SOLIDWORKS Page 3

Having a data management system is crucial for any serious engineering or design firm that needs an organized and smart vault of their work and workflows. SOLIDWORKS PDM is a great tool for this because of how straightforward and flexible it is at maintaining the history of files, including all versions and revisions inside the vault. Depending on your workflow, your Version Control process can be fitted to your exact needs, nothing more and nothing less. In this article, I discuss my recommended top three SOLIDWORKS PDM tools that work in conjunction with version control to make managing these precious files as easy as possible.

Did you know that every license of SOLIDWORKS includes the SOLIDWORKS FloXpress application? FloXpress is a computational fluid dynamics tool that evaluates the flow of fluid in a single internal cavity within parts and assemblies. Once you run a calculation on the velocity field, problem areas in your design will pop up, and you can improve them before manufacturing any parts. Different from SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, which is meant for complex fluid analyses, FloXpress is specifically designed to analyze fluid flow in a fully enclosed volume that includes at least one inlet and one outlet.

With every release of SOLIDWORKS, we see the addition of hundreds of new features and enhancements – both big and small. It’s not always the incredible new feature or tool that makes the most significant impact on our daily design experience; sometimes it’s the little improvements that have the biggest impact. SOLIDWORKS 2020 has enhanced the surfacing capabilities, and although it’s a small improvement – it’s one of my personal favorites.

While COVID-19 continues to be a global concern, TriMech wants to ensure you that we are 100% committed to supporting you and your business in every possible way. One of those ways is by continuing to offer, and even expanding, our learning options. In today’s article, we'll quickly review the different professional digital training and certification options TriMech offers.

“So… should I show the customer ‘MasterAssembly-new-latest-USETHIS-keep’ or ‘MasterAssembly-final-DONOTDELETE-approved-updated’?” Thanks to data management tools like SOLIDWORKS PDM, these phrases in the office are a thing of the past. With SOLIDWORKS PDM, maintaining a file’s history and accessing the latest revision is second nature. Unfortunately, you’d need to be tethered to the PDM Vault to account for the latest updates, even with remote access. You know what would be even better for universal version control, especially when needing to show the latest file version on the fly? Taking the file confidence of PDM and wrapping it into an intuitive social platform, like 3DEXPERIENCE ENOVIA accessible anywhere you’re connected to the Internet.

When creating a model in SOLIDWORKS, changes are bound to happen. A key to this is creating a robust model. You’ll know if your model is sturdy if you try to make design changes and it does not show any failures or does not break. With SOLIDWORKS 2020, there is a new feature to help your models adjust to changes so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time modeling.

When it comes to designing a project, it is important to use revision management to track and control any changes that were done. Revision notes are important in the design process because they will specify who designed, approved and validated each revision in the project. This blog article explains how to use revision control which is beneficial for the user to track project design changes, making for a clear understanding of past, current and future designs.  

In this modern digital age, working from home and ensuring that business continues (mostly) as usual is not difficult. For those of us that work with SOLIDWORKS, that means bringing our work laptops home, or installing the application on a home computer. In today’s article, I’ll explain the different ways you can use your SOLIDWORKS license from home.

When you’re creating a design in SOLIDWORKS, it can get very complicated quickly. Going from 1, 10 or even 1,000 parts in an assembly can happen in the blink of an eye. Working on complex assemblies with multiple systems and collaborating between many designers can be a challenge, especially when work needs to reference other sub-assemblies. Now, with SOLIDWORKS 2020, you can use the new Envelope Publisher tool to make dealing with complex, large assemblies easy.

TriMech is fortunate to work with clients from Maine to Florida and out to Arkansas, offering a range of engineering solutions. This week's client story showcases how TriMech's Project Engineering Group (PEG) helped Digital Projections improve their display frames designs using SOLIDWORKS. 

Part numbers are used to identify and catalog different items. Intelligent part numbers are used to capture and display further descriptive characteristics of each unique item. Intelligent part numbers were developed at a time when storage databases were very expensive and not very prevalent. To recognize and understand the definition of a given part number, the number itself was defined using a descriptive meaning in each character or set of characters that make up the part number. Here is an example of an intelligent part number and its meaning.

Rigid flexible components are one of the most talked-about additions to SOLIDWORKS 2020. With this feature, you can visualize the movement of your design like never before. Things like springs, living hinges, cables and bellows come to life.