SOLIDWORKS Video Tech Tips

If you need to work remotely or want flexibility when you work with your SOLIDWORKS licenses, online licensing might be for you. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we show you how to convert your SOLIDWORKS license to online licensing.

When it comes to creating sketches, we’re often looking for faster ways to do our daily tasks like editing or dimensioning. SOLIDWORKS gives us the power to speed those tasks through the Auto-Rotate and Numeric Screen Input system options. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we will share with you how you can use them to speed up your sketching in SOLIDWORKS.

Creating your 3D model begins with a good 2D sketch, the foundation of models in SOLIDWORKS. One of the core concepts when working with sketches is using relations to help define the position of sketch geometry. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we take an in-depth look at one of the more advanced relations – pierce.

Using layers can save time when it comes to your drawings. They act as a grouping to speed up formatting for your drawing information. Layers contain information about an annotation’s color, font and thickness. They can also be hidden from view on drawings and from prints. Check out this week’s Video Tech Tip to see how to create a layer and modify its properties.

SOLIDWORKS is the industry standard for design. What makes this possible is the diversity of tools and features that can be used to design just about anything. We like to say you’re only limited by your imagination but as you're designing, you'll find that in reality you only use a few tools. So, it makes sense to have these at your fingertips and customize the interface to your liking to help you get your job done faster. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we show you how you can customize the interface on the fly.

When creating a sketch, the geometry is just the first step. You will still need to add definitions like size and position to complete the sketch. This could be done manually by adding dimensions and relations to each individual sketch entity or it can be done automatically using the Fully Define Sketch function. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we are going to share with you how to use this function. It is a great time-saver when you want to quickly add definition to sketch geometry. Although with SOLIDWORKS your sketches don’t need to be fully defined, it is a best practice to add dimensions and relations to your sketch geometry. Fully Define Sketch offers a one- click way to do this. It’s also known as the auto dimension button.

Lines come together at a point. But it’s not always that straightforward in SOLIDWORKS. Sometimes the point is made by “virtually extending” lines to their intersection. This is known as a virtual sharp. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, Elite Application Engineer Chang Lee, shows you two ways to add virtual sharps in SOLIDWORKS. 

One SOLIDWORKS model can look or function in different ways. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, our Elite Application Engineer Chang Lee walks you through step by step how to leverage this command. He explains how to showcase various positions of your models using alternate position views in SOLIDWORKS. 

Every day it seems like we have to do more and more in less time. Well, the only way to do that is to get better and quicker with the tools you have. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we show you how to use two great keyboard shortcuts to help you make drawings in SOLIDWORKS quicker than ever before.

So, you want to move a sketch from one face to another? There are two ways to do it. One is a basic lesson taught in the beginning of the SOLIDWORKS Essentials training, while the other is a slick trick only power users know. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we’re going to show you both ways so you can easily move a sketch (or feature) to a different face

There’s no doubt that copy/paste is a beloved productivity enhancer. It’s something that we all use daily to help save time in applications like Word, Excel and even SOLIDWORKS. But SOLIDWORKS takes copy/paste to the next level with derived sketch. Think of derived sketch as copy/paste on steroids. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we share with you how this works and why it’s so great.

The power trim tool is a favorite among SOLIDWORKS users. It’s a handy tool to cut away, trim or sketch geometry quickly. We affectionately call it the SOLIDWORKS weed wacker, because it works in mostly the same fashion. In this week’s Video Tech Tip, we show you a little-known function of the power trim tool so you can leverage all of its functionality.