How to copy files using Solidworks Pack and Go

When you
don't use a file management system, keeping files organized can be a hassle.
 So, what happens is users put all their part, drawing, and assembly files
into the same folder.  This will cause issues when creating new revisions.
 

Once the deed is done and all files are in the same location there
will be a hefty price to pay to move files into the correct folder locations.
 Pack and Go will help to keep the references from getting lost but you
will still pay with time. 

To do this correctly, first have your file structure created on a
server or anywhere you like.  Keep in mind that you will need to keep
track of your revisions and not just separate your parts, drawings, and
assemblies.  Then starting with the main assembly drawing, whether it is being
opened from Solidworks explorer or Solidworks, go to Pack and Go.  The
first thing I like to do is put a check next to Include Drawings.  This will make sure you move/rename all the
drawings as well.  Although you only have one option for a folder location
or zip file location, you can bypass this and change the file name and folder
location for each referenced file.  Just
double click on the file name and location in the Save to Name and Save to
Folder respectively. The only down turn to this is that it will take some time
depending on how many files you have to move. 

 

 

You will also have to do this for all the past revisions and
make sure they are properly located in the folder structure you create.

 

Wisconsin - Illinois Simulation 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 November 5th an elite group meets up in Wisconsin trying to understand, how fellow designers crank the most out of their designs. The Wisconsin / Illinois Simulation User Group is made of individuals who go an extra step with conceptual designs. The discussions spring around different features available in SolidWorks Simulation, 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 Simulation 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: November 5th 2010

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

Time:   10 am to 3 pm.

Hope to see you there.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager – Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

It's Just Time to....Level with Tech Support

    So the “It’s just time to” topic for this week comes from straight from the tech support “pit”.   We don’t call it the pit do to elevation or the cleanliness of the area.  In fact I don’t know why we call it the pit.  Maybe it is a throw back from the movie “PCU”.   Maybe it is due to the amount of stuff piled on Joshs’ desk (see pic).

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, the pit.  The fact is that generally a techs life in the pit is not simple or easy.  Sometime the questions are very easy, many of them the techs have heard before.  Some of those we have either a direct fix, or a series of steps that we typically take to isolate the issue.  At that point we have a pretty direct road map to call resolution.  The road to resolution could be short and flat, a easy walk in the park, but on the other hand…   It could be treacherous and winding with a free fall at the end.  Most times the keys to easy call resolution are in the hands of the customer calling in.

Information from the beginning is critical.  The techs will ask a lot of questions some of which may seem really off the wall, but many times the tech on the phone is slowing eliminating possible causes.  Here is where the customer comes in.  Volunteering as much information as possible is a good thing.  It will make the road much faster and smoother.  Not mentioning changes to the system or environment on the other hand is going to make this very bumpy and drawn out. 

If you have been working on your machine or your network and have changed something that you think may have caused the issue you need to come out with it.  The license manager working all morning and all of the sudden just stopping is not normal.  Something happened to it , something changed.  Just level with me, tell me what changed, and let’s work together to try to fix it.  Telling me that nothing changed is not going to help.  I am going to solve the issue, which will most likely show me the changes, so you might as well just come with it.  Oh, and yes, odds are we have seen it before.

Keith Schaefer

It's Just Time to...uninstall, clean, and reinstall SolidWorks

I as a tech hate, and I repeat hate telling a customer that they should uninstall and reinstall to try and solve a problem.  To me that is just poor troubleshooting.  I say that this is much like taking you car to a mechanic and him saying that I think that you have a bad head gasket.  Well the fact is that I either do or don’t have a bad head gasket, but I refuse to tear it down and just “throw parts” at the problem.  I would say that it is time to take a hard look at the mechanic.

That leads into the next question.  Have I ever told a customer to uninstall and reinstall SolidWorks even though I was unsure of the real issue?  Without a doubt yes.  And I will tell you why but first I need to go into what I do to look at troublesome machines.  CATI has service that we use called WebEx.  WebEx is an awesome tool.  It allows me to look directly at a customer desktop and even take control if I am allowed to do so by the customer.  This is letting me look right down the throat of the machine.  I then start looking around at the machine; depending on the issue maybe I look at graphics drivers, versions of files.  The whole time that I am controlling that machine I am also trying to get a gut feel for the overall “health” of the system.  The second reason that I would do tell a customer to uninstall and reinstall would be if I believe that one of the prereqs is the cause of the issue and I think that the customer will find it easier to reinstall the prereqs using the SolidWorks installation manager than trying to uninstall and reinstall the prereqs manually.

So this is where thing may get a little blunt.  Let me say sorry up front.  Come on guys!  Your machine with SolidWorks, SolidWorks (2), SolidWorks (3) all in the program files?  Yeah, not healthy.  Let’s face it this machine most likely doesn’t need support, it needs a exorcism.  All the ghosts of SolidWorks past right there to haunt you.  If the program file in SolidWorks is like this, where is you toolbox folder?  This location has changed of the years.  Maybe it got upgrade with the rest of SolidWorks, but the point is that this machine is not healthy.  The number of SolidWorks folders in the programs group is not the only way to check the health of a system, but it sure does clue into what this machine has been through.

CATI has a webcast coming up on this topic.  Keep a eye on webinars at www.cati.com to registration info.

…Purchase a new computer.

What is the life span of an engineering work station?  Some people say up to five years.  I have been working at CATI for almost nine years.  In that time frame I can think of at least seven different computers that I have had.  I know that it seems really high, but let’s take a closer look.  Most techs will say that you can figure that the average engineering work stations with SolidWorks will last three years.  If I went back three years and found that machine it would have been a Dell M70.  It at the time was a great machine.  SolidWorks 2007 installed (great release), 2 gb of RAM, that thing was great.  Now let’s take that same machine and put it into use today.  While it will still run SolidWorks, it is no longer certified.  2gb looking back seems like nothing.  Good luck finding a graphics driver let alone a certified one that works well.  Is it going to run, yes.  Is it going to run well and put me in a position to be productive? Absolutely not.  I hate to say it, but three years for an engineering PC is pushing it.  By now most companies are taking the computers that are rotating out of engineering and trickling them down into sales, or purchasing.  While they are on the low side for engineering, they are most likely perfect in their new sales or purchasing roles.  Keep reading, next time we will start to look at some of the options for hardware and software in new engineering machines.

It's Just Time to ...Let XP Go

   I liked XP,  I really liked XP.  Who didn’t?  The OS as a whole has been and still is a main stay in our company.  I talked to a customer on the phone a couple of days ago that just ordered a new machine.  He was reciting the specs of this machine to me almost as if he was a proud father.  This guy was amped.  Sweet video card, lots of ram, and then he said it.  He ordered the machine preloaded with a XP 64bit downgrade.  I had to stop him.  You did what?  Why on earth at this point in the game would you take a new 64 bit system and not put Windows 7 on it?  He likes XP.   I know, I like XP too, but at some point we have to let go.  Embrace the new OS.  I like XP. I really like XP.  But I love my Windows 7.  The new features and functions in this OS are awesome.  I think that you will see more than a few blogs from Todd talking about new features and functions of 7.  (We have yet to upgrade Todd’s machine to 7, so I think that he is using the blog to try and create a justification.)

From God mode, to XP mode, (have I mentioned that I like XP?) there are some many new features and functions.  The upgrade is simple, and if you haven’t yet, you have to try it.  I think that you will agree that it is the way that everything is going to go.  If you need to take that XP install disk, say a few words, maybe a moment of silence.  In the end you are going to need to ease it on down into the bottom drawer of your desk.  No, not next to the Cheetos, the other bottom drawer, the one that houses the old Windows 2000 disk and the NT disk. The ME disk that is still in the wrapper, and the Vista disk that was used for one install, followed shortly by the XP disk again.  But it is just time to let XP go. 

It's Just Time to…Stop building Frankenstein.

The easiest way to provide some insurance that your users are in a stable environment is to buy certified systems.  I am not saying that it is impossible to buy all of the parts that it would take to create a great system, put them together, and have an awesome machine.  Dell, HP and the rest of the computer makers pay engineers a lot of money to produce a product that will be as stable as possible.  It is pretty hard to put a dollar value on that.  I don’t get any kickbacks, but it is pretty hard to beat a certified system.

   Your double mother board, quadruple graphics cards with dual 1080p monitors on each. running 11 gig of ddr3 for ram (this is a very odd number) is not doing you any favors.  The stability of this machine and the ability for support to reproduce the issues that you may run into is almost nonexistent.  The through put of issues on this machine is going to more than double the time trouble shooting takes the support staff.   In a certified machine there are a number of things that can be taken for granted, and assumed.  In Frankenstein, there is zero.  Start packaging up all the spec, event logs, and every bit of info that you have, because we are going to need it.  I have enough trouble trying to keep track of one or two monitors, let alone the six that Frankenstein has, and what drivers do we have going on here?  That is anyone guess.  The fact that Frankenstein is has three 1tb drives raided together, and is being used as your home DVR streaming wireless HD, you guessed it, not helping.  We will talk more about hardware and software next time, but for now, STOP BUILDING FRANKENSTIEN!!!

It's just time to...

    Hello all, I have some opinions that I would like to throw out to the blog world.  Hopefully I can get all of these to fall into one cohesive thought pattern, but if not bear with me I will do my best.  I am going to call this series “It’s just time to…”  I have worked with CATI for more than 8 years now and cover a variety of roles.  From presales meetings and demonstrations, to phone in technical support, and on site consulting I have worked with our cad customers through tons of issues. From their networks and workstations, setups and installations, to training and support.

    Let’s start with a few things from the support department.  The fact is that sometimes the support tech on the other end of the phone is afraid of coming off as rude, blunt or pushy.  We do our best to understand your business, and what you are trying to do or what you are expecting from the software.   Techs are great at finding work arounds or loop holes to help get the job done.  This can be seen day in and day out on support.  I think that some of the work arounds given by techs often do a great disservice to the customer.  Yes, the fact is he will more than likely find a way to do whatever you are trying to do, but the reality of the situation is that the customer is now using work around for a function that does not, or should not be used in that way.  Many times the work around adds a magnitude of complexity. Though yes they found a way to work around or give the customer what they were looking for, the fact is that it could take much longer in the long run for the workaround than doing this the right way from the start.

Sometime the answer should be no.   Sometimes what you are trying to do really is a bad idea.  Sometimes the answer the customer gets they may not like.  I’m sorry; sometimes it is in your best interest to hear the hard truth.  (The Hard Truth was a contender for the name of the series too.)

 I brought the idea for the series to my boss.  I told him that I have an idea that I believed would over flow with content.  One that all of the techs could contribute to, but most of all one that I thought people would be interested in and read.  That got his ear, but it was then that I dropped the bomb shell.  I told him that there was only one condition that I would even pitch the idea to him.  I wanted full publish rights.  The articles had to go straight to the blog, no mediator, or fact checker, and no one checking for the politically right thing to say.  It needs to be straight forward, and the fact is that it may make some people a little mad.    It took a little convincing, but here it is.  Please understand that the articles are being written by me or the other techs, we are not writers by trade, just a bunch of tech guys that would like a venue to level with our customers and the cad world.  We are not trying to make anyone mad or put anyone down.  This is about telling it like it is, and the fact is, It’s Just Time to: