Rob Jensen’s Blog

Today I was on the SolidWorks Forums and got to thinking about installing Service Packs (SP) in SolidWorks.

I was wondering if users run right out to the SolidWorks Customer Portal and just download the latest and greatest SP or do they look at the bug fixes (SPR) and make their decision on that.

When I get a e-mail (or whatever) telling me there is a new SP ready, I will wait a few days to even look at the Fixed SPR list.  The reason I do this is usually there is a lot of traffic on that site when a SP update is announced and I don’t want to even attempt to download the patch.

Next, I see if there are any fixed SPR’s that will affect us.  If there isn’t, I won’t even bother upgrading.  Currently, I’m running on SP 3.0.  All of my users are fine (at least I think so cause there isn’t a line outside my office) so I don’t touch my installation.

If you do upgrade, make sure you test the install before deploying it.  You don’t want to have a user come by and tell you his macro worked yesterday and it doesn’t today.  I’ve been there and done that.  That user will haunt you until it’s fixed..:-)

Bottom line is if all is good in your SolidWorks World, then just let it be.  You;ll be glad you did.

Sometimes it takes reading a blog post to generate another blog post.  Hence, this post.

I had a user group member ask me this same question at a meeting.  I got to see exactly what he was trying to do when Mike Puckett and I went on a customer visit.  Then today, Anna posts a way to do this on her blog..!  So I thought I’d give you another option to capture the same result.

First, I created my sketch profile and extruded it as a thin feature.  Note: I have a .001in gap between the 2 lines so I can create a sheetmetal feature from the solid.

After I have my base shape, I created a sheetmetal feature out of it by going to Insert, SheetMetal, Bends

Once you have your sheetmetal feature created, you can sketch the profile you want to cut out and do a Cut Extrude.  NOTE: I have “Nomal Cut” selected.  This will give you the laser cut shape.

And there you have it.  The final product.

The nice thing about this option, is if the shop comes up and says that they are going to saw cut the tube, you can just edit the cut feature and un-check the Normal Cut option and you have a straight cut.

I’m sure most (if not all) of you have had to edit, open, change or fix another person’s SolidWorks part, drawing or assembly.  I get the chance to do this every day as a CAD administrator and I always find a certain feature or part that makes me think “What in gods name was this person thinking?”  That’s were leaving a comment is very helpful.

Comments can be added to items in the FeatureManager design tree (assemblies, components, features, sketches, and so on) in the manner of Post-It® notes. You can include a date and time stamp in text comments.

To add a comment, right-click an item in the FeatureManager design tree and select Comment, Add comment.

The Comment box will pop-up and you can start typing  text. 

You can also add the current date and time by clicking the  Date/Time Stamp.

Click Save and Close.

So how do you view these Comments??  Well,there are a few ways to view Comments.  If you hover over the Part, Feature or Drawing View it will pop-up.

You can also view all the Comments in the Model, Assembly or Drawing in the Comments folder int he FeatureManager.

So the next time to add a empty model in your assembly for a BOM, or model something way out in left field, do your fellow co-workers a favor and add a comment.

I’m sure most (if not all) of you have downloaded a 3D model from a website. Most of the time you can just download the file (STEP, IGES, Parasolid) and open it in SolidWorks. But lets say the file you downloaded is a zip file with a spec sheet or a Readme file included. What do you do now? What I’ve done was unzip the files, delete the documents I don’t need and them open the file I do want in SolidWorks.

Well, you don’t have to do all that. All you need to do is download the zip file and drag and drop it into SolidWorks. SolidWorks will open the file formats it can and toss the rest. It will even tell you which files it can’t open. Pretty slick, huh..?