windows vista readyboost & solidworks

Last week there was some buzz on Twitter about a new Windows Vista feature that is called ReadyBoost.  What is ReadyBoost you are asking?  Compliments of Microsoft.com here is an explanation.

Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC’s performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.

Windows Vista introduces Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory "under the hood."

Windows ReadyBoost improves system memory and boosts performance.

The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows SuperFetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.

It’s easy to use Windows ReadyBoost. When a removable memory device such as a USB flash drive or a secure digital (SD) memory card is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, you are asked if you want to use this device to speed up system performance. You can choose to allocate part of a USB drive’s memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.

Source:  Explore the features: Windows ReadyBoost

When I first began using Windows Vista I noticed this feature but never really looked into it much.  After some thought I realized that this feature can have some major benefits for people that have SolidWorks on a Vista machine.  Not too long after I read that Devon Sowell had started using ReadyBoost on his revamped Windows Vista 64bit machine when he wrote a quick blog post about this boot times between a XP 32bit and a Vista 64bit system.  This led me to really begin thinking about this option for my personal laptop which is running Vista 32bit.  So last week I started asking some question on Twitter that led to more people jumping in and showing interest.  Not to long after, Devon posted another great article titled “Vista64 ReadyBoost Warp Factor 10” which stated that the start up time for SolidWorks 2009 on his XP Pro platform was around 120 seconds.  Now with his new system (Vista 64bit) and using ReadyBoost his boot time was down to 8 seconds.  Amazing!

By the time that he had posted this article I was already on the road to our local electronics store to buy a 8GB thumb drive (here is the one that I bought on sale for $19.99).  I made sure when I got to the store that it would work with Windows ReadyBoost (even double checked it on my iPhone while standing there) because at the time I was led to believe that not all thumb drives would work with this new feature.  I felt pretty good on my way back and I was really excited to see the gains that I would get with this new option being utilized.  My excitement quickly died as I plugged the thumb drive in and I received the message that it was not compatible to run Windows ReadyBoost.  Frustrating…yes, Defeated…no!  On the web I went and I came across a great article that tells you have to use ANY thumb drive to work with Windows ReadyBoost.  With a few registry hacks you can get it to work and now mine is a lean mean ReadyBoost thumb drive machine.  You can read that article here.

I have not done any official time testing with SolidWorks because I haven’t had the time to sit down with it yet and play but this is one thing that I did test.  I ran my personal laptop (Vista 32bit) with ReadyBoost alongside my work desktop (Vista 64bit) without ReadyBoost and my personal laptop started SolidWorks up around 8 seconds faster.  My personal laptop is considerably smaller than my brand new work desktop but it still started SolidWorks quicker with the help of ReadyBoost.

I hope this article helps out anyone that is running Vista and SolidWorks.  If you haven’t already checked out Windows ReadyBoost you need to find time to look into it and utilize it soon.

the ins & outs of in context modeling

As most of you know that visit my blog on a normal basis, SolidWorks WORLD 2009 posed a different opportunity for me.  This year marked the 1st time that I did a technical breakout session at the event.  The topic of my session was called “The Ins & Outs of In Context Modeling”.  Now I have done some presentations before at the user group level but never at a conference the size of SolidWorks WORLD.  I was very relieved when I received my time slot information and found out that it was on Monday afternoon.  This allowed me to enjoy the rest of the conference without having to worry or think about my time on stage.  It took a little prodding from a friend of mine to even submit an abstract for consideration but now that the conference is done and I have my first presentation under my belt I am very happy that I did and I had a great time doing it.

In context modeling as a whole can be a very touchy subject around the SolidWorks community.  Without the proper training, best practices, etc. it can result in unstable models and assemblies and can cause major headaches and possibly even nightmares from time to time.  This is what I wanted to base my presentation around for those in attendance.  I covered such things as what to include in your best practice standard, relations tips & tricks, different modeling techniques, and much more. If this is a topic that interests you I encourage you to download my presentation (PDF format) and check it out.  You can download it either by clicking here or on the image below.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have as well by dropping me a line.  To do that click here.

a little here, a little there

SolidWorks Pack & Go.  Do you use it?  I use this tool all of the time.  The ability to take an entire assembly and save it off, keeping all of its relations, into another file structure.  Well the 1 pet peeve that I always had was if I wanted my assembly in a top level folder but all of the other components in a sub assembly it got kind of scary at time.  Take the image below for example.  I want the assembly that I am using the Pack & Go on to be in this folder, BUT I want the components of the assembly in the 150-1 press components folder.  What I used to end up doing was sending them all to the 150-1 press components folder, manually moving the assembly back up to this folder, and then as soon as I open the assembly redirect the components to the folder that they were in.  Man, that whole explanation even made my head spin, confusing I know.  Well there is a way to get around this that is MUCH, MUCH more stable and very simple.

To start, open up your assembly and go to File > Pack & Go.  Once you have done this you should see a screen like the one below.

Towards the bottom you will see a spot that says “Save to folder”.  Hit the browse button and select the folder that you would like to save your new assembly to.  As you can see below I have selected the 150-1 press components folder that we discussed earlier.  As it stands right now all of my files will be saved into that folder as you can see by the path of all of the files under the “Save To Folder” column.

Here is where you can get a little tricky with the Pack & Go functionality.  If you double click on the Save to Folder cell of the assembly (should be the top item) you will get a dialog box that looks like the one below.  Notice how the original folder contains the path that you told it earlier (150-1 press components).  By hitting the browse button along side the New folder name area you can select the top level folder instead.

As you can see below you have now told SolidWorks to send the assembly to the folder called sta. 11 pierce but the rest of the components are going to the 150-1 press components folder.

Just like that you have sent the files into the desired locations that you would like as shown by the image below.

This is a very nice way to keep your filing system clean and stable when you are using the Pack & Go tool.  I hope this helps anyone that has dealt with this kind of thing in the past.

Where Have You Been All My Life? Lesser Known Functions

So everyone has probably returned from SolidWorks WORLD now and is trying to get back in the day to day grind, at least for the next 345 days until SolidWorks WORLD 2010 in Anaheim.  Well, I am back at it also and stumbled across a function today that I can’t remember if I knew existed or not but for sure do not use.  Here it is, the ability to rotate around a vertex, edge, or a face.  Now I may just be falling off my rocker, a little case of relapse after a week off but I accidentally stumbled into this command and really liked it.

So you are either saying to yourself right now, this dude has lost it and better retake his essentials course or how the heck do you do it?  Well, no matter what you are saying I am going to share it with you, so here is how to do it.  To start with you need to know about the middle mouse button (mmb) click option.  Your mouse probably has this option as long as 1) it has a middle mouse button and 2) it didn’t come across on the pond with the pilgrims.  If I were to guess, a lot of your are clicking away furiously right now on your mmb because it is kind of fun and something that you don’t do all of the time, right.  By the way, if you do it 5 times in a row, then left mouse button click 2 times, then right mouse button click 4 times, then back to the mmb for 3 more times you will get a special treat on my site.  Alright, back to the point.  So here is what you have to do to get this feature to work.

1.)  Open up a part or an assembly (obvious, right?)

2.)  Middle mouse button CLICK on a vertex, a face, or an edge (notice how the face turn’s magenta instead of blue).  Now your icon will turn into the rotate icon but it will also include an axis through the middle of the icon.

3.)  Hold down the mmb and rotate away

Nifty, huh?  If you want to see kind of a not so good video (still working on my video creation skills) of this you can check it out below or here.

Some other better known middle mouse button features are:

1. Hold down Alt and the mmb and you can roll the view
2. Hold down Ctrl and the mmb and you can pan around your screen
3. Hold down Shift and the mmb and you can zoom in and out

So there you have it.  Maybe a little hidden functionality that you were not aware of.

Still looking for that special treat on my site by doing the clicking song and dance?  Alright, I may have misled you a little bit but I will give you this to enjoy.  Check out this video and fast forward to the 75:00 minute mark.  Now that is funny!

SolidWorks 2009 Textures…Why the Change?

Some of you may have noticed that in SolidWorks 2009 all of the appearances, textures, materials, etc. are grouped into 1 area. What I could not find was how to add just a texture to a face like you could in SolidWorks 2008 and previous. It seemed to just be missing from the equation. Well after I did some research, and with some help from Jeff Sweeney and Ricky Jordan, I got it figured out (at least I think I do). I was given these two links that show you how to get your textures back and how to handle them once you get them inserted on your part. The key is to follow these links in the order that they are here.

1. What’s New in 2009 - Textures ?? (Randy Simmons, 3DVision Technologies)
2. SolidWorks 2009: Goodbye Colors. Hello Appearances! (Ricky Jordan, RickyJordan.com)

So why change something that isn’t broke? I understand the thought process behind combining all of these features into 1 single location, and I like the idea. The one thing I don’t like is that it does not include EVERYTHING that it needs to and you have to do the above workarounds to get your textures back. This is coming from a frustrated Engineer and CAD Administrator (was frustrated) and not a programmer. If I had any idea of what it takes to program a software like SolidWorks I would probably understand how some of this happens.

This goes for all of the bugs and quirks that you will find from service pack 1 all the way to service pack 4 or 5. I do not know if it is possible for ANY company to ever create a software that is 100% perfect, that will work with every system configuration, every design situation you could run into, etc. etc. So I guess what I am saying is give these software companies a break from time to time. Each year it seems to be a bigger and bigger band wagon of people that like to tear the software company apart because they are getting software with bugs and glitches in it. This is not only for SolidWorks but for any software company.

There you have it, enough of my ramblings. So to wrap this post up, if you want your textures back like you had in SolidWorks 2008 and previous…follow the (2) links above (in order) and voila…you will get them back.

Do the Workaround!

Sounds kind of like some crazy dance from the 70′s doesn’t it? Well after I found this workaround I was dancing around my office like it was 1972!

Ever since switching to SolidWorks 2009 I have noticed that I have been unable to resize the shortcut bar (“S” key) when I was customizing it. This caused me to get kind of frustrated because it would not allow me to properly position my commands how I wanted them. So I figured that I would post the question on solidjott.com and see if anyone else was having the same issue. Now, if you haven’t already checked out solidjott.com you need to do it now (well on 2nd thought finish reading this post and then check it out). Anyways, I posted the following question and realized that others were experiencing the same issue as I was.

hey everyone! i am running 64 bit vista ultimate with solidworks 2009 sp2.0 ev 64 bit. has anyone experienced the inability to resize the shortcut bar with these settings? it is not a early visibility issue because i have had this problem since sp0.0. please let me know, it is not a show stopper but can be kind of annoying!

After I got some comments from others that were having the same problem I started to look into it a little bit more and found a service request in the SolidWorks Knowledge Base that explained this problem and a workaround to fix it. If you run a dual monitor setup (which most do probably) you probably will experience this problem if you are running SolidWorks on the secondary monitor. In order to resize your shortcut bar you will now need to move SolidWorks over to the primary monitor, resize it, then move SolidWorks back over to your secondary monitor. VOILA, it works! Now I hope that SolidWorks fixes this in an upcoming service pack but for the time being you will need to do this workaround.

Now that we got that out of the way, go check out SolidJott. It is an awesome new SolidWorks Q&A site that includes an add on that will allow you to use it right inside the SolidWorks Task Pane. What that means is that you will no longer have to switch between SolidWorks and the web if you are experiencing a problem of sorts and are looking for some feedback from fellow SolidWorks users. Ben Eadie has done an unbelievable job with this site and add on and deserves all the credit. Solidjott.com is often populated with quite a few of the SolidWorks power users that are chomping at the bit to answer your question or concern.

Engineering & Sales Communication…3D PDF

As most engineers know there is need for an easy communication method between the engineering department and the sales department and in turn the customer. When you are using a 3D modeling program, such as SolidWorks, you have to make a decision whether a 2D document will be good enough or is 3D a necessity in order to get the most out of your design ideas. A program like eDrawings which SolidWorks offers is a great tool for communicating internally at your company and to your customers but it always has the drawback that whoever you are sending the file to needs to have some sort of a viewer installed in order to see it. This may not be a big deal but it can be to some people. eDrawings is a tool that we use quite frequently at my company but every now and then you run into a situation while using it that hinders the paths of communication.

Over the past couple of months there has been some buzz in the SolidWorks community about a SolidWorks Labs product called Presentation Studio. I have briefly played around with this SolidWorks add on and it looks great but again you need to install additional software and so on. However, this finished project is really nice and it will make your “presentation” stand out from the rest. If you haven’t already tried it, play around with it and see what you think. I personally think that the people in the SolidWorks labs are on to something great here. To see some great reviews of the product check out these links by various members of the “SolidWorks Blog Squad”.

• SolidWorks: Heard! – Episode 183 – Presentation Studio (podcast)
• SolidSmack – SolidWorks Users Crave Useful Add-In. Get Presentation Studio
• Mike Puckett’s Blog – Free 3D PDF Creation Software From SolidWorks Labs

There is also an easy way to create a 3D PDF of you model without installing any additional software and the only prerequisite that the recipient of your file needs in Adobe Reader 8 or newer (I believe Adobe 8 is the cutoff). Most companies have this program already installed on their computer for viewing 2D PDF’s so it won’t be an issue 99% of the time. Now understand, this 3D PDF that you create will be about as plain as they come but it will get your design across. It also includes some hidden functionality that is very nice by using the RMB when viewing the file. Here is what you need to do to create this simple communication file.

1. Open the SolidWorks model that you need to send someone in 3D.

2. Go to File > Save As…

3. In the “Save as type” dropdown you need to select Adobe Portable Document Format (*.pdf). Once this is selected you will have checkbox that appears that says “Save as 3D PDF”. Make sure this is checked otherwise you will get a 2D PDF of your SolidWorks model.

4. Simple as that…you now have a 3D PDF of your model. By looking at the picture below you would think that it is just a 2D picture but you can rotate it around by holding the LMB. To pan in and out you need to hold down the RMB.

You now have a 3D PDF that you can send to your sales department or to a customer to portray your ideas. But the functionality doesn’t end there. By simply clicking on the RMB you will get a list of additional functionality that is available to you. These include the ability to walk around your model, fly around it, show it shaded with edges, etc. etc. etc.

If you would like to see the 3D PDF that I show here you can open it by following this link.

I hope this helps you and your company to communicate better both internally and to your customers.

SolidWorks 2009… A Great New UI Enhancement

I have read about all of the great new enhancements in SolidWorks 2009 but sometimes you don’t realize how nice they will be until you actually see them in action. As is the case with the above picture. This morning I was working on a component and had added a feature above the chamfers in my FeatureManager tree. Well it caused some errors with missing references for the chamfers so when I went in to fix them I received this nice preview of what was going on. First you will notice in the graphics window that it is showing the ghost images of where my chamfers used to be along with it being highlighted in the PropertyManager. This is great because it will allow me to quickly delete missing references and re-associate them to new faces or edges (in the case of chamfers or radii).

If you haven’t already switched to SolidWorks 2009 you can download SP1 in the Downloads and Updates page of the SolidWorks Customer Portal as long as you are a subscription customer. To see a list of some of the things that were fixed in SP1 you can check out the Fixed SPR’s page or download the What’s New in SolidWorks 2009 PDF document.

Drop me a comment of other new features that you like even more after seeing them in action.

Quick Conversions On The Fly

How many of you have to do a fair amount of dimensional conversion between inches, millimeters and centimeters?

At our company we do all of our modeling in inches but there are a fair amount of our customers that send us hard copy prints that are fully dimensioned in metric units. I would then have to spend some time manually converting these dimension over to inch so that we could model the part correctly. It worked but it ate up time that I could be designing. Well, I found out the other day that there is a easier way to do this without having to go into Tools>Options every time and change my units for that file and then when I was done have to go back in there and change them back to inch units.

You can do it right inside your dimension input boxes while you are sketching/dimensioning. I know there are probably a lot of you that are saying to yourselves right now…he is just finding this out? The answer is yes, I know, I am ashamed but I figured that if I just found this out there may be others out there that don’t know you can do it also. Back to quick conversions, when you add a dimension to a sketch or feature you get a dimension input box as shown on the right. To do your conversion all you need to do is enter in the number you need converted followed by the unit it is currently in (i.e. mm, in, cm) as you can see in the picture below. Simple as that!

SolidWorks & Vista…Give Me Those Icons Back!

About a month ago I made the switch to Windows Vista Ultimate from Windows XP. For the most part I am really happy about making the move but there was one thing that really, I mean really, bothered me with Vista. In Windows Explorer you were forced into having a thumbnail preview of each file as opposed to the SolidWorks icons for parts, assemblies and drawings. Some users like the thumbnail preview but I am not one of them. I like to be able to quickly tell what kind of file I am looking at by just looking at the icon, especially since our assembly file names include nothing to differentiate them from our part file names.

So for a while after I starting using Vista I searched around on the web for a solution to this problem but I quickly found out that I was not the only one that had this pet peeve and no one seemed to know how to correct it. The option that SolidWorks includes it it’s Tools>Options (see below) doesn’t work with Vista so it is something that I just figured I would have to live with. Well, not anymore! I stumbled across the solution today when I was making some performance adjustments and now I am a happy camper.

So here is what you have to do to get those beautiful little icons back in your folders. Right click the Computer icon (or name in your Start menu) and select Properties. From here you will want to select Advanced system settings.

The System Properties window will pop up and you will want to select Settings in the Performance group box.

Once you select that the Performance Options window will appear that has a bunch of different options available to you. You can “Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer”, “Adjust for best appearance”, “Adjust for best performance” or “Custom”. The option that you will want to make sure is UNCHECKED is Show thumbnails instead of icons. Once you select this your choice will automatically switch to “Custom”.

VOILA!

You will now be able to see the plain SolidWorks icons as opposed to all of those small thumbnail previews that you can hardly see anyways. Please note that this is universal for all of your icons however, so your pictures, PDF documents and everything will show a icon instead of the thumbnail but I can handle that if I can get my SolidWorks icons back.