Hey Geeks! I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. Let me start off by apologizing to all of my readers for my most recent absence. I have been knee deep in a project that will be extremely important to the future of the SolidWorks Geek. When the right time comes, I will tell you more about it in detail. So on to the fun stuff… Last week I installed SolidWorks 2009, so as of today The SolidWorks Geek blog has gone to the new version. I wanted to start the transition off with telling you about some of my favorite new additions to SolidWorks 2009. I can spend hours telling you about all of my favorite additions, so to keep you from falling asleep on your keyboard I decided to narrow it down to 5 features.

Numeric Sketch Input

In SolidWorks 2009, there was a number of  enhances made to the sketching environment to make your day to day usage quicker and easier. One enhancement to sketches is the ability to specify the numeric input as you create lines, rectangles, circles and arcs. This ability is not turned on by default. You must enable it in the System Options by selecting Options in the Standard Toolbar.

In the System Options tab, select Sketch.

In the Sketch options select Enable on screen numeric input on entity creation.

When enabled, you will have the ability to enter in the value for any of the supported sketch entities. When selecting an entity, for example a rectangle, simply click once to place the rectangle and fields appear for the input of the numeric value. Enter the first number and press Enter or Tab to move to the next field. After adding a value in the second field, press Enter to exit the command or press Tab to return to the first field. This will not place dimensions on the sketch entities, in fact after hitting Enter the dimensions will disappear.

Sketch Dimensions of Zero and Negative Values

Another enhancement to the sketching environment is the ability to specify a zero or negative value for sketch dimensions.  You can imagine how helpful it is to be able to add a zero of negative number to a sketch dimension, especially when using Design Tables and Configurations. In this example, there is a circle in a sketch that is drawn to be 2 inches from a edge on our part. If we wanted to move the circle to the other side of the edge prior to SolidWorks 2009, we would have to delete the dimension and move the circle to the other side of the edge and apply a new dimensions. Now, all we have to do is double click the dimension and add a minus (-) in front of the dimension value and click the green checkmark.

The circle is now on the other side of the edge.

Now if we want the center of the circle to be vertical the the edge, we would normally have to delete the dimension and add a vertical relation to the center and the edge. That works fine but it does cause some problems in multi-configuration parts. Now with SolidWorks 2009, we just double click the dimension and change the value to zero (0) and click the green checkmark.

The circle is now vertically aligned with the edge and the dimension shown in the sketch displays a zero as it value.

Parting Line Analysis

The next enhancement is extremely helpful those who create molded components. This is an enhancement that I was very excited about since I work on a lot on molded components. The analysis tools, Draft Analysis, Undercut Analysis and Parting Line Analysis can now run continuously and report changes as the model is changed. You might be looking at that list of analysis tools and think that something looks different. Well, there is now a new Parting Line Analysis tool added to SolidWorks 2009.

Parting Line Analysis displays a potential parting line based on your direction of pull and changes dynamically as the part geometry is changed.

Magnifying Glass

How many times, when working in a large assembly or part, have you need to zoom in a specific area to do something like take a measurement or edit a small feature. Prior to SolidWorks 2009, you would need to zoom in and out many times but now with the addition of the Magnifying Glass; things have gotten a lot easier. Press G on your keyboard and a circular magnifying glass appears allowing you to zoom in and work on a smaller area of your part. Using the scroll wheel on your mouse you can zoom in and out without effecting the scale of your overall part. Move your mouse around and the glass moves as well, allowing you to work on any feature within the circle.

If you hold the ALT key while using the wheel on your mouse, you can create a section parallel to the screen. When you are done with the magnifying glass you can select G or ESC to close the view.

BOMs in Assembly Documents

Last but not least is the addition of Bill of Materials in an Assembly model. Instead of inserting a BOM into an assembly drawing, you can now add a BOM to the actual graphics area of your assembly model. Select Insert from the menu bar.

Then select Tables -> Bill of Materials.

Just as you would in an assembly drawing, Select the Table Template and any options you want and select the green checkmark.

The BOM will now appear in the graphics area of your assembly providing the same functionality as BOM in a drawing. In fact, when you create an assembly drawing you can insert this BOM into that drawing.

Many More to Come…

This was just a quick description of some of my favorite enahancements to SolidWorks 2009. From now on all the projects, tips and tricks and tutorials will be based on SolidWorks 2009 and we will be able to explore even more enhancements. If you don’t want to miss anything, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed and I will be back next week with some new content.

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