Tech Tips Page 4

It's the first day after the holiday season, and it's back to the grind for us here at TriMech. Our team is looking forward to an exciting new year. But first, we wanted to take a look back on what you loved in 2015.

With the recent release of SOLIDWORKS 2016 and the flurry of “What’s New” events behind us, I started thinking about new features that have been introduced in the last few years. Every new SOLIDWORKS software release brings brand new functions and tools, plus enhancements to existing commands and features. Here are a couple of my favorites you may have missed. 

Did you know SOLIDWORKS EPDM has the capability to create new folders and folder structures? With this feature, users can organize any project or product line into specific folders. By following the six steps below, you will never lose an important file again.

What is the one thing that all 2D sketches have in common?

As you may have guessed from the title of this article the answer is planes. Any time you create a 2D sketch in SOLIDWORKS you have to start that sketch on a plane or a planer surface. Since you will not always have a planer surface to sketch on, you have to become proficient in creating planes since it is crucial to modeling efficiently.

When applying restraints to fixtures in SOLIDWORKS, the reference plan tool can be used with high degrees of specification. With SOLIDWORKS 2015, customization of this feature is highly specific and allows you to apply multiple directional translations, including changing the normal direction of planes. 

When patterning a feature in SOLIDWORKS, you’ve surely been intrigued by the geometry pattern option. It doesn’t scream for attention, so it can be easy to gloss over or shrug off with simple ‘meh.’ But before you disregard it completely, you should know exactly what geometry pattern means and how it can reduce rebuild time and file size.

Sometimes we need to create a plane cut in SOLIDWORKS, but we only have information for three points of the plane. You can make this happen easily with surface cuts.

When importing files into SOLIDWORKS Composer, you may need to reorient the default vertical axis of the viewport to get the desired shadows and lighting effects. The process is quick and easy.

The latest release of SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM saw some great new enhancements and extended capabilities. It was hard to miss the new and improved Web 2.0 interface as well as the Microsoft Office EPDM Add-in. However, the same can't be said for some of the more subtle changes.

There are so many great features in SOLIDWORKS 2015 that we couldn't cover it all in one post. Part 1 of this six part series covered the SOLIDWORKS 2015 interface. In Part 2, we’ll discuss the new sketching features.

SOLIDWORKS 2015 includes numerous new features, both big and small, including changes to the interface, sketching, features, parts, assemblies and drawings.

We’ll go through each of these one-by-one in this six part series. In Part 1, we’ll talk about what’s new in the SOLIDWORKS 2015 interface.

Sometimes when creating or splitting routes in SOLIDWORKS Electrical, Splice Components need to be added. In this ModernTech Tech Tip, we'll show you the perfect way to simplify schematic design in a matter of seconds.