems easy. Even though setting up a model may take only a matter of minutes, sometimes we run into scenarios that require a significant amount of computation time. For example, some problems deal with processes that develop at different rates and if the difference in the rate at which these processes develop is significant, the CPU time or solve time might be dominated by the slower process. In this article, we look at how to use the Flow Freezing capability in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation to complete these time-intensive computations.

Whenever a holiday comes around, I like to get creative in SOLIDWORKS as you can see from a previous article I created for Halloween a few years ago. For Independence Day, I wanted to raise the flag in SOLIDWORKS! This provided a great opportunity for me to create a rendering and show you the differences between PhotoView360, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard and Visualize Professional.

Raw 3D printing material symbolizes infinite possibilities unlocked by the user’s creativity; however, if the raw material is mistreated and improperly handled, that potential vanishes. Making sure to take proper care of raw materials and store them in their intended conditions is the best way to ensure high quality prints. In times of extended shutdowns, or simply long hiatuses between prints, it’s imperative to store material properly.

Dark or light? No, we’re not talking coffee here. We’re talking about the SOLIDWORKS UI. For years now, there’s been the option to change the color of the interface as well as the icons. This functionality was introduced to SOLIDWORKS 2016. Before we talk about a light or dark interface let’s first talk about the icons.

When upgrading SOLIDWORKS and PDM applications to a new version, your existing files remain at the version in which they were created. If they remain this way, it will create delays when opening and reading these files since they will be undergoing conversions when opening. This can be seen as slow system performance, but luckily this doesn't have to remain an issue. In this article, we look at three ways in which you can upgrade your files to their latest version in SOLIDWORKS.

The Stratasys V650 Flex brings outstanding upgrades to the capabilities of Stereolithography 3D printing. Imagine the versatility of choosing your own materials with the only open-material system from Stratasys. With 2x the print capacity of competitor's models, open-material system capabilities and faster prototyping, you will not have to choose between quantity and quality. This powerful addition has a small footprint and will continue to print even if the power goes out.

International Women in Engineering Day is June 23! As technology and additive manufacturing improve, women and young girls have become more interested in pursuing an engineering occupation to transform the future. This year, we are celebrating ten women who continue to revolutionize the 3D printing industry by educating and inspiring others. 

As we've been exploring how to build a better electrical parts library in SOLIDWORKS Electrical, we've looked at set up of libraries, classification and how to import external or custom data. Having all your project-specific or company-specific data in one place helps you speed up your design process and also makes it easier to have access to all your part details. But how do you stay in control of who views or edits your libraries? How can you keep them organized? In part three of this series, we walk through the steps to relocate data within libraries, delete certain data and manage access permissions.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical comes with a huge default library of common parts right out of the box, which is very helpful in getting started right away. However, there could come a time where you will need to expand this library with more parts that better fit your project needs. Fortunately, there are different import options that allow you to easily add data to your SOLIDWORKS Electrical libraries. In this article, we will go over how to download, import and manually enter new part data.