Javelin / TriMech Author
Alin Vargatu, CSWE
SolidWorks Tutorial: Import Diagnostics (1) – “Face Piercing Through Solid” Error [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on December 2, 2013
This week, we will post a series of articles focused on troubleshooting and healing topological errors from geometry imported in SolidWorks. Two designers of different nationalities can communicate using a lingua franca, a language that is not native to either of them, but which is known…
Using SOLIDWORKS Direct Modeling to modify an imported model without feature history [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on November 25, 2013
How can you modify a model without history? Use the SOLIDWORKS direct modeling tools to reverse engineer an existing model. When you need to create tooling or fixtures for your customer parts, it is often necessary to remove all the details that will not be produced by your tooling, or…
SolidWorks Tutorial – Flyout Feature Manager Design Tree [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on November 18, 2013Watch this video for tips on how to quickly expand and collapse the Flyout Feature Manager Design Tree:
SolidWorks Tutorial – Apply Material to All Parts of an Assembly [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on November 11, 2013What do you do when you work on a large assembly, with multiple levels of sub-assemblies, and want to apply the most common material to all the parts? Opening each part file on its own and applying the material is extremely time-consuming. Instead of that follow this simple 3 step procedure: Open the main assembly Select all the part components Apply the same material to the whole selection Sounds simple, does it not? The problem is that even though SolidWorks is renowned for being the most intuitive CAD software available today, some workflows are not yet as straightforward as the users would like. Case in hand: Step 2 – creating a selection set of only the components that are “parts”, while filtering out the sub-assemblies. It is doable but it is…
SolidWorks Tutorial: Direct Modeling [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on November 8, 2013Some people will be shocked by the title of this article. How can you say that SolidWorks can do direct modeling when every operation you perform on the model is documented in the feature tree? Let me start by saying that if the definition of direct modeling includes loosing track of the operations you perform on the affected geometry, then SolidWorks does not have direct modeling capabilities. But if you need to modify existing solid bodies, regardless of how they were created, then I can tell you that SolidWorks has the capabilities that you are looking for! This video present a very good example on how you can perform a complex change affecting a local area of an imported body using SolidWorks. The update is…
Make SolidWorks Better! – Submit Your Ideas for the “SolidWorks World 2014 Top Ten Ideas Contest”
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on November 6, 2013
Great News – the submission has been opened for new ideas on improving SolidWorks! It is the best opportunity for you, the users, to make your voice heard by the product definition groups at DS SolidWorks. The top ten ideas (based on your votes) will be…
SolidWorks 2014 Tutorial: What Was Hard Now Is Easy When Applying Tangent Mates [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on October 4, 2013SolidWorks has always been a user-friendly software, mostly because 99.9% of the workflows in SolidWorks are natural, like in the real life. From this point of view, compared with other CAD software packages, users are really pampered when working in the SolidWorks Universe. It is understandable then why some SolidWorks users might become frustrated when having to find workarounds for the other 0.1% of the situations, when the solution to a specific problem is not so intuitive. Case in hand: applying a simple tangent mate between a curvilinear edge or a sphere and another face was very hard to do in SolidWorks 2013 and older versions. The Javelin Blog published such a solution in the past. The SolidWorks Forum has a full discussion about this topic turned into a…
Alin’s SolidWorks 2014 Tutorial: Total Control When Deleting Features [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on September 25, 2013There are people who say that while SolidWorks excels in creating a new model from scratch, sometimes it is quite complicated to use for modifying an existing part. Let’s consider three of the most frequent questions: What if you want to do a radical change to a shape? What if you need to completely modify the whole “manufacturing” process of a specific part and for that would even have to change the type of the existing features (i.e. replace a Boss-Extrude with a Revolve)? What would happen with the children of the features that get deleted? What if you want to do complex changes to existing bodies (even “dumb” solids or surfaces)? Good News! In the last 5 years, SolidWorks introduced amazing functionality for addressing these needs. SolidWorks…
SOLIDWORKS Replace Sketch Entity [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on September 20, 2013Doesn’t matter if you are The Company Owner, a Manager, a SolidWorks Expert or just a SolidWorks Beginner, you will be extremely happy taking advantage of the most important enhancement introduced to SolidWorks this year: the ability to replace sketch entities. As the owner, CEO or manager you will notice how much faster your design team will be able to change their design intent during all phases of the design process. What before would take them hours can be done now in seconds. Moreover, the number of errors in your drawings and, ultimately, in your products will decrease by an order of magnitude! If you are a SolidWorks Power User, a large portion of your work time was most likely dedicated troubleshooting and fixing your colleagues models after they…
The Greatest Time Saver – Auto-Sketch Scaling in SolidWorks 2014 [VIDEO Tutorial]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on September 12, 2013Auto-Sketch Scaling in SolidWorks 2014 will save the world about 2,500 user-years annually!!! It is a bit ironic that you will most likely not notice a little SolidWorks 2014 enhancement which will provide the biggest productivity boost to the whole SolidWorks Community. Scaling the entities in the first sketch, based on the first applied dimension, is such a simple concept! A concept that will be used by every SolidWorks user, a concept that works seamlessly and which will save you time and your company money! How much time, you ask? It depends on how many parts you create from scratch and how complex are the first sketches in each part. Let’s say you need to create 10 new parts per day. You will save about 30 seconds per part, altogether around 5 minutes each…
SOLIDWORKS Path Length Dimension [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on September 10, 2013
New in SOLIDWORKS is the ability to dimension the overall length of a chain of sketch entities. Imagine you have to dimension the length of a wire or chain, without knowing its shape. For example a path length dimension can drive a full sketch where you…
SOLIDWORKS 2014 Top 20 Enhancements
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on September 9, 2013
My name is Alin and I am a SolidWorks user. Who am I kidding? My name is Alin and I am addicted to SolidWorks! Today I am so happy that I am about to explode (translations and rotations included)! The wait is over: SolidWorks 2014 is here…
SolidWorks eDrawings for Android
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on August 12, 2013
After using eDrawings on my iPad and iPhone for almost a year now and I believe this is an excellent tool for: communicating during the design process with customers and suppliers replacing some paper drawings in the machine shop perfect for describing the assembly or installation…
There are many different ways for users to provide feedback to SolidWorks and on this blog we have already describe various workflows for: Submitting Enhancement Requests using the Customer Portal Submitting, Discussing and Voting the Top 10 Ideas for the SolidWorks World Submitting Problems to the…
How Many Mates Can Be Created At Once in SolidWorks? One, Two,… Three? [VIDEO]
By Alin Vargatu, CSWE on August 5, 2013Watch this video to learn how to create one, two and even three mates at the same time in SolidWorks.