solidworks 2010…decals

Another new feature in SolidWorks 2010 is the ability to view decals that you have inserted using PhotoWorks even without having PhotoWorks turned on or installed.  This is very nice functionality to have available to you because you may want to send a model with a decal on it to someone that does not have PhotoWorks and they will not be able to see it.

How is this done you may be asking.  Well to start off you are going to want to make sure you have a model that has a decal on it.  If you do not you will want to turn on PhotoWorks through Tools > Add-Ins and select PhotoWorks > Decal and this will lead you through the steps necessary to add a decal onto your model.

Once you have a decal inserted you will need to turn on the ability to view decals.  You can do this 3 different ways but in the end they will all give you the correct result.  These ways are:

1. View > Decals
2. Hide/Show Items (Heads-up View toolbar) > View Decals
3. View Decals (View toolbar)

Once you turn this option on you will be able to see your decals as shown in the picture below.

On another side note in regards to decals, you are now able to view decals in eDrawings which will be really nice for sending off a realistic model to a potential customer showing them exactly what their product may look like.

solidworks 2010…reference planes

Today I wanted to take a quick look at a redone feature that might make a case for the #1 enhancement in SolidWorks 2010.

Many of us, I would imagine, at one time or another struggled with getting reference planes to come in the right way in previous versions.  Maybe we have had to add a bunch of really unnecessary sketches to our feature tree in order accomplish what we were hoping to get.  That will change with SolidWorks 2010 as the entire Reference Plane PropertyManager has been completely revamped in order to be more “user friendly” and intuitive.

As you can see below you will notice a difference in the interface as soon as you launch the command.  The picture on the left is the 2009 interface while the picture on the right is the 2010 interface.

          &         

So right away you are being asked to start selecting some references so that SolidWorks can begin thinking about what kind of plane you are hoping to get.  If you would select a flat surface it will automatically select the distance option which would result in a plane a set distance from the surface you selected.  You can also select 2 circular surfaces and get a resulting tangency plane as show below.

If you notice in the picture above you will see that it says in the “Message” box that it is highlighted in green and says “Fully defined”.  However, when you select lets say a 3rd reference that does not work with the 1st 2 the “Message” box not turns red and tells you that you have an error as shown below.

You can see in the picture below that it is extremely easy now to flip the tangency back and forth.  Do you remember how much of a pain it is to do this in previous releases.

You can select edges for plane references as shown below.

And even vertex points as shown below.

All in all this is an awesome improvement.  There has been many times in my years running SolidWorks that I have been asked by other users about how to create a plane the right way.  Now this is hard but definitely a good question because of some of the steps that were needed to do this in previous releases.  Again, this is a great improvement which I am sure you will really enjoy!

solidworks 2010…revamped help & tutorials

So now we are in week 2 of previewing some of the changes that you can expect to see in SolidWorks 2010 and my blog reader is filling up quickly with all of the posts that the “SolidWorks Blog Squad” members are doing.  At weeks end I had a total of 33 posts covering a bunch of new & cool functionality from the upcoming release of SolidWorks 2010.

To start this week off I wanted to show you something that I mentioned in my overview post that I did last week Monday.  As I mentioned then one of the areas that the usability team at SolidWorks focused on was the help files and tutorials that you can reach from inside the SolidWorks interface.  The first thing that you are going to want to make sure that you do is make sure that the option to use the web help is turned on.  You can do this by selecting the drop down arrow next to the question mark in the upper right hand corner of the user interface.  The drop down you should get will look like the screenshot below.  You can see in the screenshot that I have the option to “Use SolidWorks Web Help” selected.

So once you get into the help files (see screenshot below) you will notice some slight differences from last year but for the most part all of the new functionality will be going on behind the scenes.  As I mentioned in my overview post this online help format will allow SolidWorks to continuously update the help files.  In other releases if something needed to be updated they would have to wait until the next service pack release but not anymore.  I personally feel that this is a HUGE step in the right direction towards getting the help files to a point where they actually help.  I give this enhancement and A++!

One other thing I noticed in the help files that I really liked was that the “What’s New” is included in the help files.  This will be a nice a quick way to check out what has been changed or added.  Also, this will allow for quick access to the tutorials that you can find in the what’s new PDF for selected features.

The other area that has been updated here is the tutorials.  They have added new tutorials for DimXpert, Electrical Routing, TolAnalyst, SolidWorks APU C#, SolidWorks API Visual Basic, SolidWorks API .NET, Design Check for Assembly with Mixed Mesh, and Design Check for Connectors.

For Simulation you can go to Simulation > Help > Simulation Online Tutorial to see these tutorials.

All in all I really like these updates, especially the revamped Help section.  I think that this will be extremely useful for all users.

solidworks 2010…mouse gestures

There have only been a handful of enhancements that you will notice when going from SolidWorks 2009 to SolidWorks 2010 but this is probably one of the biggest ones you will see.

SolidWorks 2010 offers a new feature called “mouse gestures” that allows you to simply RMB click and drag your mouse in 1 of 8 directions to activate this new feature.

Now to be honest with you when I first saw this in the “What’s New in SolidWorks 2010” manual I was a little skeptical.  My initial thought was that it was more eye candy and it was another thing to have to remember what commands you have mapped to these directional shortcuts.  However, after visiting SolidWorks earlier this month I saw that the employee doing the hands on session had some of his views (top, bottom, right, left, etc.) mapped to these mouse gestures and I immediately began to really like this new feature.

So let’s see exactly how this new feature works and what some of your options are.

The image that you see to the left is the new mouse gesture wheel that will pop up when you RMB click and drag in one of the 8 directions shown (as shown above).  For each of the 8 directions you have the ability to now assign a command shortcut.  These shortcuts are the same ones that you can add to toolbars, keystroke, or your shortcut bar.  No limitations (at least I don’t believe there are).

This wheel is available in 4 different modes that can be mapped completely independent of each other.  These situations are part, assembly, drawing, and sketch.  This acts a lot like the shortcut bar does being somewhat context sensitive allowing you to map different commands for whatever situation you may be in.

The wheel itself is somewhat customizable allowing you to select whether it is a 4 command wheel or an 8 command wheel.  You can see this in the upper right hand corner of the screenshot below.  You can also see that the spot to customize this is in the same location that you would use to customize your keyboard, menus, and toolbars.

Like I mentioned before, I was a little skeptical of this new feature when I first saw it but I am beginning to see more and more areas where it would be very nice.  So in closing I would like to encourage you to check it out when you switch over to SolidWorks 2010 and see how you could use this new tool.

solidworks 2010: heads-up view toolbar customization

In the 2nd actual SolidWorks 2010 feature review I will look at the ability to customize the heads-up view toolbar. 

In SolidWorks 2010 you are able to customize the Heads-Up View toolbar.  This toolbar now acts just like the rest of the toolbars in SolidWorks with how the customization works.  To customize this you can simply go to Tools > Customize > Toolbars and check or uncheck depending on what you would like to do.  The really cool thing is that now you can also add any command from the Tools > Customize > Commands tab to the Heads-Up View toolbar and you can have everything at the tip of your fingers.

In SolidWorks 2009 the way that you could turn it off was to uncheck all of the commands and then it would be gone.  However, you would need to remember to RMB click in the general area and check any commands you might want in order to turn it back on.  SolidWorks 2010 now gives you the ability to hide or show the toolbar by going to View > Toolbars > View (Heads Up).

I personally really like the ability to fully customize this toolbar now.  My normal SolidWorks UI has no toolbars and I do not use the command manager normally (see above screenshot).  The ability to add commands to this toolbar which is semi close to my working area could be a huge benefit for me.  I am really looking forward to playing with this option in a production environment and seeing just how nicely I can customize it.

solidworks 2010…solidworks installation manager

As mentioned in my previous post this is the beginning of a series of posts about some of the new functionality that you can expect to see in SolidWorks 2010.

When you get ready to install SolidWorks 2010 you will immediately begin seeing some improvements.  It all begins with the SolidWorks Installation Manager (SWIM) that immediately comes up as soon as you hit the download link through the SolidWorks Customer Portal or pop in the DVD that you receive from SolidWorks Corporation.  In years past there have been times, at least for me, where I seemed to fight with the SWIM in order to determine what I needed to download and where it was going to be installed among other things.

Right away you will begin to see some awesome improvements with the SWIM.  You notice on the screenshot below the new toolbar on the left hand side of the screen that gives you an idea of the step by step process that you are going to be doing along with telling you where you are in regards to this process.

As soon I you select what type of installation you would like to do (individual, administrative image, or download only) and select next it will jump you to the next step which is the serial number (see image below).  Now so far you may be noticing that the actual pages that you are going through look really similar to previous SWIM’s but it is laid out a lot nicer in my opinion.  If you have previously had a version of SolidWorks on your machine and have not deleted the registry keys or transferred the license, SolidWorks will automatically fill in your license number here.

Once your serial number has been validated through the system check page you will be sent to the summary page which will tell you what you will be downloading.  You will then be able to click on the download options link and you will have some more options similar to previous SWIM’s.  You can see a screenshot of this in the picture below.

The following 2 screenshots are pretty similar to what you have always seen during the download process and then during the installation process

Once the software has been downloaded and installed you will be taken to the finish page which will allow you to select a couple of options like how often you would like to check for updates and also if you would like to see the “What’s New in SolidWorks 2010” PDF.  As soon as you select your options you can select the finish button on the bottom right corner of the screen and you are ready to go.

When I visited SolidWorks Corporation in early August we had the opportunity to meet the Product Specialist for the Installation Manager.  There seems to be a desire from her and the rest of the SolidWorks team to make the installation process a lot more intuitive and easy to use from previous releases.

If you have played with the new SWIM and have some questions about it or are seeing it here for the first time and have questions please feel free to drop me a comment and I will be more than happy to send the Product Specialist an email with your questions.

solidworks 2010…overview

As most of you are aware SolidWorks 2010 is only a few months away from release (currently in Beta 2).  A few weeks ago a group of us bloggers had the awesome opportunity to go to the headquarters of SolidWorks Corporation and see first hand just what to expect in the upcoming release.

Similar to last year’s release SolidWorks 2010 was built around a focus of 3 different things.  These things were:

• improved work experience
• trusted reliability
• depth of function

The end goal for the developers was to make the end user be able to work smarter & faster during their day to day design process.  Over 30% of the development time was spent on the areas of performance, reliability, and predictability.  One example of this that was demonstrated to us while we were there was with the delete face feature.  In SolidWorks 2009 and previous versions the feature was a resource hog and took around 16 seconds to rebuild.  In SolidWorks 2010 when this was demonstrated in took right around 3.5 seconds.  Now that is an improvement if you ask me!

The developers also wanted to make sure that SolidWorks 2010 offered a better work experience for the end user.  Some of the areas they focused on in order to accomplish this was a completely revamped installation process using the SolidWorks Installation Manager (SWIM).  I will touch on this more in an upcoming post but let me say here that it is a big improvement in my eyes and is a lot more streamlined than the previous SWIM’s.

Another area that was improved in regards to the user experience is a whole new support system (help files).  By SolidWorks 2010 SP0 you will be able point your help files to an online database that is always being updated.  In other releases SolidWorks would have to wait for the next service pack in order to update the help files but not anymore.  Now there was some concern from the bloggers about SolidWorks having to always go out on the network in order to get these files and how it would affect the performance and also about IT departments that have blocked out various internet sites.  SolidWorks representatives said that the performance should not be affected by this and that you will also have help files locally on your machine in case you can not get them online.  If this is the case you just would not be able to benefit from the constantly updated support files.

The other area in regards to user experience that was mentioned was a more consistent and intuitive user interface.  Automatic FeatureWorks turn on when you edit an imported part and different functionality like quick access to move face are examples of this improvement.

All in all I think that SolidWorks 2010 is going to be a great release, even better than 2009 which in my eyes was a welcome release compared to SolidWorks 2008.  I appreciate that SolidWorks Corporation seems to be listening to the end users and are focusing on things like reliability and performance as opposed to all of the “flashy, cool” new products.

In the upcoming weeks I will be posting reviews of some of the SolidWorks 2010 highlights here.  Many of the other bloggers will also be doing reviews on SolidWorks 2010 that may overlap with what you see here.  The nice thing about reading some of these reviews from the bloggers is that many of us have different perspectives on new functionality because of how we use it so I encourage you to check out all of the “SolidWorks Blog Squad” blogs in the upcoming couple of months to see exactly what you can expect in this new release.  You can find links to these other blogs in the side bar on the right side of the screen.

SolidWorks Labs is at it Again…Treehouse

SolidWorks Labs has again released a really cool and useful new product that is available for you to download. A while back there was a lot of buzz about another SolidWorks Labs project called Presentation Studio which allows you to easily create a 3D PDF of your design so that you can send it off to your customer for easy communication. Not to be outdone, they have released another great product that will benefit a lot of companies. This new product is called Treehouse which allows you to completely lay out your entire SolidWorks assembly without even having to fire up SolidWorks. Below I have attached a screen shot of the product web page that goes a little more in depth of what this tool allows you to do.

Here is what I envision this product being REALLY useful for, at least for the company that I work at. Your company has just gotten a big project and it has been handed to the Director of Engineering. Instead of him having to relay everything they are thinking of for this project to the designer, they can now completely lay it out, including file names and custom properties, before they even lets the designer know that this project exists. Not only will a lot of the “grunt” work be done already but it will be easy to convey ideas during a pre-design meeting.

Once you export the tree structure out to SolidWorks you will have all of your documents created already and all of your parts will be inserted into an assembly under defined (except for the first file which will be fixed inside of the assembly).

This is a really nice tool and you owe it to yourself to check it out and see what it can offer your design group.

A Hidden Gem in SolidWorks 2009

Over the last week or so Mike Puckett has been blogging about some new hidden features in regards to printing that are included in SolidWorks 2009. You can find his posts about them here and here. I also have found a little hidden gem to will pay huge dividends for our company. As I mentioned yesterday, I attended a What’s New In SolidWorks 2009 event last Friday and discovered this little hidden feature that I had to share with you.

Over the past year or two I have had many conversations with the other designers about how nice it would be to have component suppress functionality without losing all of the mates that you have tied to that component. We usually suppress components when we don’t want them loaded into our memory but it is usually a slippery slope because you don’t want the components you are working on to be under defined position wise. Friday I discovered that our wishes had been granted and we will finally be able to do all of the above in SolidWorks 2009.

Unload Hidden Components

Sounds simple enough, huh? Well it is and its results can be enormous depending on your industry. As most of you know, when you suppress a component in an assembly you are taking that component out of memory, but remember, you are also taking all of the features and dependencies of that component out of your assembly as well. It is actually the same as deleting that component but you have the option to easily put it right back into memory and your assembly. When you hide a component, all you are doing is turning the display of that component off, nothing else. Everything tied to that component stay right where they are at in the assembly and everything stays fully defined.

This is the problem that our designers usually run into on a day to day basis. There are a lot of times where we are only working on a small section of the assembly and we want to turn everything else off and get it out of memory so that our assembly runs smoother. But we can’t always do that because of the mates to the components that we want off so we end up just dealing with it and count our losses. In SolidWorks 2009 we will be able to hide the components that we don’t want to see, unload hidden components and keep all our mates intact. So you ask, HOW?

The first step is to load up the assembly that you want to work on and hide all of the components other than the ones that you need to work on as you can see that I did in the picture below.

Once you have done this all you need to do is RMB click the assembly title in the FeatureManager tree and select “Unload Hidden Components” as you can see in the picture below.

DONE, just like that you have taken all of your hidden components out of memory while still retaining all of your mates. In order to load them back in all you need to do is show your hidden component and it is back into memory. You will notice that it takes a little longer for your components to show if they have been unloaded out of memory because it has to load them back in. I’ll take that trade off.

In conclusion, I give the SolidWorks development team an A++ for this new hidden functionality. It is like they read our mind on this tool. This functionality on top of all of the actual performance enhancements will make SolidWorks 2009 the best release to date for me (it has only been 4 releases, but still). All I have to say is keep up the great work on features like this SolidWorks, it makes each new release all the more anticipated.

SolidWorks 2009 Rollout Event

Last week Friday morning I attended a SolidWorks 2009 What’s New Event that was hosted by my reseller DASI Solutions. The event was hosted on the Grand Valley State University campus inside of the Eberhard Conference Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This rollout event was great. It was put together very well and included a lot of information to take home. Jim Byrne did a fantastic job walking through the What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 presentation that was put together and many in attendance seemed very excited about what SolidWorks 2009 had to offer. It is always amazing to me how much additional information you can gather when you watch someone else walk through something. I have seen my fair share of SolidWorks 2009 from beta testing to the pre releases to SP0. I have been to the SolidWorks headquarters to look at SolidWorks 2009 and also attended the SolidWorks 2009 Press Event last month in Barcelona, Spain. However, I still learned new hidden cool features that are included in this release of SolidWorks by watching Jim go through his presentation.

So here is my advice, attend as many of the SolidWorks 2009 rollout events that you can. I will almost guarantee that you will learn something new and cool at each one that you attend. I personally have 2 more events that I plan to attend that will include some sort of a What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 presentation.

If you have any additional questions about what you can expect at these events please contact your local reseller and find out when they are going to be having their next event. Also, pay attention to the SolidWorks User Group in your area as many of these are having some sort of a What’s New presentation at their upcoming meetings.