CSWE Journey - Part 2

As promised I'm keeping you posted on my progress.

This time we will take a look at what useful tips I have found on SolidWorks Essentials for Parts Design on SolidProfessor. I hope you enjoy it...

Tip No. 1: Background Settings

The first step in this course was to set the background color to plain white because this kind of background requires less computing power. I assume that any plain color has the same effect so I got my set to gray. I'm curious how much does this setting actually help...if anyone knows the answer, please share it in the comments below.

You can set the background color via System Options:

Tip No. 2: The Infinite Construction Line

Although this tip was not directly shared in the course, I got remembered that the construction line can be made infinite. So, I asked my self the question: "Why do I keep making center lines of revolved features as finite construction lines?"

I remember an occasion when I got an error on a revolved part after I changed some dimensions just because I used a construction line of finite length.

Using an infinite centerline might prevent this kind of error from happening + the line is always visible and therefore easy to select.

Tip No. 3: Default Construction Lines on Rectangles

I never found much use in the default construction lines of rectangles that go from corner to corner. Usually, I end up deleting them and making new perpendicular lines that connect the midpoints. But the trick is, that you have the option to select this before drawing the shape, so you don't need to make corrections afterward.

Tip No. 4: Enable Numeric Sketch Input and auto-create Dimensions

When creating simple parts, I usually know what dimensions I need my part to be. If you enable the options shown below, you will be able to get the sketch automatically dimensioned for all the values you enter. The values you don't enter, won't get dimensioned.

Tip No. 5: Use SketchXpert when you need to solve an Over-Defined Sketch

I usually know what I need to do to resolve problems in an over-defined sketch. But when I'm correcting someone else's sketches, I might not see the solution right away.

When this happens, you can click on the OverDefined label on the bottom of the screen and then click on Diagnose. SolidWorks will come up with different solutions to the problem and also show you a preview of the solution. Sadly this tool does not seem to work for the state "Invalid Solutions Found", which usually happens because of zero-length lines.

Tip No. 6: Detach Segment on Drag

I did not know about this feature before. This might come handy when I need to move segments of geometry around that are connected together by default and not by relations. For example a line in a rectangle:

Tip No. 7: Use Freeze Bar

Important for your CAD standards!

This is not a new feature for me, but I thought I will share it with you because it might help you in many ways!

The main functionality of the freeze bar is to prevent SolidWorks from rebuilding the features you don't want to get rebuild each time. This means that in case you have complex parts, you might drastically improve your part's rebuild time, which may have an even bigger impact on your assembly rebuild time.

But the freeze bar also has a great side effect: it prevents the user from making unintentional changes to a model!

This might be useful for users who are reusing parts on different projects/products but don't have a PDM that would prevent them from changing the file! For example, when you are about to reuse a part from an old project, you freeze the part's feature tree and you don't have to worry that you or someone else might unintentionally change the part while working on the new project.

Sooner or later we tend to forget which parts are being reused and checking for Where-Used (unless we have a significant numbering, which is a bad idea in the first place) each time we want to make any kind of change to any part is a huge waste of time IMO.

Even with PDM in place, the freeze bar can be used to prevent changes to parts that are used on multiple subassemblies of a large project. Especially when multiple people are working on the project.

So, if we make it a habit to freeze down the part before we reuse it on a new assembly, it might help us save some reworking time :).

In case you don't see the freeze bar, you have to enable it under options:

Click here for a nice and quick demonstration of the Freeze bar by Toby Schnaars.

Tip No. 8: Distance mate between cylindrical faces

Anytime I need to specify a distance between cylindrical faces in an assembly, I usually use primary reference planes or I create a new reference geometry for this case.

But in this course, I found out that there is a better way to do this:

Tip No. 9: Shortcut for hiding components

You can easily hide components if you hold the TAB key and hover over the components you wish to hide. If you want to make them visible again, hover over the place again but this time hold SHIFT+TAB.

p.s. I still prefer the old fashioned right-click and Show hidden components, for turning components back on.

Tip No. 10: Move component with Stop at collision

Until now I usually defined limit mates to simulate the motion of parts. But this feature looks like a nice alternative to that. I haven't tried it on a real project yet, so I can' t say for sure how useful it actually can be :).

So, this is it for now guys. Hope you learned something useful, I surely did :).

You can also visit the blog simpleCADstandards.com for more info about CAD standards.