All of us who use assemblies in SolidWorks know that mating can be fun (in SolidWorks, of course). As a result, one can have a natural tendency to get carried away. However, there is a danger that can creep in when you mate too much in SolidWorks. You can end up creating an over-defined assembly, you can make redundant mates that will give you grief when you try to delete them or modify something. Sometimes the problem appears right away, but in the example I’m about to show you, it can remain buried until a design change causes problems to arise suddenly:
In the classic Star Trek episode “Amok Time,” Kirk and Spock fight to the death over a mate. Luckily, in SolidWorks, you don’t have to. In fact, you outright shouldn’t. If you try to insert a mate that isn’t going to work, SolidWorks has certain safeguards in place to prevent you from accidentally inserting it. Of course, if your green blood is boiling like Mr. Spock’s, you can choose to fight for the mate, but you can find yourself in a lot of trouble really fast as you’ll see in this next video where I fight for a mate and quickly find myself fighting with a lot of other mates:
Welcome back, fellow SolidWorks users for another installment of SolidWorks best mating practices.
Last time, we looked at rule #1: Mate before you relate. After the video, I suggested such a terrifying possibility: That a hole in a plate with a sketch relation to another hole on a different part might be wrongly used to apply a concentric mate as well, resulting in a circular reference. I can tell you’re cringing just thinking about it! Still, as perfect an example as that may be, it wasn’t as visually striking as what you’re about to see.
Greetings, fellow SolidWorks users! Welcome to my new webseries on the best practices of mating… in SolidWorks, of course!
Over the next few days, I’ll bring you several videos on the best practices on how to mate in your assemblies and avoid problems associating with poorly applied mates. Or, perhaps more specifically, I’ll explain what the best practice is, then show you in the video what goes wrong if you don’t follow these guidelines.
A license of SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server is required for use of the Solidworks Workgroup PDM Viewer. The SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server is not included with Solidworks Basic Professional or Premium and must be purchased separately. Once SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Advanced Server has been purchased, there are a number of steps that must be completed in order to allow access to the Viewer. Read More »
Start up time of the vault can be improved by running the Rebuild Vault option once or twice a month on the system where the vault was created. Read More »
During a recent support call, a question was posed regarding any method that a SolidWorks user could use to place their company logo into an eDrawing and ensure that it made it onto any prints that were taken from the eDrawings file. This got me thinking about the STAMP tool and if it could be customized….
You may receive the error “object doesn’t support this property or method” while viewing a document in Internet Explorer via the Workgroup PDM Viewer eDrawings View.
This error is usually followed by a pop up warning stating: “this website wants to run the following add-on: ‘EModelView Module’ from SolidWorks (unverified publisher). If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here… “.
To resolve this issue:
Select Internet Options.
Choose the Security tab and select Trusted sites.
Add the PDMWorks Workgroup Viewer URL to the list of trusted web sites .
This must be repeated on all client machines attempting to view documents via eDrawings in Internet Explorer.
This tip came from the SolidWorks Knowledgebase. This is a question I receive on a regular enough basis that I felt that it would be posting on Javelin’s blog. This tip as well as many other great tips can be found on the SolidWorks Knowledgebase which can be accessed through the SolidWorks Customer Portal at https://customerportal.solidworks.com/. Read More »
