SW2021
SOLIDWORKS 2021 enhancements, tech tips, and best practices
SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2021 has made significant improvements to solver performance that can reduce the solution times of some studies. The improvements are focused on studies with a large amount of surface-to-surface contact elements. There are three default solvers available: FFEPlus, Intel Direct Sparse, and Direct…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2021, you can save the hatch pattern file “sldwks.ptn” in any searchable folder so it is not overwritten when you upgrade SOLIDWORKS. This is useful if you customize the file. By default, the hatch pattern file is saved in a SOLIDWORKS installation folder…
Do you design injection molds with SOLIDWORKS? Did you know that SOLIDWORKS Plastics offers a comprehensive set of tutorials? New in the SOLIDWORKS Plastics 2021 release is a tutorial entitled Validating Injection Molding Simulation, where we learn how to simulate the injection molding process, and…
SOLIDWORKS Inspection 2021 has some template improvements. Before these improvements were made, when making an Inspection report you would click the “Add” button for a template, same when exporting to an Excel sheet you would “Add” template and then choose where to save. This year,…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2021 are Synchronize options for the configuration of a component pattern, for instance if we need components to be all the same configuration. When patterning components in a SOLIDWORKS assembly, there have for many years been options to vary the configuration of…
VDA balloons have been around for quite some time and were introduced for SOLIDWORKS in the last four to five years for SOLIDWORKS Inspection. Although, when introduced there wasn’t much functionality other than for placing them. Rotating VDA balloon For SOLIDWORKS Inspection 2021 we now…
When working in drawings, SOLIDWORKS 2021 offers more context toolbars than before, making it easier to work with sketches, markups, and centerlines. Select any one of these, and look for the context toolbar to appear next to the pointer. This saves valuable time and mouse…
New in eDrawing 2021, measure tool capabilities are increased. The Measure tool can now be used to measure the distance between cylindrical-cylindrical faces and planar-cylindrical faces. The cylindrical-cylindrical face measurement includes the overall center-to-center distance and the three components of the measurement with the flags…
New in SOLIDWORKS 2021 is greater automatic control over how the Miter works in the Trim/Extend command. This command is often used when dissimilar sizes of structural member are joined. The new functionality allows choice of how the members fit together at the joint. The…