TriMech Blog

Sink Marks appear during the cooling process with injection molding and can be easily identified using SOLIDWORKS Plastics. Detecting them during the design phase saves time and money by avoiding manufacturing defects. Let's dive in to the ways in which you can utilize this software to easily spot the errors that cause these marks.

SOLIDWORKS Product Data Management (PDM) solutions are ideal to help you keep your project data organized and the latest version available for multiple teams during development. SOLIDWORKS Composer is used to create digital materials, documentation and technical publications all with the intent of giving customers and company stakeholders a better understanding of your product information earlier in the design process, lowering costs and speeding time-to-market. In this blog article, we look at how SOLIDWORKS PDM and SOLIDWORKS Composer work together to create more accurate output while saving more time when compared to a traditional product development workflow.

In our previous blog post, our software team shared with you some of the most useful tips they wished they knew when they started using SOLIDWORKS. In this continuation, we’ll take a look at what TriMech’s hardware team wished they knew when they started using SOLIDWORKS, and how some software updates have helped them in their pre-printing process.

A very powerful tool in SOLIDWORKS which can easily be customized is Mouse Gestures. Mouse Gestures provide shortcuts for up to 12 customizable commands using only a single right-click and drag motion. The gesture can be accessed by right-clicking anywhere in your workspace and then dragging the mouse towards a command on the wheel that pops up. Whether you are in a sketch, part, assembly or drawing, the wheel can be customized for each of the four workspaces.

Learn SOLIDWORKS in 5 Minutes!, Ultimate SOLIDWORKS Tutorial for Absolute Beginners, SOLIDWORKS Tutorial #80 – Simple and Effective. These are just a few of the titles of thousands of YouTube SOLIDWORKS tutorials. Nowadays, there is so much information available to us on the Internet and thousands of hours of videos about SOLIDWORKS specifically, but how helpful are they really? How do they compare with an officially licensed SOLIDWORKS training course? How do you choose the right video? In this blog article, we talk about self-learning on YouTube for free versus attending a live SOLIDWORKS training class.

We all remember the days when we first started using SOLIDWORKS. Many of us didn’t know a sketch from a sweep! There are so many useful tools within SOLIDWORKS and it can be daunting for new users to keep track of them. Whenever I teach our SOLIDWORKS Essentials class, at least one student will inevitably exclaim, “I wish I had known that months ago!” In this blog article, we’ll go over some of those essential tools you might not know about yet.

When creating Product Manufacturing Information (PMI) for industry standards, designers and engineers benefit from being able to add annotations on their 3D models. Thanks to SOLIDWORKS MBD, they can annotate and organize 3D data such as dimensions, tolerances, surface finishes, notes and Bill of Materials (BOM). This application helps in the automation of manufacturing processes such as tolerance analysis, machining and inspection. In this article, we will provide different examples through which the use of MBD was critical to creating designs for the military, compliant with the new MIL-STD-31000 A+B standard.

You are ready to learn SOLIDWORKS. Where do you start? Whether you are a beginner or self-taught, the best place to start is with training courses. Training is an invaluable investment, but we understand that there are alternative ways of getting more knowledge about SOLIDWORKS for free. We are here to help. 

Replication is a feature in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional that allows you to have a single vault that is used across many geographically separated locations. This increases the software’s performance and provides the user with a better experience. In this blog article, we’ll be focusing on three best practices that will help you replicate your vault in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional: building schemas, maintaining schemas and monitoring activity.

A day without using plastic parts is unimaginable. From consumer electronics to children’s toys, kitchen gadgets and medical devices, the use of components made from plastic materials has steadily increased. The majority of these plastics parts are produced through injection molding, the process of injecting liquefied plastic materials into a mold, cooling or solidification of the material and ejection of the molded part.  

Building assemblies and getting them to move is one of the most satisfying aspects of designing in a CAD environment. After designing all those parts we can assemble them and start to see just how they will act and react before the first part is ever manufactured. Analysis of movement gives us insights we otherwise would not have access to without producing a part or prototype. Are parts colliding? Do they fit together as intended? Can it be assembled and does its assembly require special tools? How much space near our machine is required for it to perform its task? The list of questions goes on. In this blog article, we will go over how to use tools within SOLIDWORKS to virtually test robotic movement without any physical mock-ups.

Stratasys 3D printers offer two main technologies through which multi-color printing can be accomplished. PolyJet technology is the most widely known that allows you to 3D print multi-color, multi-material parts and is known for its detailed and realistic results. Surprisingly, many people do not know that single-print, multi-colored prints are also possible when using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology. Using Stratasys 3D printers and GrabCAD Print software, the process is actually very simple.