Toggle eDrawings measure on and off

Have you ever wanted to either give someone permission to measure your edrawing or perhaps take that ability away?  With eDrawings Professional you can create review enabled documents that allow an unlimited number of eDrawing recipients to mark up and measure your designs without having to purchase eDrawings Professional or any other mark up tool.  You can do this through the “save as” option within SolidWorks.

1)      Open the file

2)      Go to File > Save As > Select “Save as type” as .easm or .eprt and select “Option”

              

3)      Enable “Okay to measure this eDrawing file”, select OK. Select “cancel” in Save as dialogue box.

 

4)      Go to File > Publish eDrawings 2008 file, notice that the option for “Enable measure” is now available.  You can also turn this option off using the same steps if you do not want someone to be able to measure your eDrawings.

Phil Whitaker

The Front Fell off !!!

There are times, no matter how careful you are designs don™t
work when tested. Hopefully, design team take it with a pinch of salt and has
fun over beer.

Bob Konczal, the CTO, at Computer Aided Technology Inc.
found a video of an Englishman, explaining why the front of a tanker - ship (carrying
20,000 tons of crude oil) fell off. I am sure this is purely meant for
entertainment, but point taken Bob all engineering teams should be using SolidWorks Simulation making sure Front doesn'™t
fall off.

http://www.hutton-web-design.co.uk/tanker.html

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

Optimizing Hardware

Over the past couple of years I have given a presentation called "Getting the Most from Your Hardware" to several user groups and at SolidWorks World a few times.  This presentation is very well received at these event mainly due to the fact that hardware performance is something that affects all SolidWorks users regardless of their industry, modeling techniques, or level of model complexity.  Everyone could use a little more power.  It's a fairly universal situation.

This presentation is attached to this posting ( presentation and tools ) in it's current revision in hopes that it will help SolidWorks users improve their experience with the SolidWorks tools they use on a day to day basis.  As an added bonus many of the items shown in this presentation will help overall machine performance regardless of what tools you are using.

The presentation focuses on serval aspects of your solid modeling environment including hardware settings, OS configuration, SolidWorks settings, supporting software, and several others.  The presentation is an attempt to help the audience realize several key points, including

Lack of performance is more expensive that RAM, memory, and most everything else

Video Cards are a crucial component for 3D Modeling

Consistency should be your mantra

Routine hardware maintenance is critical

And Never Every Let Microsoft Make a Decision for You!!

In addition to the presentation in the above zip file there are several utilities that can be very helpful to CAD and System administrators including some tools from the "old" sysinternals company that was purchase by Microsoft a couple of years ago.  These include a process monitor, a registry monitor, a tool to make a USB Device bootable, registry cleaning utility, a tool that will clear SolidWorks addins on boot, and others.

I am hopeful that the presentation and the utilities are beneficial in your efforts to pull all of the potential power from your current SolidWorks environment.

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Manager

Computer Aided Technology

Spread the News

Hi Everyone.  I have a story for you.  Leslie takes a visit ABC Manufacturing because they have been running into some issues with SolidWorks, and would like some help.  She is at John’s workstation, and some of his fellow coworkers are nearby watching.  John asks a question about something that he is frustrated with in SolidWorks and is looking for an easy way to do something.  Leslie shows John a quick way to do what he wants, and he is ecstatic.  “Knowing this new trick will make his life so much easier,” he tells me.    Meanwhile, Bill says, “I knew that.  I use it all the time.  I can’t believe you didn’t know that.” 

I can’t tell you how many times I have run into this situation.  SolidWorks is a very extensive tool, and there many things you can do with it.  Just because you know how to do something in SolidWorks, does not mean that everyone else does.   If you run into something that you think others would benefit from knowing, type it up a quick email and send it to users.  Or you could make a small recording to actually show users.  If you do not have tool to record videos on your machine, SolidWorks provides you with one!  You can use the RX tool to record you SolidWorks session so you can actually show how to do something in SolidWorks.  I know of some companies that actually set up their own “user-groups” that meet once a week or once every other week to share tips, tricks, and modeling methods.  So next time you learn a new trick or discover a handy tool in SolidWorks, spread the news at your company.  You could save some people a lot of time and headaches. 

What you hope they won't be doing while you're sharing!

Design Better!

Leslie Lougheed

Wisconsin / Illinois COSMOS User Group

The best way to evaluate design performance is by testing it. With ever reducing design cycle time, and multitude of projects every engineer needs to work upon virtual testing paves the way to save time and money. 

On June 3^rd an elite group meets up in Wisconsin trying to understand how fellow designers crank the most out of their designs. The Wisconsin / Illinois COSMOS User Group is made of individuals who go an extra step with conceptual designs. The discussions spring around different features available in COSMOS, work arounds to set backs if any, cool use of technology to come up with next generation designs. Engineers from all walks of life spend a day, talking about what COSMOS has done to improve their design cycle.

CATI has been a patron of the group since its initiation. Our technical staff has shown active participation, ensuring customer success with technology. It also gives you an opportunity to put a face to people; you get regular emails from, or talk to them on phone. Besides, what better way to understand technology than seeing how it is being practiced in industry?

When: June 3^rd 2008

Where: Rudd Lighting Inc. 9201 Washington Avenue, Racine, WI, 53406.

Time:   9 am to 3 pm.

Hope to see you there.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager – Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

Adding Parts to the Design Library that have existing Custom Properties

Like any good redneck I like it when they make a button that will make your job or life simpler. What I do not like is when that button that was suposta make you life easier breaks what you have already done, and that is what we have here. Below is a great feature that SW has but it has a little flaw in it, we have reported this issue to SolidWorks and it is in the process of being corrected by SW Development and has been issued SPR 432438. If you would like to be added to the notification list when this is corrected please contact your VAR to get added to the SPR.

If you have an existing Part or Assembly file that you want to add to the Design Library you can do so  pretty easily. In the Design Library Pane there is a button for Add to Library. This tool makes it easy to add a file to a specific location in the Design Library and change the file name.

One thing to be aware of is if you have a part with existing Custom Properties. If you part   includes a Custom Property for Description the text for that property will be wiped out when using Add to Library. Any other Custom Properties within the part will remain intact.

As Always if something is broke we need to find a way make it work until the powers that be are able to make it work the way we want it to.

For this issue we went crazy and found you not 1 but 2 workarounds the first one is to go to File, Properties and Copy the text from the Description and then paste it into the Options area of the Add to Library dialog box. The other workaround is to not use Add to Library and to do a Save As and point it to the desired Design Library location. Note: that if you want to maintain any existing links between the part and assemblies it is used in the DO NOT check the “Save as Copy” option.

Josh Altergott – CATI Support Team Leader

The license manager won't read the Dongle!!

Many of us have run into this one.  What a pain.  I have the dongle in the server.  The light is lit.  But when I go back to my desk and remote in I can't configure the software to read the license file because it can't see the dongle properly.  It doesn't make sense.

I agree, but I know an easy way around the problem.

The issue is actually due to the fact that we are attempting to configure the license server remotely.  This is a very common problem.

What we have learned though is, if we use a console session of remote desktop it will work.

Here's how you do it:

From the Start menu select Run.

In the window type -- mstsc -v:<servername> /F -console

Then select Ok

This will take you straight to the login screen for the server.

You should now be able to read the dongle through the remote connection using the SolidWorks License Manager Interface.

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Manager

Computer Aided Technology

SoidWorks could not create a journal file

Recently SolidWorks decided that they would control the placement of the journal file rather than giving the user the ability to put it in the location of their choice.  This is generally not a big deal due to the fact that for most circumstances this file is of no use to the user.  (And if it was put in the wrong place it could be quite a problem.)

The Problem

Unfortunately, what I have been seeing a lot lately is minor issues when sharing options files with the copy options wizard.  The good news is that the location is actually stored in the registry and, as any good redneck knows, the place to work around most things in Windows is the registry.  You can also cause a lot of damage so determine your goal before beginning.

1. The option file is created using the copy options wizard and stores it to a .sldreg file.  (This also copies the location of the Journal file for that user)  This file is stored in "c:\Document and Settings\<User Login>\Application Data\SolidWorks\SolidWorks 2008" or c:\Document and Settings\<User Login>\Application Data\Solid Work" or even somewhere else, but always in the users profile.



2. This file is then distributed to other users via the copy options wizard or through a forced deployment with an Admin Image. (The path to the original users journal file gets passed to the new user as well.)



3. The new user launches SolidWorks and gets the following message:



4. The user selects Ok then SolidWorks launches.  The user does this every time they launch.

Generally the problem is that the user is pointing to a location in another users profile that does not exist on the current machine or the user does not have permission to access.

The redneck work arounds

1 ---- Hack the registry after the copy options process completes (Usually used for sharing the file one user to another)

1. While logged into Windows as the user having the problem Run Regedit



2. Navigate through the registry to this location: HKEY\CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks 2008\ExtReferences



3. Delete the value SolidWorks Journal Folders



4. The next time SolidWorks is launched the value will be recreated using the default value that places the journal file in the current users profile where he has access.

2 ---- Hack the copy options file prior to distribution (Usually used for deployment via administrative image)

1. Open the .sldreg file created from the copy options wizard using Notepad



2. Select the Find option in the Edit menu



3. Search for the phrase "SolidWorks Journal Folders"



4. It will be found only once in the file and the value will be set to the path of to the journal file for the original user that created the file.



5. Delete the entire path leaving the quotation marks (Leaving the quotes is important)



6. Use the copy options wizard to load the newly edited file into a new machine or distribute the file using an administrative image.



7. The next time SolidWorks is launched the value will be recreated using the default value that places the journal file in the current users profile where he has access.  (The changes in the registry may not show-up until SolidWorks is shutdown.

I have heard that this issue will be resolved in SolidWorks 2009.  However, until then, you will have to use the redneck workarounds.

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Manager

Computer Aided Technology

That RSS Feed thingy in eDrawings

Have you ever noticed that RSS feed inside of eDrawings and SolidWorks.

In SolidWorks you can easily disable this in the System Options but not so much in eDrawings this is especially annoying if your company requires you to enter a user name and password every time you log on to the internet.

We tried several of our usually tricks to disable this like shaking the monitor to see if it fell off (this only works with that fancy Etch-a-Sketch CAD Modeler), so when this did not work we needed to find a way to cut it out and the best way to do this is hacking into the registry of the machine.

To disable this RSS feed you will need to do the following:

1.       Start the Registy Editor and browse to the following location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\eDrawings\e2008\General

2.       Create a new DWORD Value called “RSSFeed”  it will automatically set the value to 0.

Now the next time you start eDrawings the RSS feed will not display.

If you are not comfortable hacking into your Registry you can run the attached file and it will automatically add the key with a value of 0.

Download eDrawingsturnoffRSS.reg

A word of caution please back up you registry before applying the attached REG key or making any  changes to it.

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Team Leader

Remember that you are a true red neck when you hear the into to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and turn it up when the song tells you to.

5/6/2008 Update: Sorry I forgot to include this in the orginal post but this issue has been identified by SolidWorks Support as a bug and is with SW Devolpment as SPR 420670. Please contact CATI or your reseller to be added to the SPR notificaation list.