Graphics Systems SolidNotes

SolidWorks License Management With Transfers

In keeping compliance with the SolidWorks Eula it is a good idea to know how to transfer a license. Many Solidworks users do not realize that an uninstall of SolidWorks does not automatically release the license. It is easy to do and reduce the amount of headache in license management.

Before uninstalling SolidWorks, changing a hard drive, or reinstalling windows:
1. Open your SolidWorks
2. Go to the help pull down and choose transfer license. This will free the license to be reinstalled or used on another computer.

Installing the license (serial number) is done through: Control Panel -> Programs -> Modify
1. Modify will bring up a SolidWorks Installation Manager pop-up screen
2. Choose Modify the individual installation. This will bring you to a screen that allows the insertion of a serial number
3. Click next through the screens filling in asked for information until finished

When you open SolidWorks it will activate and you will be creating once again!!

Please join the Graphics Systems group on Linkedin for more technical tutorials!

New To SolidWorks? The Basics: How To Automate Viewing “Normal To” Your Sketch

You’ve noticed it before: When you select a default plane for your first sketch, the plane rotates so that you are looking normal to it. However, in subsequent plane or planar face selections, when invoking the Sketch tool, this no longer happens. It is then you find yourself looking for one of the many “Normal To” tools (Figure 1) scattered through the Heads-Up View Toolbar, Feature Manager, or context menus.

Figure 1

Is there a setting, perhaps, that will make this behavior more consistent, and process more automated?

 

I’m glad you asked! Why, yes there is!

 

In the current version of SolidWorks, there is an option that does exactly that. It is not on by default, however. Select the Options command from the Tools pull-down menu, and under the System Options tab, click on the “Sketch” mode. Select the top-most option you find there, “Auto-rotate view normal to sketch plane on sketch creation.” (Figure 2)

Figure 2

Et voila! Now, all subsequent sketch plane selections will behave as the first.

TIP: Even if you do prefer to look normal to your sketch planes as you draw (as opposed to working in an isometric view), I would recommend toggling to other views as necessary to better see (or avoid!) objects you may be referencing, such as chamfer edges and the like.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share, or suggestions for upcoming articles? Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed and stay in touch!

Direct Editing: Move Face

Sometimes we need to make a simple adjustment on an imported part. Perhaps, for example, we need to change the diameter of a hole. The current diameter of 3.52mm needs to become 3.72mm; also, the hole has draft that needs to be maintained.

 

 

SolidWorks has a function called Move Face that will let us directly edit a model by selecting one or more face and then move them. Using this command, we can easily change the size of a hole or standoff in our imported part.

Move Face can be found on the Direct Editing tab of the Command Manager or from the Menu: Insert, Face, Move.

 

Next, we fill out the PropertyManager for the Move Face command. Choose to Offset the face a distance of .5mm “in” as follows:

 

Once we accept the feature, SolidWorks will not only effectively change the size of the hole, it will also extend other faces around the hole to maintain a solid volume. Note that we have not destroyed any of the original geometry, as the Move Face is a feature that you can edit, suppress, or roll back before; the original imported body is still there as the first feature in the tree.

 

 

This is an especially useful technique when we are working with an imported part as the main body for tooling or molds as it allows us to change geometry on the part without trying to swap imported bodies, which can get very messy if we have already derived geometry for parting surfaces and such.

Watch this space for more direct editing tips from me in the future!

Twenty Years, Sci-Fi and eDrawings for iPad

Today marks my 20th anniversary at Graphics Systems Corporation. Originally, I was going to blog about how engineering and design technology has changed. You know:

• 2D CAD that used to cost $4000 is now freely available at no charge
• 3D CAD that used to require heavy, specialized hardware and cost $30,000 now runs on laptop computers, costs less than $4000, and does more
• Simulation that used to take days to set up and run can now be completed in minutes, while enjoying the same economies of cost and standard hardware as 3D CAD
• Data management that took years to implement, cost well into the six-figure range and was too complex for most people to use can now can be implemented in weeks, at a fraction of the cost, and can be used by anyone
• Tools now exist to allow the direct reuse of 3D CAD data for manufacturing, marketing, and technical publications professions, eliminating the manual recreation of data that used to be necessary for those functions.

It turns out, however, something far more exciting happened today in the SolidWorks community than my 20th anniversary in the MCAD industry. Today, we can begin to mimic Scotty and Geordi and carry our engineering data in the palm of our hands, for today eDrawings for iPad has been released.

This is an incredibly important step in the development of the SolidWorks ecosystem. eDrawings for iPad is an excellent tool, and this first effort has enough functionality to make it very useful on the shop floor, in the conference room, and in the field. File access is available through traditional iTunes file transfer and services such as Dropbox; however, there are already iPad clients for ePDM that allow raster preview of data, so I would expect at some point in the future these two technologies will get together. That's not any inside information, that's just me making an easy prediction.

Twenty years from now, we'll be doing design on touch devices and our data will be instantaneously accessible from anywhere on the planet. Actually, that will probably happen in half that time. Maybe in twenty years we'll be doing better than that -- think about the interface between Tony Stark and Jarvis.

(What? You've never seen Iron Man, and you're reading this blog? You need to Netflix/iTunes/Redbox/on-demand it, because as much as anything, it's a movie about the future of design and manufacturing. Notice how I didn't say "go out and rent it"? Yeah, we're in a bit of the future right now...)

So, here's to twenty great years of computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing evolution. Hit me back in 2032 with whatever technology we'll be using, and I'll do a follow-up.

Oh, did you want more about eDrawings for iPad? Try here to read about it and see a video of it in action, and here to download it from the Apple App Store (it'll cost you a whopping $1.99). If you want to get your own files into the app, you can use any file-access app (like Dropbox) and "Open With..." to bring it into the eDrawings app. It works by displaying the graphics for native SolidWorks files, so you don't need to upload all the parts to go along with an assembly, unless you want to view the parts individually. That's pretty much all the training you're gonna need -- download it, play with it and use it.

Updating to SolidWorks 2012 and Video Drivers

You've updated to SolidWorks 2012. The next thing to check is your video driver; is it the correct one for your video card, operating system, and version of SolidWorks?

*Please note that Administrator privileges are required, make sure your company polices and IT department allow you make changes at this level.

It is easy to find the driver using SolidWorks website www.solidworks.com.

Hover over the support tab and choose downloads from the menu, on the next screen choose Hardware & System Requirements from the left side, on the next pop-up choose Graphics Card Drivers.

This will bring you to a screen that allows you to enter information about your computer. Questions like Computer Vendor (brand), Model, Graphics Card, SolidWorks Version and current Operating System (version of windows). Fill this out as complete as you can. When finished click the show results button. This will give you a link to download the latest, tested, correct video driver recommended by SolidWorks.

Generally it is a good idea to download and save the driver before installing it. Make sure you have Administrator Rights to your computer and check with your IT Department Administrator before installing the driver.

The SolidWorks recommended driver can prevent or resolve many issues with SolidWorks.

Contact your Technical Services Support Team at Graphics / Systems for questions or assistance about video card drivers

 

How To Create Multi-Line Custom Property Values

Did you ever want to have a custom property value show up as two or more defined lines of text? In most Windows text-handling applications, you use a "forced carriage return" by typing <CTRL>ENTER at the end of the line. Like this:

Two
Line

There is a simple way you can use this in your custom property values. Just type the text, as you would like, in a simple text application like Notepad:

Next, highlight the two lines of text (all together as one selection, to insure you pick up the invisible CTRL-ENTER "character") and Copy it to the Windows clipboard:

Then, switch to your SolidWorks custom property dialog, and paste the result into the appropriate Value / Text Expression box. When you do this, you'll only see the first line show up in the Value / Text Expression box, and you'll only see the last line show up in the Evaluated Value box. All the text is there, however -- it just can't all be displayed in the single-row-high text boxes in the dialog:

When you reference the property value somewhere else, such as a drawing title block, you'll see all the lines of text are there, with the line breaks you specified.

This is something my brother John and I figured out many years ago during one of our live SolidWorkout sessions. It's came up recently with a customer -- and it's still useful -- so I thought I'd share it.

For more SolidWorks news, tips, and tutorials, visit the Graphics Systems Facebook Page!

Custom Views in SolidWorks

(Once again we eavesdrop on Sol’s cublcle)

“Hey, Sol, how’d you get that perspective view in your drawing?” Sal was always asking questions like this.

“Pretty simple, really. We start off in the part or assembly and request a perspective view through the Heads-Up View toolbar.

“Then we access the Orientation toolbar by hitting the spacebar on our keyboard.”

“That looks like a shortcut to all our standard views!”

“Yes, it is a great tool. But as you can see we can also save any view by selecting ‘New View’…

…and entering a useful name.

“Now we can refer back to it at any time. Viola!”

“Yes,” said Sal, “but you still haven’t answered my question. How did you get that view onto the drawing?”

“I’ve got two answers to that question, Sal. One method is to drag the Named View from the View Palette.

“And the other is to select it in the Drawing View Property Manager.”

“Nice! Sol, you should start writing for a SolidWorks Tips and Tricks blog!”

“Yes, someday.” Sol sighed dreamily. “Someday….”

Bonding: Good for Families, Good for Simulation

As the weather warms in my part of the world the family and I spend more time outside. After having dinner outdoors one night the children petitioned my wife the following day to let them eat breakfast outside, too. These are the days that help us spend a lot more time together working and playing: Bonding.

Bonding seems almost natural to some of us. But it doesn't always come so easy for those of us using Simulation. Despite the default global contact condition of Bonded, why won't certain bodies and faces bond??? The reason exists because of the different nature of the elements in-use. Solid elements are three-dimensional. Shells are two-dimensional. And Beams one-dimensional. And bonding, along with other contact conditions, needs to be applied from a source to a target; the latter always being a face.

For example, here's a simple structure that incorporates solid brackets, SolidWorks beams, and a planar surface (meshed with shells). This is what we call a "mixed mesh." The brackets and surface body are modeled atop the weldment. In otherwords, they are touching faces. But, when ran with the Direct Sparse solver, one is greeted with the following:

Are the restraints inadequate? No. This slightly mis-leading error is an indication that bonding is not being respected. The solution is an oft-repeated mantra around my office: Local bonded contacts will set you free.

Ironic, isn't it?

Local contacts trump contacts between components and anything set Globally. In this case, however, the software cannot resolve the apparent contact. So local bonding is needed. How and where? A contact pair is created between the face of each body and the beam in play.

The brackets are self-explanatory: each bottom face of a bracket touching/weled to the beam needs to have a local bonded contact. (It is possible to make only one contact for both these brackets, setting the target/face set 2 to both bracket faces.... while this will work it is poor documentation and I've seen cases where the bonding still fails so I do not recommend it)

The shell crosses over two beam bodies. Again, I could satisfy this with one local bonded contact but instead chose two: one beam per the shell face.

Once the local bonding is satisfied you should get something like this:
See? Bonding is good for the family and good for simulation.

As a side note, I want to make you aware of an option whilst creating your weldment members in SolidWorks. Please be sure to clear this checkbox option so that your joints are calculated correctly in your Simulation study:

Multiple Domains and Server Processes in Enterprise PDM - Part 2

Question: How are users added from other domains the Enterprise PDM Archive Server configuration?

Answer: In order to add users from another domain when using Windows® Logins in Enterprise PDM, create a new local Windows group (on the archive server) and add users or groups from the other domain to this local group. Once done, add the local group to the Windows login settings (or attach/administrative access settings) via the archive server configuration tool.

Between domains the system administrator will create domain trusts. This can be done in one or two ways. The domain A will need to trust the domain where the users are accredited (domain B). Domain administrators on both domains will need to create the trusting relationship (even for a one way trust).

Once the domain trusts are established the following groups will be created:

A global group in the trusted domain for adding users, a universal group to which the global group(s) would be added, a domain local group where the resources are located, the universal group would be added to this group.

This provides the links for users from one domain to another.

After the trusts are created it should be possible to create explicit permissions by individual but this is not a recommended practice.

Alternative resources:
-Self-paced study guide “Designing a Microsoft Windows Sever 2003 Active Directory and Network Infrastructure" ISBN 0-7356-1970-0
-The enquirer should seek the services of a qualified MCSE systems administrator as this is a question of systems administration.

Where Are My Shadows in PhotoView 360?

One question I get asked often in regards to PhotoView 360 is, “Why don’t I see my shadows when I render a view? I see them in SolidWorks, and I know I have the light casting the shadow turned on for PhotoView 360.” See below:

 

Having the light turned on in PhotoView is, of course, key, but what you might not realize is that shadows cast by that light also must be enabled in PhotoView 360. Here’s how you do it:

1. Right click on the light in question in your DisplayManager and choose Edit Directional Light.

 

 

2. Click on the PhotoView tab. There you will find a checkbox to enable shadows. You’ll also note there are controls for the quality and softness, which you can play with below.

 

 

3. Simply check on the box Shadows and you’re all set!