TriMech Blog

I was fortunate to have the opportunity as a high school student to learn engineering and architecture through a program similar to STEM. I used this as a stepping stone to go to college for mechanical engineering. Then I found a great career with a large automaker and started really learning about practical applications. 

I LOVE HALLOWEEN, I am a giant child! So, I decided to play around with some of the different technologies that we offer here at TriMech.

It's probably needless for me to say that technology is ever evolving. It’s amazing to see where we’ve come in the last 20 years when looking at the computers we work with and how we communicate, play and work. In the past five years, we've seen two areas that have been gaining a lot of traction: virtual and augmented reality technology (VR/AR). It’s fair to say that we’ve seen huge leaps in VR/AR when comparing even the last five years to the last twenty. Certainly, the underlying technologies like high-speed graphics, high-definition mobile displays and high capacity batteries have contributed to this boom, but also the diversity of applications the technology has brought to users. CAD seemed like a natural fit for VR/AR applications. Let’s take a look at what SOLIDWORKS has done with VR/AR over the years and where it looks to take it into the future.

With every new release of SOLIDWORKS, there are hundreds of enhancements. Some are brand new tools, while others are improvements to the already powerful SOLIDWORKS toolset. Along with the new functionality, you’ll find a lot of improvements to both the system and modeling performance that will amount to huge time savings. Here are some of my personal favorites in SOLIDWORKS 2019, which offer compelling reasons for why you should upgrade sooner rather than later to this version.

These days more and more consumer products are made with the ability to connect to the internet. Some common home appliances that you’ve always used, might now be able to connect to other devices. Refrigerators, microwaves, doors, coffee makers, lights – all these items are part of a category called IoT or the Internet of things.

Engineers often need to answer questions regarding heat transfer in their designs. As with many other things, the specific task or question being asked will determine what tool to use to get the best result. Here we look at answering the question of when to use Finite Element Analysis (FEA) vs. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in heat transfer problems.

The CommandManager in SOLIDWORKS is a fantastic dock for tools that allows users to view all their available “commands” or actions at once under specific category tabs. These category tabs can be customized, allowing each to be added or removed as needed, whether it's Features, Sketch or any of the other groups.

Are none of SOLIDWORKS' default weldment profiles working for your project? Check out this short step-by-step tutorial on using configured sketches to create your own custom weldment profiles.

(Click the images to enlarge.)

As a Pro|e-to-SOLIDWORKS convert, one of the first things I noticed that was vastly different between the platforms was the community. SOLIDWORKS users are simply more numerous, passionate and vocal. This is part of what makes SOLIDWORKS such a great platform! This passion for, not only the products we develop, but for the software itself - drives the direction of the development team which in turn brings hundreds of enhancements to an already feature-rich platform every year.

For those of you who have used Weldments for frame design and extrusions in SOLIDWORKS, you're probably aware of how easy they are to work with and create. However, you may not be aware that there are literally thousands of profiles that you can download for free directly in the software. 

>> Watch our On-Demand Webinar, Weldments Tips & What's New

SOLIDWORKS 2019 is right around the corner! We tuned into the live streaming event this September and got a peek of all the changes, capabilities and performance updates the upgrade is going to bring. We've tried to compile a complete list of Launch-Day links and resources in one place to make it easier for you to find all the highlights and details. 

Many people deal with importing models and translating data back and forth between SOLIDWORKS and other software on a daily basis. Requesting the proper file format for this move is imperative, but can be overwhelming. Read our blog to discover how to avoid errors and learn about the different options.