rocksolid perspective - jason raak

add a new hole type to the hole wizard

Have you ever wanted to add a hole type to the hole wizard in SolidWorks.  In a manufacturing environment you have common holes that you use such as reams or dowels.  Now you could just use the standard drill holes that are in the hole wizard BUT when you use the hole callout function in your drawings it will call them out as a drill and not a ream or a dowel.  This could pose huge problems for when you go to assemble your tool.  Here is a quick little way around that situation.

1.)  Go to Tools > Options > System Options > Hole Wizard / Toolbox and select Configure OR go to Start > All Programs > SolidWorks XXXX > SolidWorks Tools > Toolbox Settings.

2.)  Select and click on the standard that you would like to copy for your new standard.  It will more than likely be either ANSI Inch or ANSI Metric.

3.)  On the top of the screen you will notice an icon that will allow you to copy the standard.  Once you click on that button it will prompt you to name your new standard.  Name your new standard and select the green check mark.

4.)  If you have successfully completed this you will notice that SolidWorks is now creating a new standard.  In my case, I named my new standard “PRESS FIT DOWELS”.

5.)  Once it has been created, you will now notice it on your main screen with the rest of your standards.

6.)  Select your new standard and turn off everything that you do not want to keep.  In my case I am turning off everything but fractional drill holes.  You can see this in the next 3 images.

7.)  Once you have completed this, select option 2 on the top toolbar of your screen (next to the Save button).  Once you have moved to “2 – Customize Hardware” select your newly created standard.

8.)  Click through the necessary screens until you arrive at a screen that looks like below.  Now turn off all of the holes that you do not want to appear.  In my case I only want to be able to use a 1/4”, 5/16”, 3/8”, 7/16”, and a 1/2” press fit dowel.  Once you have turned off all of the ones you do not want to use, click Save and close the program.

9.)  Now you will want to find the calloutformat.txt file.  This is by default located at C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidWorks\lang\english.  Open the txt file and add a standard at the bottom.  To find out how to do this click here.  Save your calloutformat.txt file and close it.

10.)  Now open SolidWorks and start the hole wizard tool.  Click on the corresponding Hole Type icon which in my case is a drill hole and in the Standard dropdown, select your new standard.  You will notice that the sizes dropdown only include the hole sizes that you left checked.  Note:  Your new standard will only appear in the Standards dropdown on hole types that it has.

11.)  Now create a drawing of your part and using the Hole Callout function (located on the Annotation toolbar) dimension your holes.  You will see that the callout looks exactly like you called for in the calloutformat.txt file.

I hope this little trick will make your life easier and eliminate possible problems that you have currently come across.

make your older programs run seamlessly in windows 7

This week I ran into a little bit of a snag while upgrading our last engineering workstation to Windows 7.  The workstation that I was working on needed to have AutoCAD 2002 installed on it in order to deal with some legacy data that we still have in the system.  My original plan was to install it normally in Windows 7 and then change it to run in Compatibility mode by switching to this option in the properties of the application (you can see how to do this by clicking here).  But, as most CAD Administrator and/or IT Professionals know usually things like this do not go as smoothly as planned.

At first glance everything seemed to work fine but once the designer started using AutoCAD again he ran into some serious problems.  When he opened up some pre-existing files some of the text was either missing or completely unformatted.  I traced the problem down to that AutoCAD 2002 uses a font format extension of .shx while all of the new Windows operating systems using a True Type Format (.ttf).  So our first option was to go through and switch all of the text to a TTF font but some of the dimensions were not even available to select in order to change.  This is when I remembered a tip that Jeremy Regnerus shared in his “Seven Tips for Windows 7” screencast in the Tips for Engineers Screencast Series that SolidWorks is doing.

Windows XP Mode!  What this does is install a virtual Windows XP machine on your computer that will allow you to install and run older programs on your new computer.  In order to use this tool however you will need to install some programs from the Windows Virtual PC website.  You can see this website in the picture below.  Once you select your operating system and language you will be presented with 3 files to download (step 3).  Install these in the order the Windows suggests and you will be ready to start using this great tool.

Once it is installed you will notice a new folder in your Start menu called Windows Virtual PC.  In the picture below you can see that I have also installed AutoCAD 2002 on my virtual Windows XP machine so I also have a subfolder called Windows XP Mode Applications.  The 1st time you start Windows XP mode you will be required to set up a user account with a password.  I just used the same password that is required on the Windows 7 machine to join our network.  I figured this would be easy for the user to remember.

When you get Windows XP Mode setup you have some options on how you would like to access the programs you have installed on it.  The 1st option is to click the application link in the Windows XP Mode Applications folder (in my case this would be AutoCAD 2002).  When you do this you will see a window popup similar to the one shown below saying that Windows 7 is starting the virtual application.

Once it loads you will see your application as shown below.  It look as if you are still fully working in Windows 7 but with ALL of the compatibility of Windows XP.  This is a great way to go because you still have quick access to all of your Windows 7 applications and drives.

The other option is to start Windows XP mode first which will result in a windows as shown below.  This works exactly like Windows XP did. 

From there you can launch your older program and it will look and function like it always did in Windows XP.

Both options are great functionality and give you the same result.  A fully compatible older application being able to run on your brand spanking new machine!  One thing that I have not tried to do is see how something like SolidWorks 2007 runs using this tool.  A little while back I installed SolidWorks 2007 on my Windows 7 machine out of curiosity and it was ugly.  But by using this tool I would imagine that it should work seamlessly similar to AutoCAD.

Thanks Jeremy for tipping me off on this tool!