Author Archives: Joseph Richter

Quick Hide & Show of Parts in an Assembly.

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Joseph Richter

 To hide parts.

While editing an assembly, if you need to quickly hide parts that are ‘in the way’, simply press the Tab button.  The top component directly below your cursor will be hidden, if you click Tab again then the next part below the cursor will also be hidden, all in order.  For example, in this assembly below, with my cursor on the Ace of Hearts, clicking Tab will hide the Ace Card part, then by selecting Tab again, the King will be hidden and so on.

 To show hidden part.

In order to show hidden part(s) simply click Shift+Tab on the keyboard while your cursor is over where the hidden part is located in the graphics area. As shown above, any component directly below your cursor will be shown using Shift+Tab.  If there are multiple hidden parts, they will be shown in reverse order.  For example, below the card displayed is Queen of Hearts, clicking Shift+Tab will show the King.  Without moving your cursor clicking Shift+Tab one more time will now show the Ace.

This tip can also be used in combination with the ‘Isolate’ command in order to hide or show additional parts from an isolated selection set or current Display State.

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Interference on detection on Weldments

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Joseph Richter

If you have ever wanted to check for Interference in between multiple weldment structural members in a SolidWorks Part, you will discover that there is no interference detection tools available while working on a part.  Any attempt to add the interference detection icon to your toolbar results in a greyed out button*(unavailable).  Now what?  Well with this tip, you will discover that you have 2 options for checking for interference on a weldment part:

1) Simply create an assembly with your weldment part *(no other parts are needed) and run Interference Detection from the pull-down Tools/Interference Detection or from the Evaluate tab on the CommandManager.  Make sure to use the following option, ‘Include Multi-body part interferences’.

2) In the weldment part file you can use the Combine Feature to check between 2 structural members. From the pull-down Insert/Features/Combine, simply select the ‘Common’ option and select 2 structural members to check if there is any overlapping volume between them.  You can use the Preview button in the command and you will see if there is any interference.  If there are none, you will get the following message: “Unable to create single body common to the input bodies” which would mean that there is no interference.

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Windows HotKeys

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Joseph Richter

Here are some handy Windows Keyboard short cuts that can save you time in your daily design work, and help you navigate your Windows system.  Some of these shortcuts work in SolidWorks as well. 


WIN + “+” = Magnifying Glass zoom in*
WIN + “-” = Magnifying Glass zoom out*
WIN + E = Windows Explorer
WIN + D = Show Desktop
WIN + L = Lock Windows
Win + Tab = Cycle through the open application using Aero Flip*
WIN + P = Projector and video output settings*
WIN + X = Mobility Center – Several convenient controls such as projector, WiFi, etc.
WIN + Up Arrow or WIN + Down Arrow = Toggle between window states, Maximized, Restore and Minimized
WIN + Shift + Left or Right Arrow = Move window to another monitor
WIN + 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 = Launch the corresponding application on the Task Bar
WIN + T = Task Bar navigation via arrow keys


Ctrl + C = Copy
Ctrl + X = Cut
Ctrl + V = Paste
Ctrl + Drag = Copy
Ctrl + Tab = Cycle through the open documents within an application
Ctrl + Roll mouse wheel away from you = Zoom in on Web Page or Office Document*
Ctrl + Roll mouse wheel toward you = Zoom out of Web Page or Office Document*
Ctrl + Click on Application Icon = Cycle through the open documents within the application
Ctrl + Shift + Click on Application Icon = Run application as Administrator
Ctrl + Alt + Delete = Windows options including: Lock computer and Start Task Manager
Ctrl + Shift + Escape = Windows Task Manager


Shift + Drag = Move
Shift + Click on Application Icon = Run a new instance of an application
Shift + Roll mouse wheel away from you = Go back to last Web Page
Shift + Roll mouse wheel toward you = Go forward to next Web Page


Alt + Tab = Cycle through the open applications
Alt + F4 = Terminate the active application

*HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for presentations.

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Make SolidWorks easier to see.

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Joseph Richter

There are many reasons for improving visibility in SolidWorks, for example if you wear glasses or if you’re giving a presentation in SolidWorks.  As a Certified SolidWorks Instructor, I use the following settings that I am recommending to you.

My recommended SolidWorks settings are:
Set larger icons for easier identification under Tools/Customize/Toolbar Tab, select the Option Large icons.

Make your previews pop on screen, as the default yellow can be hard to see, from Tools/Options/Colors> Temporary graphics, select the color:

When using Shaded with edges display mode, know at a glance if the faces of a model are tangent by adjusting Tools/Options/Display/Selection: Part/Assembly tangent edge display, select the option As Phantom.

My recommended Windows 7 Settings:
From a Right Click on the Windows Desktop, you can select ‘Screen Resolution’, and the resolution can be adjusted to your preference.  However more importantly on this same dialog, there is another option, called ‘Make text and other items larger or smaller’; that allows you to adjust the scale of the screen fonts.  So for Windows and every program in Windows, all text fonts shown for menu’s and pull down’s will be larger regardless of your screen resolution.

To make your mouse cursor stand out I recommend making it larger and black, find this setting in
Control Panel\Ease of Access\Ease of Access Center\Make the mouse easier to use; or from the Mouse Properties Pointers Tab.

And finally make it clear when selecting dialog box items through the Control Panel/Appearances and Personalization/Change window colors and metrics, Change the colors for both ‘Selected Items’, for the current Selection, and ‘3D Objects’ for the parent selection.

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Geometry Pattern Performance Tip

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Joseph Richter

When making a pattern with a lot of instances, performance can take a major hit when editing the part and any assemblies that contain it.  The reason for this is that SolidWorks is recreating the seed or parent feature(s) i.e. (Cut-Extrude -> Through All, Fillet on 4 edges) that you are making the pattern from.  Simply put, SolidWorks is calculating each feature for each pattern instance.  So if your features take one second to rebuild and you make a pattern of them 10 times, this will result in 10 seconds of rebuild time for SolidWorks to calculate the pattern.

In this example, the seed features to pattern are a diamond shaped Cut-Extrude with Fillets on multiple edges.  The pattern is 99 rows by columns (1881 copies) with the rebuild time on my computer calculating in at 215.98 seconds, approximately 3 minutes and 36 seconds, as shown by the Tools>Feature Statistics.
 

In order to improve rebuild time or increase performance, there is an options setting called Geometry Pattern located at the bottom of the pattern dialog box (see picture below).  Geometry pattern simplifies the calculations that SolidWorks has to perform.  Instead of recreating all of the patterned features at each instance, SolidWorks will simply ‘copy’ the geometry to pattern for each instance “as is”. 
 

In this example the rebuild time was drastically reduced by using the Geometry Pattern option as shown by the Tools>Feature Statistics; this same pattern rebuilds in just under 4 seconds.

 
Depending on the geometry of your parts, you may want to try this option which can greatly speed up your SolidWorks rebuild time and enhance performance.

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