Part of the freedom I’m longing to experience this year is simply putting the fun back in what I do. Not everything needs to be solemn and extremely important, at least not all the time. So, with that in mind, I was working on this model of a hairbrush, just for the sake of practicing and having fun. I must admit, given the kind of item it is, I also thought it could provide a few examples on us...

This blog post was inspired by a question I received via email. The question was about how to create a section view in an assembly.  There was a picture attached to the email that showed an assembly  that seemed to have been cut along two planes, but only partially, and  it appeared that one chunk  of the assembly had been removed to reveal the inside, while the rest of the assembly remained v...

I’ve never really been a car enthusiast. I mean, I like race cars and I sure enjoy the looks of a few models, like this particular one that was parked at some sort of car expo near the amusement park a few weeks ago. Isn’t it a real beauty? I actually like this one better than its younger cousins that were also on display that day.  Anyway, I like to look at cars and I like to drive them, bu...

I was actually planning on posting about friction coefficients and the way it all works using an example of a simulation of these tong grabs, but before I do that, I thought I should share with you about a little problem I ran into while trying to use a special option available for the hinge mate and a way to work around it. OK, first of all, let me tell you a bit about what these tong grabs do....

  My son made me promise this was really a model of lip balm… less girly I guess, if you’re willing to overlook the flowers on the decal, that is. Sorry, I couldn’t resist! Not that I usually wear lipstick, err, lip balm, but when stressed out to the max and whenever tossing a 12 lb ball at a group of unsuspecting pins won’t make me feel any better,   I often find solace in regular thin...

Well this turned out to be a two part post, instead of one. It all started with me venturing into SolidWorks MotionManager, which is used to create little animations of assemblies as they are exploded and/or collapsed, rotated, dragged around, or just made to have their components move and interact with each other in the way they would do in real life. I’m working on a little video about it, usi...

This is a small post in hopes to answer a question from one of the visitors to this blog. How to apply a limit angle mate in SolidWorks? Well, for illustration purposes, I created this little assembly of a couple of thin plates, and mated one of their edges coincident to the corresponding edge in the other plate, so that they could rotate about each other like a hinge. Now, it’s time to apply t...

Children and puppies have a way of keeping people busy and my home is no exception to the rule.  My five year old is extremely inquisitive (and possessive)  and has it figured out already that this is not a job I’m doing when I write the blog, so, for him, this that I do must be some sort of selfish hobby. Now, the problem with that reasoning is that, in his book, moms should not have hobbies....

I got inspiration for this little tip from a question sent to me while I was in Barcelona, last week.  It wasn’t until now that I got a chance to take a look at it and send a reply, so I hope it wasn’t too late for the person that asked the question. Anyway, this person had a simple assembly in which a couple of pneumatic cylinders were mounted on two identical pillars (one on the left and on...

This is a little tip that those who are seasoned SolidWorks users probably already know, but that can be very useful for those who are not so experienced in “the art” of top-down assembly modeling (I’m not extremely experienced but I learned this one by hitting my head against a wall a few times). It’s also a very simple tip, because all you need to do is remember one thing:  the infamous...

The inspiration for this post came from a question a friend asked me about an alternative way to have a component in an assembly display in different colors, without using a configuration for each of the colors. He complained that the assembly was growing large in size due to all the different configurations. I suggested he used Display States, instead, since I remembered I had done something simi...

I’m still in the adjustment phase with SolidWorks 2008. I’ve been trying hard to resist the urge to do everything in SolidWorks 2007, just because it’s the “familiar” environment and I already know where everything is. Instead, I’m trying to spend more time working on SolidWorks 2008, and, as a result, I keep finding new things (or things that have changed) here and there. This time, ...

So much happening, only not as fast enough as I would like it to… Well, the “ Pepsi Challenge” went a lot better than I thought. I didn’t stutter (much), everyone had a great time, and they liked it so much, they even came back for seconds! It was good, but after this experience, I sure have  a greater respect and admiration for the real  SolidWorks representatives and salespeople. Their...

While going through the SolidWorks Training Manual on Advanced Assemblies, I ran into this little piece of information,  that  is so simple and easy, it kind of left me scratching my scalp, wondering how come I didn’t think about it before.  I’m talking about removing external references in a part document that was created or edited in the context of an assembly and made to reference the ge...

As a female mechanical engineer, I always feel an overwhelming excitement whenever I find other women venturing in engineering, be it as professionals or students. I rejoice whenever I find women involved in science and technology, but particularly in engineering, since, in my country at least,  engineering is still a mainly male-dominated area, slowly opening up to women.  And women have so muc...