Introducing Standards Tuesday!

Posted on April 30th, 2008 in Drawings, Standards by admin

Doing it by the book

In recent years, I have witnessed a noticeable decline in the quality of drawings. As more emphasis is placed on models and assemblies, good drawing practices are neglected. I cannot not even count how many drawings I have encountered that seemed to not only not follow any known standards but were just plain scary. I don’t have to tell anybody that no matter how much time one puts into designing the perfect part or assembly, if the drawing doesn’t not convey the information correctly the project can fail.

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Instant3D On-screen Rulers Explained

Posted on April 30th, 2008 in Instant3D, Models, Productivity, Sketches, SolidWorks, User Interface by admin

The other day I was showing a user the Instant3D on-screen rulers when they asked me about its precision. I was asked what is to keep users from arbitrarily creating models without any regard to the values being selected. This is definitely a possibility and probably will happen with less experienced users but the on-screen rulers allows for precision without extra steps. The on-screen ruler is a great tool that is extremely easy to use that will decrease your design time without sacrificing precision.

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Adding multiple arrows to leaders

Posted on April 28th, 2008 in Drawings, SolidWorks by admin

With a show of hands, how many are guilty of faking leaders in drawings? How many times have you or someone you love made a copy of a balloon or annotation and placed it on top of another? Just for the second or third leader, you sacrifice the integrity of the drawing. Come on, be honest. Did you shutter a little after doing it? This is the time to be honest. I, myself am guilty of the horrendous crime, that was before I saw the light. That was before someone smacked me upside the head and grumbled “What’s wrong with you?”

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Improve Productivity - Use Shortcut Bars

Posted on April 25th, 2008 in Assemblies, Drawings, Models, Productivity, Sketches, SolidWorks, ToolBars, User Interface by admin

One of my favorite new features in SolidWorks 2008 is the addition of Shortcut Bars. Shortcut bars are customizable floating bars that pop up in the graphic area near your mouse pointer. By default each environment has its own shortcut bar that you can then customize just like another toolbar. With Shortcut Bars in addition to the CommandManager & Context menus, you should have no need for additional toolbars.

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Do you miss your scroll bars?

Posted on April 24th, 2008 in Customize, SolidWorks, System Options, User Interface by admin

The first release of the SolidWorks 2008 removed the scroll bars from the graphic area. The development team at SolidWorks decided to remove the scrollbars “as many users requested their removal since they did not use them at all and the just took up graphic space.”

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Drawing Sheet Background in SolidWorks 2008

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 in Customize, Drawings, SolidWorks by admin

As a SolidWorks administrator I encounter a number of questions regarding SolidWorks that I plan to pass on to the users of SolidWorks Geeks. Recently my company rolled out SolidWorks 2008 to our users and I was expecting a huge number of questions regarding the CommandManager, Instant 3D or even the overall interface.

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