I hope you are not growing tired of my SolidWorks World chronicles just yet, because I still have a lot more to write about. This was a particularly good SolidWorks World for me and I want to share what I learned with you.  This time, let me tell you about yet another hands-on session I attended. This one was presented by Michael LaFleche, Regional Technical Manager for CAPINC, and it was an int...

This one was the first ever hands-on session I attended at SolidWorks World. Last year I wasn’t able to get into any of the hands-on sessions, but this year I had the opportunity to pre-register for several of them and it was one of the best things I could’ve ever done.  This session was presented by Dan Riffell, Projects Coordinator at Eltron Research and Development. Dan is also a v...

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...

If you are one of the few that visits at least every week and you are wondering where I’ve been, well, let me just remind you that it’s summertime here in California, and right now I’m home with a sick dog and eight kids. No, I’m not Octomom.  I only gave birth to two of them, but the other six are friends and neighbors that come to play or get “casually” dropped off by their mothers ...

Hey everyone, I’m sorry I’ve been out of action for a whole week! I somehow managed to first hurt my rib cage merely by coughing,  and then, just in case that wasn’t enough,  poison myself with the very medications they gave me at the urgent care clinic to help me “feel better”.  Hmmm…  Anyway, I’ve been doing some light reading on how to model using surfaces in SolidWorks, just ...

The Insert Part command is used to add one or more solid bodies (parts) into an active part. This is not the same as creating an assembly, although there are certain similitudes about the way the inserted part is oriented using the Locate Part dialog.  The big difference, however, is that what we end up with is a multi body part, that allows no movement of the bodies relative to one another, and ...

Last week’s meeting and all the talk about automation got me really inspired, so I decided to try some of the suggestions myself.  While searching through parts and assemblies that I could use for my experiments in automation, I happened to notice something that is actually new functionality included in SolidWorks 2008. RMB clicking the part icon on the top of the Feature Manager for a part wit...

This suggestion for extruding text on a curvy surface (See a Matter of Looks) came to me as an email from Jason Stats, CSWP, from Bard Access Systems, and I thought it was a great idea to share it with everyone here. “The way I usually do it is to extrude the text using the “Offset From Surface” end condition with the sketch being behind the surface as you mentioned.  This requires ...

I learned this little trick while trying to help someone extrude some text on a curvy surface.  It wouldn’t surprise me if some of you knew of a different way to achieve the same results. That’s one of the things I like about SolidWorks: there’s so many different ways to go! I must confess it used to drive me nuts in the beginning, when I was constantly wondering if I was doing it right. I ...

As the week begins, I feel proud to say that I’ve finally completed one more of the SW training manuals, the Advanced Parts Modeling one. Each day, I’m getting closer and closer to finally feeling prepared enough to try my luck with the CSWP test, but most importantly, I’m learning  tons of new stuff about SolidWorks, getting some practice, and having lots of fun along the way. Among the e...

I don’t know what tops your list of favorite activities, but for me nothing beats  “Date Night”  with my hubby.  Whenever we have a chance, we leave the kids with a babysitter and head over to the most romantic place in town. Why, the bowling alley, of course! OK, so it’s not precisely what the dictionary describes as romantic, but we always have a great time there, and part of the fun ...

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...

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 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...

Coach Mark, who trained my son during last year’s baseball season, was proud to lead a great team of “midgets”.  He led them from mere midgets, all the way to becoming last year’s champions of their own division. Most of the kids in the team, including my own gentle giant of a son, were not as big or tough as many kids in the rival teams. Some were scared of being hit (yet again) by the b...