The Javelin Technologies Blog

Watch how easy it is to create a video of your model rotating using the SolidWorks Animation Wizard:

Watch this video to learn how to use the motion study tab in order to create better exploded view animations in SolidWorks.

Starting with SolidWorks Composer version 2013x the mouse buttons can be assigned the same functions as in SolidWorks.

Watch this video to learn how to do that. Your fingers will thank you for it!

Watch this video to learn how to add a camera and have it follow an actor. You can use this technique for generating walkthroughs.

Texturing in SolidWorks Composer is not the same as in SolidWorks. This is because a texture will allways be placed on the Actor, based on how the Camera is angled.

It is very important to make sure that the viewport is normal to the face to be textured.

Watch this video for more informaiton:

If you have been working with SolidWorks Composer you will notice that when you import a file you lose any textures that the SolidWorks files might have had. You still get all the colouring though.

There is an easy way to get SolidWorks files into SolidWorks Composer with textures. That is to save your file as a 3D XML file. If you do a Save As in SolidWorks you will see this as an option. The Composer can import this and will keep the assembly file structure. This is a great workaround if you are making marketing material. The only drawback is you lose the meta data so this file type is no good for creating BOMs.

Watch this video to see a step-by-step demonstration of this workflow:

I have to credit this trick to Scott Lidgey.

When you are rotating an actor in Composer, you can control the amount of revolution and make sure it rotates at a constant velocity. The trick to this is to click on the triad when you go to rotate and do not drag it. You will notice the property task pane ask you how many degrees. Now you can type any number you want and the actor will rotate that over time. I have created a video show this process.

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Once you have finished your project in SolidWorks Composer (for this example, images for a user manual), you might need to send your images for approval before you export to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign. You can send your project as an .exe file. This means whoever is looking at your project does not require SolidWorks Composer or the Composer player, and you don’t have to raster out your images either, saving you time.

Watch this video to learn how.

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Creating Decals in SolidWorks Composer [formerly 3DVIA Composer] can be very tricky. Unlike in SolidWorks where you just drag and drop. Composer treats every Actor as a solid mesh so adding a decal in the same way you would in SolidWorks CAD would result in the decal texture covering the entire actor in Composer. The trick for SolidWorks Composer is to create a primitive first, then add your Decal to the primitive, this provide you with control for placing the decal.

I have created a demonstration video to show you how…

In the video below, I am going to export all of my views using the High Resolution Image workshop.