CATI Tech Notes

It's All About Workarounds! Really? Yes Really!

In my experience it’s all about workarounds. Isn’t it? I mean really let’s think about it. In everyday life if there isn’t a given path or answer what do we do (especially designers and engineers)? We work around it. I can’t remember the last time something went off without a hitch or some sort of a “bump in the road. It isn’t supposed to be smooth. As the type of personality that expects perfection in most situations, I have come to understand that in order to live up to my expectations, I‘ve come up with a workaround for just about everything. Including the word count for a blog article (be “wordy”)

There is always a means to an end and this totally rings true in this statement. “When you need to drive a nail in, everything looks like a hammer”. So keeping this in mind, I had an interesting request the other day for an easy way to overlay a “featured” part over a “de-featured” part on a print in an isometric view. It took me 2 seconds to reply “no problem”. But as I thought of my work-around on the fly, there was the proverbial “stick in the spokes” issue. You can’t do an Alternate Position View in a part drawing. Doh!! Ok, we can make this up as we go and then the wheels start going and I take a sip (gulp) of coffee and the next thing ya know here it is:

• Create a part with 2 configurations- 1 for your “featured” part, one for your “de-featured” version.

• Insert this part into a new assembly 2 times “fixed” and specify the configuration for the correct instance.

• Open a new drawing using your assembly as the parent. Insert a view; I’ll use isometric for this example.

• Make sure you specify a reference configuration as the “top level” view. (this is one of my favorite enhancements for 2010 BTW)

• Insert an “Alternate View” and shoes the other configuration. This view will be in the “hidden lines view” visible. You have the ability to select a predefined configuration and this is my preferred method.

•  So in the end what we have is a laid-over style look of a “featured” part and “de-featured” part with a pretty simple procedure and just using the tools already provided to us in a slightly different fashion.

 Hope this helps!

Todd Werginz

Technical Analyst

Computer Aided Technology

Save as Exterior Faces…….

There are certain times that you just do not want all the information shown. Only certain people need to see certain things at certain times. For instance: You have a customer or vendor that has requested a footprint of a specific machine, assembly or what have you. They need this in a 3D environment to use in a layout or some other application. Your company has invested countless hours developing this product or products and there is proprietary information contained within this model(s). Or your assembly is very large and you just want to cut down on the overhead that you are sending out. The ability to save out your assembly as a part can help you out.

From the “Save As” dialog box choose your Save as Type to part:

 

At this point you will have to make a choice to what you want to save out.

 

The “exterior faces” checkbox will save just that. No solids, a collection of surfaces of just the exterior faces.  The Exterior components will save out a Multibody solid with no feature history and only the parts on the outside. In other words- “No Guts”. All components will save as a multibody part with no feature history.

    So this begs the question, what if I have a single part file with proprietary information inside and I do not want my competition getting a hold of it? How about starting a new assembly with your one part in it and doing the save as part option. This way you could leave the “guts” out and accomplish your task of keeping your information yours.

Todd Werginz

CATI

Still Redneck

Well Tuesday was the SWUGN Technical Summit in Naperville, IL outside of Chicago.  It was a very good group with roughly 130 attendees, several good presentations, and a wedge salad that I liked quite a bit.  To find out when there will be a SWUGN Technical Summit near you check out this sight.

SWUGN Info

As we usually do with an event like this, Josh Altergott and I took the chance to get a little Redneck.  We presented "Redneck Workarounds -- The SolidWorks Answer to Duct Tape and Bailing Wire".  We had a lot of fun making fun of bizarre fixes, my accent, and Josh in general.

We mentioned during the presentation that we would make the slides available through the blog so it is attached to this posting.  Download Redneck Work Arounds.  I hope everyone gets something out of it.  Even if the fixes and workarounds in the presentation are not directly helpful to you; maybe you will be inspired to think a little redneck when you run into a difficult situation.

We decided this time to freshen-up the content a bit.  We removed a few obsolete workarounds and added a few that are a bit more pertinent.  My favorite new work-around is probably "The Disappearing Dialog Box".  Here it is:

The Problem:

My Measure dialog box is no longer visible on the screen.  
  

The first potential workaround:

Change the resolution on your screen to be the max allowed.  Sometimes when a user has the resolution set real high the dialog will get pushed to the edge of the screen and then when the resolution is set back to a lower level the dialog box stays at the original coordinates that are now off scree.

The second potential workaround:

1. Edit the registry key that is the position holder for that dialog box HKCU\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks2010\General  
2. Find the "Measure Dialog Position" entry
3. Edit this key, delete any/all values, OK
4. Run SolidWorks and try Measure

I hope that this helps some folks out there but remember; it is your registry.  Be very cautious.  You can kill a machine if you are not careful.

Thanks,

Adrian

 

No Internet Connection Activation

Eventually you’ll have to get to the internet somehow to activate your Solidworks products. Let’s face it, how would we live without it at this point? Solidworks is completely activation based now for all products which requires some sort of connection to the big bad web somewhere sometime.

Some users do not wish to have their workstations connected at all do to various reasons. The main one’s being security threats, resource suckers and general distractions from the main goal which is productivity. However you still need to activate your Solidworks within the 30 day grace period to get it to fully function.

Here is the process:

1.   When prompted to activate your products, Solidworks will always default to the “Automatically Over the Internet (recommended)” check box.

2. Select the Manual via email option.

3. Press the Save button on the next screen and save the file.

*Important Tip Here-REMEMBER WHERE YOU SAVE THE FILE

4. Get a copy of the saved file to a flash drive or some other removable media.

5. Send the file that was generated to activation@solidworks.com

6. Wait for the response file to come back. This will not be instantaneous!

7. Once your response file has been emailed to you repeat the process listed above in reverse. This time pressing the “Open” to read the response file.

That should do it. You can now concentrate all your efforts on designing which is why you have Solidworks in the first place.

Todd Werginz

CATI

Updating Solidworks Service Packs for HUL Serial Numbers

How do I update my Home Use License (HUL) for all of the service packs? Because when I go to do the update Solidworks will not let me. If you have a network license you also have the ability as per the Solidworks license agreement (Please take time to read) to install 1 additional Home Use License per seat that is the lowest level of software you have in your package. Let me explain. If you have 2 seats of Premium and seat of Professional and then 5 seats of Solidworks Core, you will get a serial number that entitles you to install 8 seats of Solidworks Core on your home computers. Read the license agreement for further explanation of the legalities of all that.

Getting back to the solution of updating the HUL serial numbers. From the XP OS you’ll want to go to the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and hit the change button at the Solidworks installation.

 

 From the Windows 7 OS, its a little different looking. Navigate to the Control Panel or God Mode. You’ll need to get to Programs and Features and right click on Solidworks and hit ‘Change.’ I would show a picture here from the Microsoft Snipping Tool (which is cool by the way!) But I do not have access to this OS as of this article.

When you hit the change menu Solidworks will launch the Installation Manager and then do its normal checks and start up. You will be modifying the existing installation and the next screen will be the serial number screen. At this screen you will change your number to the Network license number and then get your updates to whatever service pack you will be going to. As of right now the current service pack for 2010 is SP 2.1. It might ask for the original installation files which were on the disk (sp 0.0) so have that handy as well.

After you run your updates you will need to repeat the process to once again change your serial number back to the HUL number and continue on. Hope this helps!

Todd Werginz

Technical Analyst-CATI

 

Imported Files – Turning Surfaces into Solids

Problem – Many times when you import a customer’s part or assembly and it opens as a part that has a ton of surfaces or it may open as a multi level assembly and each of those parts is made up of surfaces.  The file that I chose to work with was an assembly that when imported into SolidWorks opened as a part file by setting some of the import options. The Feature Stats for this part show how the rebuild time is effected by having to look at all 697 surfaces.

Files like this can pose several problems as you start to work with them. The first problem is file size; the current file is 5mb. Next when you put several parts that are built like this into an Assembly they can start to bring your performance to a slow crawl in no time, drawing performance and view display will also be effected. Lastly if you need to make any modifications to this imported file it will be difficult because there are no solid bodies to work with. Also you will notice all of the colored edges in the part this is because we have a System Option on to show edges of open surface in a different color.

  

 

Solution – Reduce the overall number of surfaces in the model and try to create a model that is made up of a single or multiple Solid Bodies. In the attached PDF are the steps that will guide you through the process I took to create a file that was made up of a single surface. I have also attached the part files for you to use as a reference. 

Overall on this part it took me about 30 to 45 minutes to get the final result but the overall reward is the time it will save you later in the design process of not having to wait around for your drawing or assembly to open or rebuild.

 

Download Imported Files-Turning Surfaces into Solids

 

Good Luck

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Manager

What Good is Blueprint Now? - A New RedNeck Workaround!

SolidWorks labs (labs.solidworks.com) came out with Blueprint Now awhile back. It is a tool that lets you edit dwg files on-line. A nice idea, but what good is that to a SolidWorks user?

Today we had a customer send in a DXF file that they were having trouble reading into SolidWorks. I tried to load it into SolidWorks my self, and ran into problems also. I got this Error:

Next step. I tried loading the file into E-Drawings, just to see what it looks like. No joy, I got a similar error.

 At this point i got a bit suspicious about this file. I have messed with DXF files in the past. They are plain text files, so I opened it up in WordPad to make sure this really was a DXF file. The file looked like a DXF file. There were no obvious problems. It had a beginning and an end.

As SolidWorks users, we do have a lot of tools to work with DXF files, so next up, DWG Editor. This looked more promising at first, in that it took longer to bomb out.

Progress? I asked it to recover, but it reported there were too many errors. This seemed like the end of the line. The customer would have to go back to the source and try to get them to clean up the problem. That's when I remembered Blueprint Now.

Blue Print now is based on Microsoft Silverlight, so after adding the plug-in. It is very easy to get started. I hit a road block right away. It only accepts files with a DWG extension and I have a DXF. I scratched my head, and thought for a second ... how different could they be? It is just 2D. If I was going to write a program to read in a DWG, you might as well do DXF too, right?

I renamed the file to give it a DWG extension and uploaded it. Guess what, not only did it load. It seemed to clean up the problems. I saved it off as a DWG and it was all down hill from there. The customer got their file and a warning to use this workaround at your own peril.

Losing Some Weight in 2009 – Lightweight Assembly Drawings

When you open your first assembly drawing in SolidWorks 2009, you will notice that the referenced files load as Lightweight.  This is expected and is a new change in SolidWorks 2009 to improve performance and memory usage.  Unfortunately, there is no way to turn this off. 

While the drawing is opening, you could receive a message that SolidWorks detects that the units of the drawing differ from the components in the assembly, which can affect the display of notes, cells, and custom properties.  And you are prompted to resolve those components or not. 

This means that there have been changes to some of the models referenced by the drawing.  SolidWorks needs to fully resolve those changed models, so that everything in the drawing is up to date and accurate.  Only the appropriate models will be fully resolved, the rest will load lightweight.  Note, if you select “No” to this message box, and also check “Don’t ask me again”, you will no longer see this message box, changed components will not fully resolve, and your drawings may be continually out of date.  To bring the message box back, go to Tools>Options>Advanced> and check the dismissed message box.  It will then appear next time you open a drawing that needs to resolve some components. 

 

If you do not want to work with the drawing while having some files loaded in Lightweight, then the easiest thing to do is to right click on the Sheet(s) from the FeatureManager and select Set Lightweight to Resolved.  This will load all components on that sheet as fully resolved.  

 

Design Better!

Leslie Lougheed

Getting the Overall Length of a Bent Tube

Numerous times, customers have asked me how to get the overall length of a tube created in SolidWorks.  If you have a seat of SolidWorks Office Premium, the Routing capability will give you the overall length of a tube/wire.  But many of us just have a SolidWorks Core or SolidWorks Office Professional seat, so we lack that capability that routing provides.  So here is a Redneck Workaround to get the overall length of a bent tube: 

The tube I will use for this example was made with the Sweep command using a profile and path.  I need to obtain the overall length of the tube and my driving dimensions do not capture that.  So what I will do is edit the path sketch and add some reference dimensions to it.  I will add two dimensions to determine the lengths of the arcs (arc length dimensions are made by selecting the two end points of the arc and then the arc itself), and I will add one dimension for the vertical straight length in my model. 

   

Next, I need to add global variable to sum up the length of the tube segments through the equations tool.   My equation will be Overall Length = the sum of the tube segment lengths.  The equation would be “Overall Length” = 5.0 + 0.785 + 1.5 + 0.785 + 4.0 for this example.  But I do not want to key in those values in the equation.  I want to select the dimensions from the sketch to ensure that the Overall Length updates if any of the dimensions update.

Lastly, I will add a Custom Property from File>Properties and link it to the global variable Overall Length.  This custom property can be displayed in a note in a drawing or in the BOM.

Design Better!

Leslie Lougheed

Daylight Savings Nov.2nd get a Redneck Fire Alarm

Daylight Savings is Nov. 2nd you should change the batteries in your smoke alarm, unless you have the Redneck Fire Alarm, then no batteries needed.

 

Not only will this save your life but you will have a nice piece of art hanging on your wall.

You may also want to hang one over the couch & bed in case you fall asleep while smoking.

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Team Leader