Register for an Upcoming DriveWorks Design Automation Webinar

Have you been using DriveWorksXpress to automate your SolidWorks designs? Are you ready to take the next step and increase your design automation functionality with DriveWorks Solo? Or, are you just starting out with DriveWorksXpress.  Either way, DriveWorks is offering the following FREE informational webinars to get you started down the path of automating your designs. 

Join us for the following webinars to see how automating can:

• Reduce the cost of custom designs


• Respond quickly to sales enquiries


• Enhance product quality


• Reduce repetitive tasks

Be sure to list CATI as your SolidWorks Reseller when filling out the registration form.

DriveWorksXpress Headstart Webinar
Tuesday July 3, 2012 
10am-11am Central Time
>>Register 

Driveworks Solo Headstart Webinar
Wednesday July 4, 2012
10am-11am Central Time
>>Register 

DriveWorks Solo Headstart Webinar
Wednesday July, 18, 2012
10am-11am Central Time
>>Register 

 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing
Computer Aided Technology, Inc. 

How do you know if all of your components are ballooned in a SolidWorks Drawing?

How do you know if a component on your drawing is ballooned or not?  Obviously, if you use the Auto Balloon command it will automatically grab all of the components but what if you are just adding the balloons individually?  The only way to tell if a component has a balloon or not is to look at the BOM table on your drawing.  Let’s take a look at a simple example.  You can see in the diagram below that item 3 is missing.

The only way to check and see which items are ballooned is to select the BOM table.  There will three arrows on the left side of your table.

 

Once you select the three arrows you will then see which items have balloons and which items do not.  This is a really valuable tool when working with larger assemblies.

As you can see, Item No. 3 (row 4) does not have a balloon next to it letting me know that this item still needs to be ballooned.

Phil Whitaker

Technical Analyst

Rapidly dimension multiple radial dimensions in sketches

2012 has added many shortcuts that allow us to get our jobs done faster and more efficiently.  Here is a new function that you may find useful if you create a lot of revolved features.   2012 now gives us the function to add multiple radial or diametric dimensions at one time without having to select the centerline every time.   There is nothing special to activiate this function.  Dimenison between a centerline and a line or point.  Place your dimension to create either a radial dimension or a diametric dimension.  Now just select the next line or point you want to dimension.   Solidworks will automatically use the same centerline as the previous dimension.  Your pointer will also change to  for a radial dimension  and   for a diameter dimension.

 

Autodimension via the Smart Dimenion

There is a little known "driven" dimension shortcut that in my opinion dosen't gett used enough. It's been around for quite some time, works well and is pretty underutilized in my book. Lets start a drawing. and dimension a block with a myriad of features on it, holes, a pocket and 2 slots.

 

Hit the smart dimension shortcut, mouse gesture, from the command manager, "S" Key, what ever your preferred method is. The "Smart" dimension tab actually has  2 tabs one of them being the "Autodimension" tab.   

 

Hit that tab and look at the interface. Pretty simple. You get the ability to choose from baseline or ordinate dimensioning schemes. Ill choose ordinate because it's something that I am used to and like it.

 

 

 

You be the judge of the results for just hitting one button.....

As always, I hope this helps improve your process.

 

Todd Werginz

CATI

 

Delete Pattern Instance in SolidWorks

Removing Pattern Instances

In SolidWorks, you can create a pattern of features using commands like Linear Pattern and Circular Pattern to name a few.  With both of these types of patterns, you can also choose to "Skip" instances of these patterns by selecting them during the creation of the pattern itself.  But a little known fact is that you can also remove these instances without ever having to re-open or edit this pattern feature again.  Allow me to explain with this example.  Take an ordinary part with a linear pattern of features.  Select on a face of this feature or pick multiple feature surfaces at the same time by holding down the CTRL key:

Next, press the Delete key on your keyboard.  You will see this message box appear with some choices:

Choose to delete the pattern instance, and you will see the item selected remove from the pattern as an instance being skipped!

So with SolidWorks you have yet another way to accomplish a failry common task without having to edit the feature with extra mouse clicks and steps!

Brian Reel
CATI Technical Analyst 

 

DriveWorks Solo 3 For the Price of 2 Special

For a limited time only, you can get 3 seats of DriveWorks Solo for the price of 2. Don’t miss out on this exclusive offer! With this offer you not only get 1 seat of DriveWorks Solo entirely free, subscription support is included on all 3 seats for the first year!

>>>Learn More about this offer.

If you’ve been using DriveWorksXpress to automate your SolidWorks designs, why not try DriveWorks Solo for FREE and see the benefits and extra functionality it can offer you and your business.

For more information and to try the DriveWorks Solo 30 day FREE trial just visit www.driveworkssolo.com or contact us for more information.

 

Jim TeDesco
Marketing
Computer AIded Technology, Inc. 

SolidWorks 2013 Beta #1 Available for download

Well Ladies and Gents,

SolidWorks 2013 Beta #1 is live for download. Lets go check out the new features and check on out the lovely prizes you can win in the beta program. My suggestion, Go through the Tutorials!

Cheers,

Bob McGaughey, CSWE

CATI