Javelin / TriMech Author
Chris Briand, CSWE
Customize Context Sensitive Popup Menus within the Graphics Area [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on September 17, 2014
With every release of SolidWorks, we gain new methods of customizing the user interface to our specific needs – the 2015 release of SolidWorks is no different in this regard. We can now Customize Context Sensitive Popup Menus / Right-Click Menus within the Graphics Area. This…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2015 Professional! – Radial Explode [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on September 16, 2014
Among the many nifty and new features with SOLIDWORKS 2015 Professional and Premium, is the Radial Explode option when creating an exploded configuration of your assembly. Radial Explode will save you many hours of work when attempting to create the style of exploded assembly depicted…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2015 Premium! – Flatten Surfaces [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on September 15, 2014
I think my favorite new feature of this 2015 release of SOLIDWORKS Premium is definitely the Flatten Surface functionality. Over the years I have had plenty of opportunities where this function would have directly saved customers a ton of time, money and effort in attempting…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2015 – Dynamic Reference Visualization [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on September 12, 2014
Another excellent feature that has been added to this 2015 release of SOLIDWORKS is Dynamic Reference Visualization; this is the ability to dynamically see the parent / child relationships between features within the FeatureManager. To quickly view feature dependencies, simply move the mouse cursor over the…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2015 – Chain Component Pattern [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on September 11, 2014
It’s what we have all been waiting for some time now – the curtain has been pulled back to reveal some fantastic new functionality in SOLIDWORKS 2015. If you did not have the chance to take a look at the SOLIDWORKS 2015 beta releases and…
Preventing Rotation in Concentric Mates [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on February 10, 2014
With this new SolidWorks 2014 feature you can now prevent the rotation of components that are mated with concentric mates by selecting the lock rotation option. Locked concentric mates are indicated by an icon in the FeatureManager design tree. This should effectively reduce the number…
Using the SOLIDWORKS Stick Fonts for CNC Machining
By Chris Briand, CSWE on January 22, 2014
In this video I will show you how to apply SOLIDWORKS Stick Fonts so that we can output single line geometry for laser Engraving, Water Jet, or Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining. This long-time requested feature for an open, single line font has been fulfilled….
Linking SOLIDWORKS Component Dimensions to Global Variables at the Assembly Level
By Chris Briand, CSWE on January 20, 2014
During one of our recent SOLIDWORKS online training courses an excellent question was poised by one of the students regarding linking SOLIDWORKS Component Dimensions: “Am I able to link dimensions within my components to a global variable that I have created within my SOLIDWORKS Assembly?”…
SOLIDWORKS View Mates for Reference Geometry [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on January 16, 2014
SOLIDWORKS 2014 has given us many new advantages over prior releases, one if which is the ability for the view mates display tool to show us mates attached to reference geometry. As shown in the video below, you can open the View Mates window for any…
How to link a SOLIDWORKS Custom Property to Sketch Text [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on January 3, 2014
The ability to link SOLIDWORKS custom property to an instance of Sketched Text within a drawing is a feature we have had since this capability was introduced in the 2010 release of SOLIDWORKS. The video below will show you how to do just that! Note:…
Flip Normal for Reference Plane [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on January 2, 2014Take a look at the new option to flip the normal for a non-default reference plane in SolidWorks 2014 – Another great time saver!
The Invert Selection Tool – Use IT! [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on August 3, 2013Many of the tools we find in SolidWorks are often overlooked by most designers in favor of “going with what they know”. Most of the time this leads down the road of outdated tools and practices while modeling. One set of overlooked tools is the selection tool-set within SolidWorks. There are a number of gains that can be made with the ability to quickly select everything – deselect the items you actually want and then invert the selection entirely. Take a look at the following video and see where you too can save time while designing.
Help Your Shop Cope with Complex Pipe Copings [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on July 24, 2013Generally termed coping is a process by which one part with an irregular surface is fitted to another. The most common examples we see are with interior molding or on pipe. One flavor of design in which coping is rather prevalent is handrail design, if the connection is complex at the joints, advanced coping is done at the ends to ensure that we have a relatively smooth transition from one pipe segment to the next. Take a look at the following video as I run through the method I use to produce a 1:1 scale print-out that can be then cut out with scissors and wrapped around the end of the pipe. Once fitted the path of the cut can be traced with chalk or…
Re-Activating your EPDM Licenses after an update of your EPDM system [VIDEO]
By Chris Briand, CSWE on July 20, 2013One of the most common questions we receive from both new and experienced SolidWorks Enterprise PDM administrators is surrounding the procedure to update the EPDM licenses after an upgrade of the EPDM system or during the initial installation and setup of an EPDM System. Take a look at the following clip as I take you through the process to update a license file with one that you would have received from the SolidWorks Customer Portal or via an email from your SolidWorks reseller.
As one of the “conservative” members of our technical staff here at Javelin – I’m not one to play the odds, but I’ll make a few bets here in this blog article: The first is that you have not yet looked at my.solidworks.com. The second…