Since as early as SolidWorks 2000, SolidWorks has had the Hole Wizard tool to quickly help you create a hole on your part with a predefined cross-section, based on the standard and sizes that you chose, but now there is a new tool in SolidWorks 2017 called Advanced Holes. This is useful when the hole gets a little more involved, containing multi-sized cross-sections, like trying to create the holes for the shoulder bolts in the [...]
This blog post is going to show you how to scan a mid-size part with tiny features. When scanning a model, you're usually faced with the decision of using a scanner that either has a large scan envelope and good resolution, or a scanner that has a small scan envelope with high resolution. But what if you needed the best of both worlds, that is, to capture both a larger part with small fine details? [...]
Today we are going to talk about the enhanced functionality to the Thread feature in SolidWorks 2017, mainly using multiple start threads. There are various reasons why someone might use threads with multiple starts. The main one is that it allows the lead distance of a thread to be increased, without changing its pitch. This proves useful when fine threads are required, but at the same time you want a quick advance, for example like [...]
In this blog post we will discuss how to improve the quality of your STL to produce better 3D Printed parts. The STL, or Stereo Lithography file format, is widely used for rapid prototyping, 3D Printing, and CAM. An STL file describes the surface geometry of a 3D object by triangulating the vertices on each face of the object. At times though, the STL file may contain errors, small holes, imperfections, and blemishes as shown [...]
There is new functionality in SOLIDWORKS 2017called Convert to Bodies, that allows you to remove the feature history in a part, while retaining geometric references in the assembly. This new feature comes in handy if you have a simple assembly and you want it to one of your manufacturers, but don’t want to share the feature history of the part you designed. One option is to save out the part file as a neutral format file, [...]
In today’s blog post we are going to introduce three new enhancements to Parts and Features in SolidWorks 2017. The first one has to do with using Instances to Skip in patterns. When creating a pattern, SolidWorks would already give you the flexibility to remove a pattern instance by clicking on the pink spheres; this way you weren’t bound to the array produced. Although at times, depending on how many instances you wanted to skip, [...]
A new in SOLIDWORKS 2017 called Convert to Bodies will allow you to remove the feature history in a part, while retaining geometric references in the assembly. This new feature comes in handy if you have a simple assembly and you want it to one of your manufacturers, but don’t want to share the feature history of the part you designed. One option is to save out the part file as a neutral format file, such [...]
There is a significant enhancement with the Wrap function in SolidWorks 2017. In the past, SolidWorks has been able to Wrap a 2D sketch onto a CAD model, but it had to be either a cylindrical or cone-shaped face. In addition, you could only Wrap to a single face; multiple faces were not supported, but now in SolidWorks 2017, these limitations have been removed. In the example below, the goal is to emboss the Cimquest [...]