TriMech Blog

Ready to maximize your efficiency in the new year? These free resources are great for identifying small improvements for your day to-day task or finding solutions that address an engineering, design or manufacturing challenge. We have compiled a list of helpful options when it comes to learning more or just needing a reference. Whether you only have a few minutes or you are ready for a week long course, we have resources created by industry experts at your fingertips.

Instead of struggling to convert CAD files from third-party systems, 3D Interconnect is used as an add-on feature to SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium that allows users to interact with third-party CAD data directly inside of SOLIDWORKS.

DriveWorksXpress is the ideal tool to help you with everyday repetitive design tasks. Included in every license of SOLIDWORKS, it allows you to create multiple variations of parts, assemblies and drawings, quickly and accurately. 

In October, we 3D printed some cool-looking lollipops on our Stratasys J-series PolyJet 3D printer to showcase the life-like quality that can be achieved with Vero and Agilus30 materials. Keeping up with the candy theme for the holidays, I thought it would be fun to create an incredibly life-like jawbreaker on the J750, which also provides an exciting opportunity to go over the Part Priority feature in GrabCAD Print. This feature helps novice modelers and users of CAD software that don’t make great watertight models create amazing 3D printed parts, exactly how they want them to be without needing to go back and fix their models.

Expanding your SOLIDWORKS knowledge to optimize your skills and your resume can be a daunting task when looking at the many certification types. The Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert (CSWE) certification is considered an industry benchmark for 3D design and is a strong addition to your portfolio of SOLIDWORKS knowledge. There are two variations that allow you to specialize in a specific area. We will cover each one, as well as the prerequisites that must be completed before taking the CSWE.

Desktop Metal recently announced the launch of its new Shop System, the world’s first metal binder jetting system for machine shops. Shop owners will now have access to the high-quality binder jetting technology to print end-use metal parts at a faster rate, with more quality and efficiency. With this latest addition, Desktop Metal now provides a solution for the full metal production cycle and fills the last gap in its product line.

3D printing has revolutionized many industries, and the field of dentistry is no different. Due to the numerous benefits of 3D printing, dentists are finding various ways to implement it into their practices. One of the most significant advantages that 3D printers offer for is the production of multi-material elements. Dental 3D printers can simultaneously print a range of cases from implant models with soft tissue and custom-fit surgical guides, aligner setups and indirect bonding trays, a variety of restoration mock-ups and more.

Expanding your SOLIDWORKS knowledge to optimize your skills and your resume can be a daunting task when looking at the many certification types. The Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional (CSWP) certification is considered an industry benchmark for 3D design and is one of the first steps in building your portfolio of SOLIDWORKS knowledge. It is also a pre-requisite to more advanced certifications. There are four variations that allow you to specialize in a specific area. We will cover each one, as well as the basic courses recommended by SOLIDWORKS that should be completed before taking the CSWP.

MakerBot recently announced that it was further expanding the material capabilities of its Method platform with a new experimental MakerBot LABS print head and what they are calling the "Partner Materials Development Program." This opens up the Method platform to use a potentially unlimited number of materials as filament suppliers can now qualify their 3D printing materials for the platform in-house. Engineers and designers can discover the resulting pre-qualified materials from leading filament companies to explore new 3D printing applications.  

The Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Printer is here to help you reduce your production time by allowing you to print various jobs at once, one after the other. This smart, modular, FDM manufacturing automated printing system will enable you to produce multiple parts quickly without any interruptions and with a variety of colors.

I have been a SOLIDWORKS user for about six years, using it mostly for CAD, but sometimes for running my designs through structural simulation analysis. The CAD software I used prior to SOLIDWORKS was slower and this process took extra time to set up. I had to export and import .STEP files between different software, and even though it worked in the end, it seemed like running simulations took forever. My experience since changing to SOLIDWORKS Simulation has been very different. In this blog article, I show you how I used SOLIDWORKS Simulation to run a simple static study.

Expanding your SOLIDWORKS knowledge to optimize your skills and your resume can be a daunting task when looking at the many certification types. The Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate (CSWA) certification is one of the first steps in expanding your SOLIDWORKS knowledge and is mainly taken by new users and students. There are five variations that allow you to specialize in a specific area. We will cover each one, as well as the basic courses recommended by SOLIDWORKS that should be completed before taking the CSWA.