Alignex Blog

At Alignex, we strive to help our customers to learn how SOLIDWORKS can give them a different perspective on designing content to fit their needs. My opportunity presented itself when I was recently teaching the SOLIDWORKS Essentials course.

Spending a few days in the classroom is always a rewarding experience especially when you are instructing the basic fundamentals. It’s all about giving learners an opportunity to experience more of what SOLIDWORKS has to offer.

Here are some of my favorite skills students get to experience in the class:

Say you have a team of 4 designers. The team has a total of 3 licenses (2 Standard, 1 Premium). Two of the designers require the standard features, and two utilize the features within the premium license. They are all on the same network domain. 

In order to leverage the full extent of the premium license, the license manager can be setup so only those who require the additional functionality have access to it. The process for setting up a system for license allocation uses a feature of the SolidNetWork License Manager (SNL) called the 'Options File'. If an administrator wants to structure how licenses get distributed, this is where to go.

I’ve personally used sheet metal to design fixtures, shield electronics and enclose assemblies. After kicking and screaming, I would usually revisit these designs after the other side said it needs to look “pretty.” 

There are lots of reasons that designs get delayed, pushed back or redesigned. To make sure you’re not the bottleneck, let’s review how we can utilize SOLIDWORKS’ full potential and not just the sheet metal functionality. Depending on the difficulty of the design, it may be simpler to start with solid or surface bodies. We would then continue with a process referred to as converting to sheet metal. It is a simple tool to help us work smarter not harder!

Working with CAD models created in other systems is always a challenge. Any time you transfer a model from CAD system “A” to CAD system “B” there can be issues. Think of it like trying to translate a complex poem from one language to another. Sometimes there will be a loss of meaning in translation.

Similarly, when we read in a model from another CAD system into SOLIDWORKS, there can be issues as well.  This post will show you how to:

Ask any designer what the most troublesome aspect of their project plan is and you'll most assuredly hear about time constraints. There's time required for one-off designs. Time required for change documentation.  Time required for the myriad of mundane tasks that we all must fit into the schedule. So what about time for the real design work? You know... the stuff we learned in school. The stuff that was so cool that we decided to make it our career.  How do we get more of that time?  Well, you could ask for an assistant (good luck with that) or you could automate those tedious and time-consuming tasks using SOLIDWORKS Macros.

You’ve nurtured your model from concept. You have an intimate knowledge of every fillet, extrusion and sweep. You've accommodated its need to be different using configurations and are now ready to release your design to the world in the hopes that it will be accepted and flourish. It can, and it will. Your model will survive checking, inspection and most importantly time – if configurations were used in moderation.

While some saving and exporting options in SOLIDWORKS are pretty straightforward, others can be confusing at first. In this post, we take a look at the different options in SOLIDWORKS 2015 including Saving, Exporting, and Pack and Go and how they affect our workflow.

Save Options

There are five different options for saving in SOLIDWORKS, including the Pack and Go option. It may seem like a lot, but they can actually save you time once you learn which option is most suitable for your needs.

Since the release of SOLIDWORKS 2015, there have been a lot of questions surrounding hardware requirements, optimal RAM, video cards and more. To ensure you are always working with a SOLIDWORKS supported and optimized system use these tips from the Alignex technical staff. Though these recommendations are a good starting point for spec’ing out a SOLIDWORKS machine, it is always a good idea to conduct your own hardware/software tests before purchasing any workstation, computer hardware, or video card for SOLIDWORKS.

Backing up design files can save many hours in the event of a change. In the case of a SOLIDWORKS version update for instance, these files can be overwritten and with them hours of design time. For companies with network drives and servers, some of this may already be taken care of. But more likely to be over-looked are the file document customizations. These are the files like our drawing and part templates or sheet formats and bend tables. Where are these stored and how do we back them up?

Common customized files include sheet formats, templates, design library items and of course toolbox data. Some of these may be stored on a shared drive or PDM system like SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM (EPDM) but if not, the following listed locations should be checked. Watch the video below on our YouTube Channel or follow these steps.