Wow! I haven’t really experienced SolidWorks 2008 ( I wish I could). I’ve seen some people complain about things they didn’t like about it, like the user interface, but apparently all the other great things about SolidWorks 2008 as a whole greatly outweigh any problems it may have, since it’s been awarded Product of the Year, according to the readers of NASA Tech Briefs.  You can read...

Well, last week was so hectic that at times I wished I could be the one splitting myself into multi-bodies. Hmm, perhaps, what I really need, is a few good buddies (like Molly Maid and Supper Nanny) that can come over and give me a hand every now and then.  Anyway, not so long ago, I was telling you about my little exercise in creating new parts using the Split command. But that isn’t the onl...

Apparently, in part thanks to a certain Robin of Locksley from the 21st century, SolidWorks has just made the SolidWorks World 2008 proceedings available to everyone, along with podcasts, videos, cool photos and all! Oh, and the website is the coolest too! To get to them, just go to the Customer Portal, sign in and look for the link to SolidWorks World 2008 on the left. Enjoy! Oh, and thanks to th...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve spent some time learning about the use of multibodies in SolidWorks.  It’s a fascinating subject, indeed! I had used multibodies before, when modeling the hairclip, but mostly I had limited myself to combining two or more bodies into one. Now, I’m learning to do the opposite: create two or more separate bodies out of one, and save them as individual f...

I have mentioned before that I’m trying to learn a bit about plastics and molds, and  since I’ve bought some materials from the Society of Plastics Engineers, every now and then I receive some information about upcoming events. I thought this one may interest a few folks in the area.  Anaheim is a bit far for me, but for 35 dollars seems a good deal, if you happen to be in the area a...

The last couple weeks have been hectic and interesting, to say the least. On one hand, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, if only via e-mail, a truly amazing human being, full of life experience and wisdom (that he’s more than happy to share with the younger generations), as well as plenty of ideas and enthusiasm. I’m sure you’ll soon be hearing more about him, but for now I’ll leave you ...

I stumbled on this one almost by accident and thought it was something neat to share, for those that, like me, didn’t know it was possible. You know how easy it is to edit feature patterns, right? There’s an icon for the pattern on the feature manager, you just right click on it and select “Edit feature” and voila, you can make all the changes you wish. But what happens when it’s a sketc...

Don’t worry! I’m only creating exploded views of assemblies! Creating an exploded view of an assembly can be very useful when providing information on how to put all the parts of a product together. It can be animated in SW, or inserted in a drawing document, together with a list of parts or bill of materials. The procedure to create an exploded view of an assembly isn’t really complicated. ...

If you have bought lessons from Solid Professor, chances are you receive their interactive newsletter “Ask Solid Professor” already.  Isn’t it the neatest thing? I have never bought any lessons from them, I’ve only sampled the freebies, but I receive the newsletter just the same, because it’s free for everyone. You don’t need to buy from Solid Professor to subscribe to it. Now, th...

Almost at the end of the SolidWorks Essentials manual, I found  some very useful information about Physical Simulation of assemblies. Thanks to this newfound knowledge, I’m happy to report that I was finally able to complete my older son’s dare, and show him that darn hairclip in action. Yeah!  It’s really lots of fun to watch your assemblies coming to life this way, to see all...

Back in January, when I started blogging about my learning journey as a SolidWorks apprentice, I had no idea of all the different roads that I would be travelling in hopes to arrive to my destination and ultimate goal of learning and becoming proficient with this software. I have tried so many different ways so far that I almost lost count! I started with the tutorials that come with the student e...