Multi Tip Friday

Lets cover several tips today.

Dynamic Mirror and quick mirror tip.

Finding More Weldment Profiles

By Default SolidWorks gives you six standard profiles for weldments.

They also offer a lot more you just have to download them. Check out the video to see how.

Weldment Drawing Tip

Video for dealing with the drawing. More to follow.

Structural Members, Home Projects, Tubing

Check out the Weldments Video.

3D Sketching

Quick how to video on 3d sketching.

Monday Morning Quiz

How do you create two solids with different depths from one sketch like the picture above?

Check out the Video for the Answer.

Finding your center

Check out this video (with Audio) for a mate tip.

One Clean Face

Check out the Video (with Audio) to see a tip that comes in handy for modeling both in solids and surfaces.

Conversions

For converting units i have found this handy little calculator to be a lifesaver for SolidWorks and Simulation.


http://www.snapfiles.com/get/convert.html

Check out your processes

Occasionally i have been known to install other things besides SolidWorks, like itunes.

Well, eventually when you start up machine you have all these processes clamoring to do their thing. I like to eliminate this on the start up, freeing my resources for what i want.

Start-Run- type in msconfig

-choose start up tab
-uncheck any thing that you do not want starting with the machine everytime like google toolbars,itunes, or adobe.

It also helps to run a google search on the names if you are questioning their validity.

Clean it Up!

Do a Disk Defragment and Disk Cleanup weekly (some do it every day).

Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools

1) Disk Cleanup
2)Disk Defragment

You can even schedule these to run automatically with the scheduled tasks found in the system tools.

Graphics

Running SolidWorks can be a tough thing to do for some machines. Now, i have loaded up SolidWorks on my comadore 64 and done some sweet extrudes- you can load and run SolidWorks on the meagerest of machines but that doesnt mean you will like it. You will crash all the time and loose valuable work time which leads to a return on investment decision to make.

The first and important topic for our discussion is the graphics card. This is crucial! It can make or break your sanity.

Go to http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html to find your card and check if it is still suitable to run your version of SolidWorks. Then find the drive listed with your card and download it. Installing this driver can make a substantial difference in the performance of your card.

To find what card you own currently you can use the SolidWorks RX to list it for you.

Go to Programs - SolidWorks - SolidWorks Tools - SolidWorks RX

COMPUTER PERFORMANCE

Getting the most out of your Settings!

Over the next few days I am going to give some hints on maximizing your computers performance in dealing with SolidWorks.