The SolidWorks Geek

As you might have noticed, I am pretty excited about SolidWorks 2011 but then again I am a geek and I get excited about new zombie books, sci-fi movies with lots of explosions and any new gadget that comes on the market. With previous releases of SolidWorks I usually only covered a few of my favorite enhancements in one article but I actually had sometime this year to cover more than usual. I have been playing with SolidWorks 2011 and I love many of this years enhancements but I have not had an opportunity to use 2011 in a production environment.

In the past I was excited about some enhancements such as the magnifying glass, numeric sketch input and mouse gestures. But when it came time to actually creating parts, assemblies and drawings at work; some enhancements never caught on with me. However, on the flip side, other recent enhancements such as Instant3D, the Shortcut Toolbar and the Dimension Palette have become as important to me as my Android phone. It is really hard to say what enhancements will be among my favorites a year from now but honestly all the enhancements I have written about over the past couple of weeks have potential.  So let us see what today’s candidates are, shall we?

Opening Models with Referenced Toolbox Components

I am a big fan of using the Toolbox for common hardware and I have been for the past few years. Unfortunately it seems that I am in the minority.  I can understand why many would not care for the Toolbox especially with some of the strange errors that can be directly related to the Toolbox and how it is set up. One of the issues I have experienced and I know is pretty common is how SolidWorks handles an assembly that was created with a different installation of the Toolbox. This is common when receiving assemblies from outside sources, when opening a legacy assembly that was created with a different installation or even when trying top open an assembly that was created by a user that may not be using the network installed toolbox.

In SolidWorks 2011, the process of opening assemblies that contain Toolbox components that were created with a different installation has become easier. When an assembly is opened that contains components from a separate version of the toolbox, the components will automatically be located in your toolbox.  The cool thing is that this ability is enabled automatically. However, if you do need to update your settings for any reason to enable or disable the ability to locate Toolbox components in your own library, you can select or deselect the Make this folder the default search location for toolbox components in the Hole Wizard/Toolbox section of your System Options.

Weld Beads

Last week I spoke briefly about the addition of weld tables in drawings. I also mentioned that I am far from an expert on welding so I may not be able to give the new weld bead tool the justice it deserves but I will try my best. In the past weld beads can be added in assemblies but they were created as in-context components and I know, from my previous sessions of experimentation, it was sometimes a tricky thing to do…at least it was for me.

With the new Weld Bead tool in 2011, adding welds to weldment parts and assemblies, and multibody parts just got easier… even for a novice like me.  I have played around with the new weld bead tool and I have to admit it is extremely easy to use.  The weld applied to the model is a simplified representation and doesn’t actually change with the type of weld selected and it doesn’t effect the mass properties of the part but  it also doesn’t seem to effect the size of the model. In the documentation the benefits of the simplified weld beads are listed:

• Uniform implementation in parts and assemblies
• Compatibility with all types of geometry, including bodies with gaps
• Lightweight, simplified weld bead display
• Inclusion of weld bead properties in drawings using weld tables
• Smart weld selection tool for face selection of weld bead paths
• Association of weld bead symbols with weld beads
• Handles that assist in defining weld path (lengths)
• Inclusion in the weld folder in the FeatureManager design tree

While I have playing with the tool I found that the Smart weld selection tool made things so much quicker and easier than actually selecting each edge individually. I can imagine that this will make adding welds to very large and complex weldments less time consuming and resulting in better use of time and money.

Smart Weld Selection Tool in the Weld Bead PropertyManager:

Making Selection using the Smart Weld Selection Tool:

New Weld in Place with Weld Symbol:

This small introduction does not even come close to giving the Weld Bead tool the attention that it deserves but, like I said, I am still learning. I am hoping that I will be able to write something a little more detailed at a later date as soon as I become more familiar. I would, in the meantime, love to hear what you think about the weld bead in SolidWorks 2011. Is it really as cool as it seems?

Are We There Yet?

If you have read each part of this series, I take my hat off to you. These long series can sometimes be hard to follow and I know each article has been spaced out perhaps a little too far. Well, the good news is that we are almost finished. Next we will be covering some of the enhancements to Enterprise PDM, which is one of my favorite subjects outside of modeling and drawings. Until then… have fun geeking out.