TriMech Blog

Decals make all the difference with your models. They are the little details that truly elevate your design from good to great and most models aren’t complete without them. So, what are decals and how do you use them in SOLIDWORKS?

Enterprise Data Management solutions are used for keeping your design data files organized and under control. Organizing your data in a vault, or central archive, is ideal for automating workflows, finding files and ensuring manufacturing teams have the latest file versions. If you’re a SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard or SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional user, there are ways to optimize the performance by using the benefits of the SOLIDWORKS Toolbox.

3D printing is currently leading the pack on the prototyping side of things. It’s fast, affordable and extremely easy to design parts. 3D printers use two main technologies, PolyJet and Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), each with its own set of considerations. There are several methods for creating plastic parts – at both the prototyping and production level as well as some best design practices for better parts result.

SOLIDWORKS 2019 is full of countless enhancements for parts, assemblies and drawings. One of the biggest enhancements to drawings in this release was an improvement to Bills of Materials (BOMs). BOMs have grown to ubiquity over the years as they are used by almost every designer for nearly every single assembly. 

3D printing a functional prototype is one of the most critical steps in the development of any product or solution. It allows for testing, hands-on fit and finish testing and the ability to make design iterations on the fly before the final product is made. It allows for problems and defects to be found quickly, saving you both time and money. Plus, prototyping can be done in 5 easy steps.

At its core, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a collection of cloud-based software applications for 3D design, analysis, simulation and communication. It allows team members to be in the same environment looking at the same data and the same files in order to make changes and comments in real time. Just like with a smartphone, there are different applications available for the platform to customize the experience for your specific project needs. And since the platform is cloud-based, all of what we are about to talk about is accessible through a web browser, not a dedicated computer.

SOLIDWORKS 2019 comes with dozens of features that expand on the robust toolset we have been using for decades. We're eager to share with you the newly expanded capabilities of the Offset on Surface tool which now includes Geodesic Entities. Through the offset on the surface command, you can now add an offset that is defined as either a geodesic offset or a Euclidean offset.

In our previous blog, we discussed my need to design a case for my Raspberry Pi, and why I chose SOLIDWORKS xDesign to do it. In part two of this series, I will look at one of the options for creating my design: FDM 3D printing. The entire process from start to finish was easier than you may think. 

SOLIDWORKS xDesign is a cloud-based application that is part of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. One of the most convenient and coolest features is the ability to model from any place with an internet connection. I recently needed to design and create a case for my new Raspberry Pi circuit board and decided to use xDesign to do it, which saved me a lot of time and effort.

SOLIDWORKS 2019 builds upon the ground-breaking touch modeling innovations introduced last year in SOLIDWORKS 2018 and offers even more enhancements for working on touch-enabled devices. There’s now a wealth of innovative new productivity enhancement that lets you take advantage of the latest cutting-edge hardware technology. 3D CAD modeling on a touch screen PC such as a Microsoft Surface or a Windows 10 PC is now even better. Currently, more entity types are supported when sketching with a pen or stylus, dimensions can be created by writing directly on thr screen and the intuitive touch-optimized environment supports even more everyday design workflows.

Yes, but not really. Here's how.

"Can SOLIDWORKS run on a Mac?" is a question we get all the time. Unfortunately, the answer is no, it does not run natively on a Mac. It can only be installed on a Windows environment. So, the question then becomes "How can I run SOLIDWORKS on a Mac and how well does it perform?" Let's talk about how to get SOLIDWORKS running on your Mac and what you can expect in terms of performance with this kind of set up.

New to SOLIDWORKS 2019 is the slicing tool which creates 2D sketch sections at the intersection of geometry and a reference plane. It's extremely powerful because it can be used with traditional SOLIDWORKS geometry as well as mesh geometry and even graphics bodies.