Alignex Blog

Are your modeling abilities a cut above the rest? Every year at SOLIDWORKS World design engineers from around the country test their skills and compete during a live Model Mania Contest. In 2015, Alignex customer Nick Vande Waerdt from Kooima won 1st place at SOLIDWORKS World. 

This year at our Minneapolis , we thought we’d have a little competition of our own!

Configurations in SOLIDWORKS parts and assemblies give you the ability to vary dimensions and control the suppression states of various features without needing to create a new document. This allows you to have multiple variations of one project within one file.

Look at any item sitting around you. You will find a majority of them have the company’s brand on it. Whether it is a protrusion, a depression, an engraving, a sticker, or a stamp, the spline tool will allow you to represent your logo on your product and help ensure your customers know who to come back to.

Learn how to use the Draft Analysis tool in SOLIDWORKS to check the correct application of draft to the faces of parts that will be manufactured by the molding process. Commonly used in the plastics industry, it will help identify faces on your model that don’t meet minimum angular or taper requirements. Since this tool shows where both positive and negative angles meet, it is also helpful when deciding where to put a parting line.

Learn how to identify problems in your model with help from the Geometry Analysis tool in SOLIDWORKS. This tool checks for areas that may later cause issues with various applications such as finite element modeling or computer-aided machining. By inputting the parameters, we can have SOLIDWORKS quickly pinpoint existing problems and where they are located on the model.

Learn how to use the DFMXpress analysis tool inside of SOLIDWORKS to determine if your part is ready for manufacturing. This tool gives designers valuable insights to identify issues that might cause increased production costs or problems during fabrication.

Learn how to use the Thickness Analysis tool in SOLIDWORKS to identify areas in your model which may be too thin or thick to properly manufacture. This tool is often used in the plastics industry to check wall thickness of injection molded parts to insure that mold cavities have enough room for melted plastic to flow into.

The SOLIDWORKS Collision Detection command allows designers to quickly find and fix colliding components when moving or rotating a component. This command can be used to detect collisions in an entire assembly or you can narrow down your focus and just look at a selected group of components that you are interested in.

Learn how to use the compare functionality in SOLIDWORKS to identify the differences in your model from one revision to the next. With SOLIDWORKS Compare tools designers can quickly see updates without having to interpret revision notes.

One of the most efficient methods to resolve an error in your geometry is to rebuild or repair that section of your model. The SOLIDWORKS Check Entity tool can help you find failed geometry and investigate detailed geometry information. This is a valuable tool to use when Import Diagnostics is unable to repair geometry.