In this article and the next, I will go over how you can best set up your SOLIDWORKS templates, for both models and drawings. The first article is all about setting up your model template, with a focus on the part template.

What is a Template File?

A template is a file that is set up to meet your company’s set of rules for documentation. If everyone uses the same template, the documentation will be uniform.

When setting up your template, you need to consider a few different things:

• Do you have any custom properties that you want filled out automatically?
• Do you want to use a drafting standard (ANSI, ISO, DIN, etc.) or do you want to deviate from that?
• Do you want multiple templates, for instance with different drafting standards, different measurements, etc.?

I usually divide model templates into two categories:

1. Document Properties
2. Custom Properties

Document Properties

To open and modify the document properties, you need to have a document open that is the same type of template you want to make.

With the part open, go to Tools > Options.

Here you will find the Document Properties tab.

These properties can be divided into two categories: “Drafting standard” and for the lack of better words, “Non-drafting standard.”

In the image below, you can see where it separates.

The Drafting standard is the document rule set that covers font type, size, arrow sizes, etc. While it has no effect on the drawing, you may want to give it a look to ensure that your coworkers always use the same font. Using these rules will guarantee that you comply with the international drawing standards for ISO, DIN, ANSI etc.

If you modify these standards, a new drafting standard will be created called “<last used standard>-MODIFIED.”

Once the drafting standard is done, the file can be saved (1, in picture below) and used in some of your old files if you want to (2).

Next, we have the “Non-drafting standard.”

These are properties that are not affected by international standards for drawings. The most important ones here, if you ask me, are the Units and Image Quality.

Units

This section determines what units you are using in your model. Setting it incorrectly can create problems in the model. For instance, you think you have set a length to 3 inches, but it is set to mm.

These values do not transfer to the drawing. If your drawing is set to mm and your model is set to inches, then you will get the result in mm on the drawing.

Image Quality

Setting your image quality correctly can be very prudent for your future assemblies.

Image quality is used to set the level of detail in your model. The higher the detail, the longer the rebuild time. Rebuild time is transferred to any assembly in which the part is inserted, even if you set the assembly image quality to low.

In the below image you can see the difference between a model with the highest quality and the lowest quality. This is why I usually set this to 10-20% percent of the maximum.

On your drawing, the quality of your model is of no consequence.

With the document properties set, you can save it as a template but you can also set up your “Custom Properties.”

Custom Properties

Custom properties are values created on the model that can be transferred to your drawing, BOM, PDM and even to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

When setting up properties, you can either make it a property that is general for the entire model, or meant for the configuration only. The easiest way to differentiate the two in the custom properties tab.

Why is that important? If you have a property that you know will always be the same for every configuration, you can add this as a custom property.

If you have a property that changes in each configuration, the Configuration Properties will need to be reconfigured.

One note on custom properties and configuration specific properties, is that your drawing will always attempt to read the Configuration tab first, and then the Custom Properties tab.

But there will be more on drawings in the next article on setting up drawing templates.

You have a few different options when setting up your properties in SOLIDWORKS. For now, let’s go over two options.

The first way is by using File > Custom Properties or the shortcut.

This is by far the most commonly used and the simplest solution.

Open the Custom property tab and write the custom properties that you need.
In this case, I have created these five custom properties and two configuration specific properties.

As you can see above, I have set some of the values to be filled out automatically and some properties with the value to “To be filled out.” This is done to ensure that I do not use an old value by mistake.

Another method is to use the Property tab builder.

The property is a program that is installed with your SOLIDWORKS that allows you create a custom property box that is quickly available within SOLIDWORKS.

We won’t get into details here but suffice it to say that this is quite a useful program. It allows you to save predefined property tabs for parts, assemblies and drawings.

To create a new property file quickly, click “Custom Properties” in the right side of the screen and select “Create now”.

This will open the program and you can determine the type of boxes you want and if you want to have some of them filled out with predefined values.

Once you are satisfied with it, save it as a custom property part template (.prtprp) or the equivalent template that you are working on.

Once it is saved, it is available on the right side of your screen and you can quickly access and fill out your custom properties.

Once the Custom Properties is prepared, it will be saved as a template by going to File > Save As.

Then, select the part template extension.

Afterwards, repeat the process for the assembly template and save it as an assembly template.

3DEXPERIENCE

Saving your template on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a little bit different since it is saved online to ensure that everyone has access to it.

To do this, you press File > Save As once your part (or assembly) template is ready to be saved.

This will bring up a pop-up box, where you can give the template a title and a description.

When saving the template, you can determine if you want to keep on developing on it by saving it in a draft state or make it available for everyone by setting it in released state.

Creating your model template is the first step to ensuring that your documentation will be uniform and thus reduce the number of potential problems down the road.

The Intersect tool is one of these features that too often goes overlooked. This article will act as a short tutorial on how and when to use this powerful tool.

Intersect tool icon, found in the features toolbar.

But first, a quick disclaimer. The Intersect tool requires prior knowledge of how to manage multibody parts in SOLIDWORKS. So, if you aren’t familiar with these tools, consider learning about multi-body parts before diving into this tutorial. 

What Is the Intersect Tool?

I learned about the Intersect Tool in the same way I learned about many other useful SOLIDWORKS tools: by struggling. We’ve all been there, trying to bend the software to our will, but just not being able to create what we envisioned. In this case, I was trying to create a part like this one:

The desired geometry.

This is a simple part. However, that post in the center was giving me a headache. I couldn’t use the “Up to Surface” End Condition in the Boss Extrude command because there were multiple surfaces that the extrusion needed to terminate on.    

The “Up to Surface” End Condition was no help.

My boss had been watching me struggle. After watching for a few minutes, he finally took pity on me and jumped in to help. He pointed out a magical tool that would easily let me accomplish what I was trying to do.

He told me about the Intersect Tool, which allows the user to create solid bodies from the intersecting regions of two or more existing solid bodies. Users can then delete or keep these resulting bodies depending on the desired geometry. 

How to Use the Intersect Tool

Let's look at that part I was working on. Instead of trying to get the extrusion to terminate at the complicated face, we’ll just extrude it well past the whole outside ring (shown in red). You don’t need to worry about the extruded distance as long as it completely clears the outer edge of the red part.

Pro tip: Be sure to uncheck the Merge Results box in the Boss Extrude property manager.

Two solid bodies, instead of the desired one.

So now, we are left with a multibody part, consisting of our original red solid body and the new, overly long body (shown in blue below) we just created that interferes with the red body. 

Two solid bodies, instead of the desired one.

Now what? Enter the Intersect Tool. Let’s activate the tool, found either on the Features toolbar or in Tools > Features > Intersect Tool. Once opened, we see this screen:

Intersect tool Feature Manager.

Now, let’s select our two separate solid bodies and leave the “Create Both” option button selected.

Select the bodies to intersect.

After hitting the Intersect button, we see that the selected bodies have turned yellow. If we hover our mouse over the part, we see that the entire part is now separated into regions. These regions are essentially wherever our two selected parts do and do not interfere with each other. There is also a list of these regions under the Regions to Exclude tab in the property manager. 

This is where the Intersect tool really comes into play. When I was first shown this tool, my boss described it to me as a 3D version of the Power Trim sketch tool. One of the best things about the Intersect tool is that it allows the designer to be a little sloppy, if you’ll pardon the term.

Earlier in the tutorial, I said that the distance we extruded the center post did not matter. This is because, as long as it extends past the first part, we can trim away the excess material beyond this point. We just click on the unwanted regions in the graphics area, and they disappear. 

Trim away the unwanted regions.

You can also see in the above image that Region 2 and Region 6 are checked in the “Regions to Exclude” box. Once we exit the Intersect tool, those regions will be gone. In the Options tab, make sure the “Merge result” box is checked, or all these regions will output as separate bodies. Once that is checked, let’s hit the green arrow and finish up with the Intersect Tool.

We can see that we now have the exact part we originally wanted and that the blue body has been consumed by the red one. There is one clean resulting body, named Intersect2. 

A beautiful part with a beautiful new name.

Final Thoughts

A word of caution: don’t overuse the Intersect tool. I suggest judicious use. While powerful, this tool can make your design somewhat unstable, especially if it is in a stage where it still might be subject to redesigns.

Remember how the two original bodies were combined into a new one, effectively erasing the original two? This means a few things. One, if you are working with a part that has multiple bodies, you will have to keep close track of the bodies after intersecting them, especially since the tool will rename them. Two, any features created after using the tool will be dependent on that feature in the tree. This means that you won’t be able to move a feature in the tree from after the intersect feature to before it. Three, if you make any changes to features before the intersect feature in the design tree, it will often break the intersect feature.

It can easily be fixed, though.

A simple change in a previous feature breaks the part and gives us the dreaded yellow triangle.

Having said all that, this is still a powerful tool, which in the right circumstances can be extremely useful for complex designs. I’ve only outlined one use for the Intersect tool, but there are many other ways to use it, such as with mold and cavity making, or with surfacing. I encourage you to experiment with the Intersect tool and find out what works best for you.   

Although I’m no longer providing tech support and working as a SOLIDWORKS instructor, I still find myself using the same tools over and over again. So, I decided to put together this list and share with you my top six tools and features of SOLIDWORKS that I couldn’t live without as a VAR or as a SOLIDWORKS user.

1. Quick Measure

This is one of those tools that is right in front of you, but you won’t see it unless you look for it. It’s right there in the status bar. Where in status bar, you ask? It’s the small bar going across your SOLIDWORKS interface.

Fun fact: Did you know that every section of your SOLIDWORKS screen has a proper name? Check out the reference guide below for a complete overview (as of SOLIDWORKS 2023).

If you pay attention to these areas, you’ll be amazed by all the information you can learn quickly.

Back to the Quick Measure tool. It’s a lightweight version of the full measure tool, but the reason I love it is because it’s always present, and presenting measurements based on your selection. This is a huge time saver when you’re trying to work as quickly as possible.

In the video, you can see how the information is readily available based on the entities you have selected. Now you can measure at a glance and get back to modeling without needing to launch the measure command.

2. Searching

In the upper right corner of the SOLIDWORKS interface is the search bar (see the reference guide above). Think of this as the Google for SOLIDWORKS—not simply for the fact that it’s search, but because it’s a tool as important and fundamental to designing in SOLIDWORKS as Google is to everything else. Searching inside of SOLIDWORKS with this tool is incredibly powerful and it just keeps getting better year after year.

This is your one stop shop for everything – the help file, MySOLIDWORKS, your files and models and, most importantly, Commands. The Command Search is the most epic feature people learn about. I’ve seen it change lives in terms of modeling in SOLIDWORKS.

It’s a way to quickly access any command just by typing it. Instead of searching through endless menus and drop downs, you can instantly access and launch commands by searching for them. It is even more powerful now since it has been added to the short cut bar. You can access the search by pressing the S-key.

Fun fact: Did you know you can customize your interface on the fly through the command search? Just hit the plus sign in the search to drag and drop the command from the search results onto your interface. It’s yet another life-altering tip.

3. Customizing

As you work with SOLIDWORKS, you’ll find the customizations that just work well for you. There’s only one right way to do something in SOLIDWORKS, and that’s the way that gets it done the fastest.

But how do you go about doing this? There is no shortage of ways to customize the interface. To get into the customization mode you just need to find the item “Customize…” which is accessible through a right click in most areas of the application. In this customization mode, you can easily drag and drop to customize the commands. Drag a command off to remove it and drag a command on an area to add it.

This is just a sampling of what you can customize in the interface:

• Toolbars
• Shortcut bars
• Commands
• Menus
• Keyboard (hot keys)
• Mouse gestures

4. Synchronize Settings

If you are following step-by-step while using SOLIDWORKS, take a moment to save your settings. You’ll not want to have to worry about remembering all the tweaks and adjustments you’ve made over the years to get a system that works well for you.

Of course, you can use the Copy Settings wizard to have a record of your customization. Copy Settings has been around forever, and is no longer a separate tool. Now it’s now accessible within the main SOLIDWORKS application, and you no longer have to close the file you’re working on.

Recently, a better way has emerged: use your 3DEXPERIENCE ID and automatically synchronize your settings. This is a great way to make sure you always have your settings with you no matter where you go.

This is a two-step process.

1. There’s a system option that needs to be turned on. The option is Synchronize SOLIDWORKS Settings.

2. You’ll need to log into the SOLIDWORKS Experience. Click the blank avatar in the upper right corner and you’ll be prompted to log in using your 3DEXPERIENCE ID.

5. Mates

My hot take: the width mate is the best mate. Why? Because it’s so versatile and comes in handy for an incredibly common function – centering things or lining things up in the middle. I’ve always said the width mate could be thought of as a centering mate. It’s my go-to mate when working with assemblies in SOLIDWORKS.

It’s even better now because it’s been added to with quick mate functionality. This means you can preselect the entities and add a width mate on the fly, without going into the full mate command. See it in action below. All it takes is a few clicks and things get automatically lined up in the middle. It’s incredibly powerful and incredibly useful.

Watch how you simply preselect the faces, and SOLIDWORKS lines the components up. Behind the scenes, it is automating the process of making two midplanes coincident.

6. What’s New

So how does one learn about all these features?

Every one of these features (and countless others that didn’t make it into this list) were all features introduced in a What’s New release. Every year when a new version of SOLIDWORKS comes out, I recommend reading the PDF that comes with the new version. If you want to wait to upgrade, then you can find it by just searching for What’s New SOLIDWORKS and you’ll be able to access all the versions going back several years from the most recent release.

Reading What’s New is my number one recommendation to anyone who wants to improve their SOLIDWORKS skills. I’m sure you’ll see the What’s New videos as they’re released, and if you don’t find them, they may just find you. Less read – but arguably more impactful – is the 200-page PDF that takes a deep dive into all the features, enhancements and new tools. This is the one thing I still do since leaving the reseller channel, and it’s the one thing that keeps me fresh and up to date on the latest additions to the tool.  

Kara Tucker, a Product Development CAD Designer at Gibson, described the process of creating guitars using SOLIDWORKS. From the challenges of working with wood to the intricate reverse engineering process, Tucker sheds light on the meticulous craftsmanship behind each instrument.

Gibson is known for their legendary guitar shapes, but even with a steadfast history, there’s still engineering and design that needs to be done. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

Respecting the Wood

Tucker's journey to Gibson began with her experience working with wood and plastic at an escape-game company. Unlike common materials that are utilized in more traditional engineering work, wood is ever-changing and encompasses a range of species that present different qualities both at the production level and over the life of a guitar.

“I would describe my design work with the game company as wooden based structures—cabinets, with hardware, springs and magnets, stuff that pops out at you. The structures need to last because they are interacted with daily, and it’s very immersive. I learned a lot while I was working there and really got a feel for working with different kinds of species of wood.”

Each assembly of a guitar incorporates various woods and other materials that tend to stretch and deform over time. While this can be a challenge when manufacturing, it’s more about designing for what will come eventually—preparing the design to play well off the shelf and still play well after decades of aging.

Tucker and the engineers at Gibson aim to have tight tolerances while respecting the unique properties of wood. That’s why the company imports woods, and dries them to an 8 percent moisture content, lower than the industry standard of 12 percent, to minimize imperfections and ensure high-quality products.

She emphasized the need to work with the inherent characteristics of wood rather than against them, combining the skills of a woodworking artist and an engineer. The mechanical properties and hardness ratings of different wood species must be thoroughly understood to create successful designs.

Preserving History and Reverse Engineering

The rich history behind Gibson guitars is an essential element to not only preserving past features but also carrying them forward as they engineer instruments. To properly design and replicate the instruments, she delves deep into the historical context of each model, understanding the engineering intentions and the production processes of the past.

This knowledge allows her to design with purpose, respecting the original intent while considering the current production limitations. Reverse engineering plays a crucial role in the process, involving the use of 3D scanning technology from Creaform and software such as VXelements to move from mesh to CAD. Tucker and her team capture intricate details and dimensions of existing guitar models, retrofitting them into the SOLIDWORKS CAD environment.

“The shapes of the Explorer; the SG shape; the Les Paul shape. All of that is kind of already set in stone for us. Usually what ends up happening is the product development team will want to copy a neck. We'll take a 3D scanner and scan an artist's neck and reverse engineer that using our mesh-to-CAD workflow. What we're doing is trying to retrofit a very particular feel of a neck onto whatever our modern technology allows us to construct it.”

Neck profiles are a critical element in guitar design. Gibson guitars feature asymmetrical necks with unique profiles, ranging from rounded to slim taper designs. Legacy instruments that have adapted and changed over time are even more unique and vary greatly.

Gibson engineers use a mesh-to-CAD workflow to scan legacy instruments and get them into the SOLIDWORKS environment. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

Reverse engineering these necks requires meticulous attention to detail, using splines and asymmetrical geometry to replicate their contours accurately. Each model presents its own challenges and the design process demands a deep understanding of the hand operations and material removal during manufacturing.

When Tucker started at Gibson, many of the engineers were still working in 2D CAD. That means a major element of the reverse engineering process isn’t just replicating specific elements of artists’ guitars, but also documenting the shapes in 3D CAD. Creating a digital historical context for the different instruments is important and it allows the Gibson team to understand just how the instruments change over time.

Scanning and creating CAD models of legacy and artist instruments is important for reproducing unique products, and also for documenting. (Image credit: SOLIDWORKS.)

From CAD to Creation

Transitioning from the digital world of CAD to the physical creation of guitars requires planning—and more planning on the engineering side than you might expect. Tucker ensures that the CAD designs consider the manufacturing process, accounting for variations that occur during machining and assembly, as well as the hand-sanding and other manual work that is done to refine the final products.

Factors such as fingerboard dimensions and tensioning of truss rods must be carefully considered in order to achieve a playable instrument. The reverse engineering process often involves accounting for material removal of 50 to 70 thousandths of an inch to achieve the desired final product.

Tucker provided an example of the nuanced engineering that needs to occur when they are reverse engineering instruments for contemporary production.

“We had a carved top, and I took the joining fret information—where the neck joins the body—and that acts as a constraint. The bridge height and the bridge playability that you put on this assembly also acts as a constraint. From there, we have to play around with the design to make sure that the neck and body are joined in a preferred way. There might be a riser involved, or an existing riser needs to be more complex.” The tiny details can make or break a guitar’s design and playability.

Other times, the engineering work isn’t quite so constrained. For instance, they will sometimes have to develop full-on assemblies or rework various pieces of hardware. Tucker explained one project where they were developing a new tailpiece that would be more adjustable and springier. 

“Sometimes, it’s almost like a Mr. Potato Head sort of situation and then in other cases, it's brand-new stuff. It really varies based on what the end goal happens to be. Because I’m so detail oriented, my bosses have to remind me, ‘Kara, you’re not designing a rocket.’ Even though it’s just an instrument, there’s still so much value in keeping the nuanced details in consideration.”

Designing Gibson guitars is a testament to the intricate artistry and engineering prowess involved in crafting these iconic instruments. Tucker's passion for her work shines through as she navigates the complexities of wood, reverse engineering and the preservation of historical designs. Even on a production line, each Gibson guitar is worked by hand and the design and engineering processes take that into account as they develop each instrument.

1. Introduction to using SOLIDWORKS to synthesize mechanisms
2. Adapting traditional graphical methods
3. 4-bar linkage motion generation
4. Optimizing mechanisms for size and smooth motion

This article builds on these previous ones, providing a real-world example of optimizing a mechanism with many different constraints. Where the constraints are too complex to represent in a single sketch, a multi-step approach can be used.

A sketch is set up to solve the mechanism for one configuration of parameter values. A script is then used to solve this sketch for many different configurations and record the values of driven dimensions. Finally, a spreadsheet is used to analyze the results and find the optimum design. In practice some iteration through these steps is required, as shown in the process flowchart below.

A script was created using the SOLIDWORKS API to read in the configurations, solve the model and store the results. It uses three simple text files for inputs and outputs:

Inputs.txt:

This file is created by the user to define the problem to be solved. It has three lines:

• The file name of the SOLIDWORKS part to open and interact with.
• A comma separated list of the driving parameters to be updated by the script.
• A comma separated list of the driven parameters to be recorded by the script.

Parameters.txt:

This file is also created by the user. Each line represents a different configuration as a comma separated list of values with each value corresponding to one of the driving parameters listed on the second line in inputs.txt.

Outputs.txt:

This file is created by the script. It has a similar structure to parameters.txt, with each line also representing a different configuration as a comma separated list of values for each parameter. In this case it is the driven parameters listed on the third line of inputs.txt that are listed.

Understanding the Constraints

The BriefBike design brief was that it needed to unfold, in under half a second, into a stable two-wheeled roller case format. It also needed to have riding geometry comparable to a normal bike and be structurally efficient.

Previously, an early prototype demonstrated the bike can be unfolded in less than half a second. But this design was too wide when folded and the complex relationship between constraints was making further improvement challenging.

BriefBike was designed to have a wide two-wheeled base that can be easily dragged behind you on two smaller castor wheels. This is in contrast to current folding bikes which, when fitted with castor wheels, behave more like the much less stable four-wheeled roller cases. These narrower designs must be pushed in front of you and actively steered rather than simply following along behind. Because the propulsive force comes from a hand quite some distance above the small wheels, they are very prone to tipping over. To be able to move quickly and navigate uneven surfaces, you need two wheels located quite far apart and to be able to pull it along behind you. This then creates a natural trailing link suspension effect.

A key design requirement for BriefBike was that it needed a wide two-wheeled base that could be easily dragged behind the rider.

Before creating the actual mechanism synthesis sketch, a simpler sketch was created to define the basic ride geometry of the bike. This includes parameters such as the wheelbase, trail and head angle. A linear dimension was used to drive the head angle as this was easier to work with in the API.

The RideGeom sketch defined the important parameters affecting the handling of the bike. This was then used as a reference for the LinkSynth sketch which solves for the linkages which enable the bike to fold.

The actual mechanism synthesis is performed by a sketch which shows the four-bar linkage in two positions – folded and riding. Each link is constrained to be the same length in both positions. By adding dimensions and constraints until the sketch is fully constrained, the link lengths and joint positions are determined. Setting up this sketch to robustly solve with a wide range of different parameter values was the most challenging aspect. It was also necessary to change the constraints somewhat as the design evolved.

The main four-bar linkage is represented in this sketch, with the ground link not actually drawn. The three non-grounded links are drawn in the riding position with a thick dotted line and in the folded position in a thick solid line.

Even with this automated approach, it is not possible to solve for every conceivable combination of parameters. The model has a total of 16 driving parameters. If each parameter had just five values, the total combinations would be 150 billion and take hundreds of years for SOLIDWORKS to solve. The method therefore starts with manually testing each parameter, getting a feel for the impact that adjustments make. Only when interactions become difficult to properly explore in this way is the script used to explore an area of the parameter space.

This project went through six iterations, with up to 40,000 configurations tested at a time. Generating a table with all the different combinations is what’s known in design of experiments as a full factorial set. For large parameter sets, an automated approach is needed to create this table. This can be done using Power Query, which comes with Excel.

First, a table is created in Excel for each parameter, listing the values to be tested. Each table is then connected to a query in Power Query which generates a single, much larger table with all the possible combinations. The actual process is a little involved but is explained clearly in this YouTube video. The table of configurations can then be exported into a text file that the script can read.

After the script had solved all the different configurations, I placed all the input driving dimensions and all the output driven dimensions into a single Excel table. This had a column for each parameter and a row for each configuration. I then created additional columns to calculate things like joint forces based on the lengths of frame members. Once all this data was in a single table, configurations could be filtered to find those with the best performance.

This resulted in finding a design with a longer wheelbase, steeper head angle, more direct transmission angles, lower joint forces and a more compact folded package. You can find out more about BriefBike at www.BetterBicycles.org

One of the highlights of the annual event is always the 3DEXPERIENCE Playground, featuring exhibitors showcasing their technologies, software and applications of 3DEXPERIENCE tools. This year was no exception, with booths sporting everything from new 3D visualization tools to artists creating biology-inspired fashion. While the event showcased a huge variety of technologies, many exhibits fell into three categories: manufacturing machines, design tools and applications of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Design Tools

Opportunities to improve and augment your design process were all over the 3DEXPERIENCE Playground. Lenovo and HP occupied large booths highlighting their newest mobile and desktop workstation options. Numerous providers of education and learning software offered their latest tools and model resources including Ultra Librarian which shared how to access their large printed circuit board CAD library. 3D scanning company Artec 3D showed off their 3D scanner options which integrate into your modeling workflow.

Multiple 3D modeling mouse companies showcased their products, including 3Dconnexion which demoed their two-mouse modeling solutions. Startup CADe also offered a new option for a CAD mouse: your tablet or phone. Their currently free-to-download app can sit opposite of your dominant mouse hand and offers an additional touchscreen navigation option and 3D modeling shortcuts. They are still in their testing phase and soliciting feedback. They were offering enterprise software options as well as individual downloads.

A user tests Sony’s Spatial Reality Display in the 3DEXPERIENCE Playground.

Sony brought along a tool for a different part of the modeling workflow: analyzing your models before physically creating them. Sony’s Spatial Reality Displays use eye-sensing technology to finely tune a three dimensional image without the use of any type of glasses. As we wrote last year, screens like these have never been better. While these spatial reality screens don’t solve a huge problem, they offer a unique new way for users to engage with 3D models without having to prototype them.

Manufacturing Machines

A cobot stacks coffees cups on the 3DEXPERIENCE World shop floor.

Now that your parts are designed using a suite of new tools, it is time to explore the technologies that can help bring them into reality. CNC machines and cobots were front and center on the shop floor portion of the conference.

A large 5-axis milling machine was putting SOLIDWORKS-designed, Nashville-themed details on belt buckles which were first 3D printed by Markforged. These belt buckles popped up a number of times throughout the conference worn by Dassault Systèmes representatives during the general sessions. Other CNC machines were engraving coffee cups, producing small metal boots and more.

CNC machines are typically thought of as tools only for use in a large-scale manufacturing environment, but there was special focus on their potential applications for makers and smaller-scale uses. Manufacturing company Tormach had their xsTECH CNC Routers available for testing and offered CNC 101 training sessions to get people started. These desktop CNCs serve as a hook, getting students and makers into manufacturing.

Close by the CNC machines were a small fleet of collaborative robots, or cobots. Doosan Robotics was demoing the ease of programming the cobot motion on the manufacturing floor, while also featuring the breadth of applications of their machines beyond the factory. DR. PRESSO the coffee-serving cobot was hard at work throughout the conference pumping out Americanos and espressos to caffeine-deprived attendees. DR. PRESSO is currently working in South Korea, but is working to gain traction within the United States as well.

3D printed chess set created on Nexa3D printers.

While there was a noticeably smaller presence from 3D printing companies than past years of the event, they definitely still had a footprint in the Playground. Nexa3D showcased their printers and products made with their printers, including a large 3D-printed chess set and guitar. Their major push at the event was highlighting the speed and ease of use of their smaller scale resin printers and large-scale manufacturing options which they emphasized in 3D printing demos and with a talk in the 3DEXPERIENCE Theater.

3D printing also made an appearance in the context of companies such as Athena 3D Manufacturing, which showcased their 3D printing and other manufacturing services with a focus on their variety of material options.

3DEXPERIENCE Created Products

Always standing out from the crowd at 3DEXPERIENCE World Playground are the incredible creations made using Dassault Systèmes products. From student vehicle design teams and research groups to artists and social media influencers, many of these people and products were showcased in the education and maker zones at the conference.

Exosapien Technology’s mech suit, Prosthesis.

Back at 3DEXPERIENCE World once again and drawing attendees from all over the conference was Exosapien Technology’s Prosthesis mech suit. Designed in SOLIDWORKS, the massive 4,000 kg electromechanical machine multiples human strength 50 times. During the first day’s general session, the suit’s creator Jonathan Tippett also discussed the improvements coming in the next version, which will be two-thirds the size, half the weight and twice the power of the original Prosthesis. He also announced Exosapien Technolgy’s upcoming application of this mech suit knowledge to the vehicle world in the form of the EXO-quad.

Not to be missed rolling around the education zone was the designed-in-SOLIDWORKS Star Wars robot, RX-Gil and his maker David Ferreira. Equipped with voice changing technology, speakers, powered wheels and numerous other movement capabilities, the little droid traveled around the conference floor filming videos and taking pictures with attendees.

Small scale mockups of wheelchairs created by nonprofit Magic Wheelchair.

Nonprofit organization Magic Wheelchair, which received a $30,000 donation during the final conference day’s general session, had a spot in the maker zone highlighting their work transforming children’s wheelchairs into spectacular works of personalized art. You can explore more of their projects in our story covering one of their Halloween creations from 2022.

Closeup on one of the pieces in Kate Reed’s Beyond Biomimicry fashion collection.

Nearby in the maker zone was Dassault Systèmes artist in residence Kate Reed, who explores the intersection of biology, fashion and technology. Reed exhibited her designs from the Beyond Biomimicry collection, which used parametric design to mirror natural growth that was then 3D printed into a fashion collection.

The pair dreamed of offering bikes to young racers using the Dell model, as Hilbert described at the 3DEXPERIENCE World 2023 conference. The idea is that people can customize the bike they want, before they buy it, so that it will fit their needs the day they get it. But there was a big roadblock to this dream. It was the 90s and the cost to get a seat of CAD software was about $30,000. Hilbert added that this didn’t even include the $30,000 computer needed to run the software in the first place.

Then, Hilbert went to a talk at his school that would change his life forever. The speaker was Jon Hirschtick—the card-counting founder of SOLIDWORKS. At this talk, Hilbert realized that by using this affordable CAD tool, he could compete with the big players.

“I tell you, the power we had by being able to design literally on a laptop in the late 90s—it completely changed the game for us,” he said.

How Cobra Moto uses SOLIDWORKS. (Image courtesy of Cobra Moto.)

Little did he know that as his dream evolved with that software, he would become CEO of Cobra MOTO and McDowell would become his Chief Engineer. And that their company would use the expanded features of SOLIDWORKS to change the world of motocross.

Motocross and the Start of Cobra MOTO

The sport of motocross consists of a group of racers navigating a course made up of different terrain, using a motorcycle. It became popular in Europe after WW2, with all the bikes that were left over. However, the sport didn’t really take off in the U.S. until the 60s. That delay explains the cookie-cutter market that Hilbert and McDowell found themselves in during the 90s.

When Cobra MOTO was created in 1993, it effectively built the marketplace of 50cc automatic bikes—as no one was serving that market. That’s because the audience was a niche of a niche: those interested in powersports, motorcycles, off-roading, motocross, youth products and competition-ready equipment.

“One of the really cool things about doing what we do is that we get to work with kids that are absolute phenoms,” said Hilbert. “They're some of the best athletes in the world and we get to see them grow up. If anybody happened to watch the Tampa Supercross … almost everybody that was at the very top of the field started out on a COBRA when they were kids.”

Cobra was first started by Bud Maimone, another motocross enthusiast who was attempting to address that market. He offered bikes that didn’t need self-modification, were race-ready and were therefore reliable. But Hilbert explained that Maimone was exhausted and looking for something new to do after running the company for so long. By 2003, Hilbert and McDowell took over.

They now had their dream to offer highly customized bikes to their target market, the software to make those designs and now the brand to make it all a reality. All they needed was the implementation.

The Cobra MOTO Design Strategy

To compete with the big boys, Hilbert and McDowell have implemented a design philosophy at Cobra MOTO that focuses on quality and speed—while keeping the workflow appropriate to the company’s small size. The crux of the philosophy centers around the 80/20 rule, using SOLIDWORKS for the hardware design and digital simulations and physical testing for final iterations and safety.

The design and development philosophy of Cobra MOTO. (Image courtesy of Cobra MOTO.)

“One of the things that works really well within the SOLIDWORKS platform is a lot of the built-ins: the built-in flow simulation, the built-in stress analysis and FEA. These aren't incredibly complex pieces of software. There aren’t high-end capabilities where you can adjust all kinds of boundary conditions, moving boundary conditions, multiphase and this-and-that. But they're good enough to get us the solution 80 percent of the time,” Hilbert said.

To ensure speed during the design and simulation side of this design philosophy, Cobra Moto uses HP Z4 workstations with NVIDIA GPUs. McDowell said after his presentation that “the biggest waste of time for my team is if they're waiting. Whether it's graphics or regeneration or just transferring files, if they're waiting...idle hands, idle minds. So the quicker the results, the more they can stay focused and the hardware is huge on that.”

Once the team is 80 percent certain on a design, they use tools such as additive manufacturing to speed up the physical testing/iteration part of the design process. Additive manufacturing enables the team to quickly build a prototype and test it for things such as rider grip or “getting a wrench where it needs to go” during maintenance, as Hilbert joked. He noted that if this was done with an outside organization, the iterations would take weeks, maybe months. But they can do it in days. He called it, “hardware at the speed of thought.”

Hilbert also reiterated that a design philosophy centered on speed and the 80/20 rule must keep safety as the highest priority. This is another reason why he believes in physical testing.

“You're putting a kid on a rocket ship. That’s what we do,” said Hilbert. “Safety becomes incredibly important. It informs almost every decision we make in terms of how we design and how we deal with our customers. As far as the testing goes, nothing surpasses testing. You can do a lot of work in the digital realm but until you get a product into a [test pilot’s] hands— and realistically multiple [test pilot’s] hands—you're never going to understand the use case fully until something's out there getting hammered-on in the field.”

How Cobra MOTO Offers Custom Made Bikes While Making a Profit

Now Hilbert and McDowell have a means of designing and testing parts. But how can they turn those parts into customized bikes and offer them to customers at a reasonable price while making a profit? After all, that target market is, by their own description, a niche of a niche. So, it would require small production lines that typically turn out expensive bikes. Cobra MOTO learned the solution to this problem during the Great Recession: when supply chains are tight, build it yourself.

“We kept our guys and gals working,” said Hilbert. “[This was a better] strategy versus trying to manage global supply chain in an incredibly uncertain time.” This verticalization strategy is especially efficient when you take into consideration the small production sizes. If they were to outsource production at 1,000 parts per run, then they wouldn’t have been able to keep the business profitable and few, if any, manufacturing outlets would go along for the ride.

Cobra MOTO makes its own tooling and fixtures. (Image courtesy of Cobra MOTO.)

Cobra MOTO produces its own tooling and fixtures using SOLIDWORKS. The challenge here is that as a small company they can only work on one injection mold at a time. To compensate for this, the company again uses additive manufacturing. They get to market with additive parts and slowly replace them with injection molded ones as they become available.

The build-it-yourself strategy of Cobra MOTO enabled the company to expand as a part supplier under the brand CARD and into the aerospace market with Cobra AERO—which even serves military drone customers. But that is another story.

We covered a lot of material in this design challenge and today I’d like to share three of the more interesting areas of this project:

• Adding paint to the body.
• Running the electrical wiring (without using SOLIDWORKS Routing).
• Blending the neck to the headstock.

My hope is that by the end of this article, you’ll have some new tricks to use when facing similar design and modeling challenges in SOLIDWORKS.

Adding Paint to the Body

Guitars are often manufactured by first carving, sanding and painting the wooden body. After this process is complete, additional machining takes place to remove additional material. Pockets are machined into the painted body for things like the pickup cavity, neck pocket and the electronics area. Similarly, holes are often drilled into this body after it’s been painted.

This will leave us with a two-tone result, with one appearance representing the paint and another representing the machined (unpainted) wood. I wanted to capture this effect in my SOLIDWORKS model, and I decided to do it using the surfacing command Offset Surface.

I first created the basic shape of the guitar body using boss-extrude, cut-extrude and a series of lofted cuts to remove material and create the scalloped shape of the body.

I then used the command Insert > Surface > Offset and created an offset surface with a distance of 0.010”. I used the “Select Tangency” command (found in the right click menu) to quickly select all the faces of the body which are tangent to one another.

Once I had this surface offset at 0.010” I was able to use the command Insert > Boss/Base > Thicken and assign a wall thickness of 0.005,” thickened to the inside of the newly created surface.

Pro Tip: I find that having this small gap (0.010”-0.005” = 0.005” gap) helps to avoid some graphical anomalies that occur when you create thin surfaces directly on top of other solid surfaces.

After creating this thickened solid body to represent the paint, I assigned an appearance of candy apple red to the body and was very happy with the results.

The cool thing about this technique is that I can roll these two features (the surface offset and the thicken solid body representing the “paint”) to the bottom of the tree, rollback above these two features and continue designing the remaining features of the wooden guitar body.

I can add pockets and holes and any other features to the body and when I roll forward these pockets and holes will automatically be cut into this offset surface, leaving me with the perfect results.

Running the Electrical Wiring (without using SOLIDWORKS Routing)

The guitar used in this project has a relatively simple wiring harness comprised of a pickup, a potentiometer, a 3-way switch, an output jack and a ground wire running to the bridge. In spots like this, launching and configuring SOLIDWORKS routing is not necessary (plus I know there are a lot of users who don’t have access to SOLIDWORKS routing). So, to create these wires I utilized a “Stub and 3D Sketch” technique.

I started by positioning these components in the correct locations and mating them to the wooden body of the guitar. As we can see in the above image, the appropriate pockets and holes for the electronic components and wiring have been machined into this body.

Next, in each of these electronic components, I created one or more “Stub” sketches. A “stub sketch” is a simple sketch, usually just short line, which is created at the location where the wire connects to this electronic component. In the case of this 3-way switch (shown above) we can see that there are 2 “stub sketches,” one for the red wire connection and one for the black wire connection. After creating these sketches, I used the Sketch Color function in SOLIDWORKS to change the color of each sketch, which helps with identifying the different stubs and what they represent.

Back in the assembly, I was able to show all these “stub sketches.” This sets me up nicely to create my electrical harness using 3D sketches to connect the stubs. I started by creating a 3D sketch and using Convert Entities to convert two of the red stubs from the electronic components. These two converted entities represent the two ends of a single red wire. While still in this 3D sketch, I created a spline between these two short converted entities and assigned a tangency constraint to the spline at each end. Lastly, I create a sweep using the appropriate wire diameter and then color that sweep red.

After running the first wire, I was able to repeat, repeat, repeat.

Blending the Neck to the Headstock

One of the most common questions I get from students is “how do you blend one area to another area?” such as the neck of the guitar into the headstock. This is one of the more challenging parts of this exercise. The approach I took was to create the neck as one body and the headstock as a second body.

This multi body approach set me up nicely for a blend, using a Loft command to bridge the two bodies. Since I wanted the loft to have a smooth transition, I decided to create a larger gap between these two bodies.

To create this wider gap, I made two cuts, one on the neck body and one on the headstock body. I was trying to leave enough room to create a smooth curved blend region, with a smaller radius on the top and a larger radius on the bottom. That is why I created the cuts at an angle.

After creating this gap, I needed to modify the faces of the headstock. I wanted the transition to be coming from the smooth faces on the bottom of the neck and blending into a set of smooth faces on the headstock. Currently, the headstock has sharp corners, so I needed to do some filleting to smooth out these corners.

After smoothing out these edges, I was almost ready to loft. But first, I needed to make sure that each of the profiles had the same number of edges. The flat face of the headstock had a total of six edges, but the flat face of the neck had only two edges.

When lofting, I always try to work with the same number of edges going around each face (or profile). If there are a different number of edges on each face, SOLIDWORKS can run into issues with the loft twisting and/or ending up with an undesired result. So, I created two planes in the neck area and used these two planes to create two Split Lines along the side walls of the neck. That let me break up the elliptical edge of the neck into six edges.

With an equal number of edges on each profile I was ready to begin the Solid Loft command.

To begin the loft command, I selected the end face of the neck as Profile 1 and the end face of the headstock as Profile 2. I always take care to choose each of these profiles in a similar location, to avoid twisting in the loft.

In the above image, we can see that I selected each profile at a similar location—the upper corner of each face. I also like to unselect the option for “Merge Tangent Faces,” which can sometimes help to ensure that the endpoints of each profile are properly connected.

This loft preview looked pretty good—there was no twisting or anything bad about the loft—but it also looked too straight and flat. I wanted a smooth blend from the neck to the headstock, so I edited the options for “Start/End Constraints.”

By choosing the option for “Tangency to Face” for both the start and end faces of our loft, I was instructing SOLIDWORKS to smooth out the transition of the loft, by making the outside faces of the loft tangent to the outside faces of the neck and the headstock. This tangency option worked out great.

Conclusion

Even if you are not a guitar player, this exercise is a useful way to explore a lot of great functionality in SOLIDWORKS, including:

• Using an offset surface to emulate a part which is painted/finished, and which has machining operations performed after the painting operation.
• Creating basic wiring without utilizing the SOLIDWORKS routing add in.
• Making a loft smoother by making sure each profile has the same number of entities and by using the Start/End Constraint option of “Tangent to Faces.”

I hope you found these tips helpful, and I hope you’ll find some areas in your work where you can utilize these techniques to save time and get fantastic results.

About the Author

Toby Schnaars (AKA: TooTallToby) has been a SOLIDWORKS user, instructor and enthusiast for the past 20 years.  He has fielded over 10,000 tech support cases and has instructed over 200 SOLIDWORKS training classes.  He has earned the ranks of both Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert and Elite Applications Engineer (CSWE + ELITE AE). 

Toby regularly posts videos of SOLIDWORKS tips and tricks on his YouTube channel TooTallToby. 

Folks outside the world of engineering may not know much about Dassault Systèmes or SOLIDWORKS, but if you’re design-inclined, you know the value of a community built around these tools. No matter how intuitive or straightforward a CAD/CAM/PDM/etc. interface might be, questions will still arise. That’s how Deepak Gupta found himself learning SOLIDWORKS back in the early 2000’s.

“I did a four-year college that was completely mechanical engineering. During the last year, we got just a glimpse of 3D,” Gupta explained. That glimpse was literally just a few minutes of exposure to 3D CAD before being thrust into the workforce.

His first job used AutoCAD and 2D drawings. The VP of the company wanted to present a machine concept to one of their customers, but they wanted more than a 2D drawing. That was Gupta’s first real exposure to 3D—in AutoCAD.

“Things were going fine, but then a friend introduced me to a SOLIDWORKS reseller in my region, telling me that these people do 3D, too.”

The owner of that company went to the same college as Gupta, and he quickly found himself as an application engineer with the organization. From then on, he was learning new things about SOLIDWORKS every day. Through solving customer problems, he learned the ins and outs of the software suite and built skills with the software.

Until one day when a customer presented a particular challenge that he couldn’t solve himself. That’s when he found the forums where he could connect and ask questions.

“I started getting lots of answers from there and then one day I thought, ‘I have some knowledge about SOLIDWORKS now, let's share it back to the community.’ So, I started giving back with answers to problems that people were sharing on the forums,” he says.

In 2011, Gupta found himself being invited to his first SOLIDWORKS WORLD and saw the vast community that had been created around this software. As his expertise became better known, Gupta was approached to work on a project in SOLIDWORKS.

Since then, he’s built a business as a SOLIDWORKS Design Consultant, working with clients on their drawings, details and even automation by making macros or add-ins. He is also a Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert, a SOLIDWORKS blogger and a user group aficionado.

Many of Gupta’s clients are organizations that have a lot of projects rolling at once. When they are unable to fit the work into their queues, they call him. He works as a team member on specific projects and has touched a range of different disciplines including 3D modeling, 2D drawings and animation projects.

Gupta remembers the early days of 3D CAD when many were afraid of adopting the newer technology for fear of breaking their drawings.

“Now, people are doing 3D modeling by touchscreen or with a stylus! You can just open up the software on your cell phone and you can draw a good 3D model. Things have changed drastically in the last 20 years.”

The emergence of CAD in the cloud has really inspired this SOLIDWORKS champion. Gupta touted the fact that having cloud access to CAD provides more liberty and power to the users, especially for someone who travels for business.

Being in India and working with worldwide clients, Gupta knows the potential challenge of accessing assets when you’re in a different time zone. But thanks to the cloud, you can just log in and show your customer, without having to rely on connecting with your team that might be out of the office.

“I personally feel it is giving you much more power than it used to. But looking at how users are taking to it, I still feel it'll take another five to ten years for people to eventually adopt it completely,” he says.

Much like his beginnings with SOLIDWORKS, Gupta feels that there is a growing value in collaboration in CAD. In fact, he believes that in some circumstances, what used to take six months can be squeezed down to even a few days.

“One team member may be sitting in Japan, one may be sitting in America, one may be in Germany and one may be in India. We used to send samples to every team member to test on their end and share the reports but now everyone can look at what is going on through the collaborative software. They can immediately give their input, rather than wait for weeks to get the sample and testing. Fast feedback means a faster time to market.”

Most of us are well aware of how valuable the hive mind can be. Collaboration, whether that’s within CAD or throughout engineering in general, means that we are always finding ways to become more efficient and create better products.

Gupta invites aspiring community members and folks looking for project help to connect with him on LinkedIn.

Stephen Petrock has not only earned a place amongst valuable CAD trainers, but now finds himself helping to teach the best ways to train CAD users.

Petrock started his engineering journey from a young age, as a LEGO aficionado who quickly developed into a kid that simply wanted to figure out how things worked. As you might expect, that led to studying engineering in college and eventually getting an internship with the Department of Defense.

While getting hands-on experience with mechanical engineering over every summer and winter break, he also gave walking tours of Washington, D.C. “I had this day job that was incredibly technical and hands-on—equations, calculations, figuring stuff out, building it, just making stuff right—but, it wasn't enough to pay the bills. So, I gave the walking tours. That was my kind of entrance into public speaking.”

When the contract for the project Petrock had been interning on was coming to an end, he had to start looking for a new job. With his experience in both engineering and public speaking, he wanted to find a profession where he could combine both.

That’s when his work at a SOLIDWORKS partner started. “I went from being a hands-on engineer into full-time learning SOLIDWORKS,” he says.

His previous experience had been with a different CAD software, so he began learning SOLIDWORKS and getting all the certifications. That quickly transitioned into not only giving software demos and presentations, but he also began creating marketing content and educational collateral.

Petrock films a SOLIDWORKS Simulation video presentation while in Peru. (Image courtesy of Stephen Petrock.)

Petrock explained that creating the needed educational content isn’t always straightforward. We live in the age of Google, so you can look anything up and there is most likely some sort of information out there. The difference with learning something like CAD is that you might know the function but without knowing the software, you might not know how to even ask for what you need.

“You don't need to know everything, but you need to know how to figure it out,” he says. One of the first times he realized this had to do with an icon on top of his mouse. He didn’t know what it was and in turn, didn’t know how to look it up. “I didn't know how to describe it to someone over the phone or how to type it into Google. How do I look this up? You don't even know what to search for to get the answer to the question. Your question is, ‘What is this thing?’ Well, you have to first learn how to describe the thing. Understanding that there is a process, there are resources out there, but just having that right mindset and figuring it out is a huge part of creating content in this space.”

While Petrock isn’t fresh out of college anymore, he still has insight with younger emerging engineers, and he’s seen how things have changed since the late 2000’s and early 2010’s.

“There's been a transition lately with the additive manufacturing space, that I think what used to be problems are no longer problems, which is really cool. What used to be a problem was that a more seasoned or salty machinist would say, ‘These engineers always make stuff that I can't manufacture. I can't make this.’ Well with additive, we can make whatever you want. I think what's really good is the younger people, they're not as stubborn or set in their ways.”

The mindset that Petrock sees in younger engineers can be a double-edged sword, as he’s seen in his time working with SOLIDWORKS users. The barrier of entry has been lowered (significantly) for CAD, which means more users—many of which have no engineering or manufacturing experience at all.

CAD is highly technical, and these days its users can be anyone from a PhD working on a research project, DIYers who are in their garage tinkering, or a professional engineer that doesn’t care about all the features because they just want to get the job done. Developing a way for these various groups to learn CAD can be a major hurdle, as they all learn differently and require different skillsets. Petrock has worked to make content and presentations that are relevant for everybody in the CAD space.

“I think [the engineering community] is poised for good future growth in terms of agility and a mindset that is going to help enable that. The people that get it are the ones that aren't scared of breaking it. They know they can click around and just figure it out.”

These days, Petrock finds himself in Miami, Florida as he works with 2Win! helping leading technology organizations deliver better demos and presentations of their products. Beyond engineering, he spends time with his wife and their dog. His wife’s family is from Peru, so much of his leisure time is spent learning Spanish and enjoying Peruvian culinary experiences.

“Before I met my wife, I didn't know anything about Peru, and now I know that they make the best food. It's amazing, and I definitely recommend everyone trying to find a Peruvian restaurant.”

From mechanical engineering grad to teaching technology companies the best ways to demo their products, Petrock foresees electronics organizations—specifically, electro-mechanical systems—and the adjacent markets being the biggest places of engineering growth. That means potentially new features in CAD, and more opportunities for every engineer to learn more about their craft.

I am happy to report that the Auto-Mate tool works beautifully now. I tried with no success to replicate my previous failures—but Auto-Mate is wise to my wily ways and was able to re-establish clean mates every single time.

As any long-time SOLIDWORKS user knows, broken mates can be tedious and annoying to deal with, especially when you are working in a large and complex assembly. You don’t want to see those red error warnings—you want a clean assembly. Broken mates slow down your system’s performance and they make it more difficult to troubleshoot.

After I test-drove the Auto-Mate tool through my previous model, I decided to create a new assembly and see if I could put this new feature through another round of testing. Working with the SOLIDWORKS development team provided me with some insight into what might make this tool fail.

I started off by making a simple box with a lid and four holes. I added some flathead bolts from McMaster-Carr, my favorite source of SOLIDWORKS-modeled hardware.

You see right away that my box is a little too narrow to accommodate the countersinks. Additionally, I am using M6 bolts and the holes in the box bottom are set to M4.

I start by editing my box bottom to enlarge it and use M6 holes. I didn’t save it as a new part.

Once I made my changes, I saw broken mates immediately.

I couldn’t fix my mates until I updated my lid. I did that by creating a new part and then replacing the old lid. I created the new lid outside of the assembly to ensure it was treated as a brand-new part.

I selected the old lid in the assembly, right clicked and selected Replace Components. I used this option because the SOLIDWORKS developers hinted that the Auto-Mate will still work using this workflow.

Holes were misaligned, and the box still required some editing.

I ended up breaking several mates by the time I had completed my changes.

Now it was time to test the new Auto-Mate feature.

I selected the first broken mate, and the Auto-Mate tool wasn’t available. I had the option to replace or redefine the mate, so I selected that option. I repaired that one mate and all the other broken mates automatically healed.

What sorcery was this? The SOLIDWORKS team has improved their software so much that SOLIDWORKS can detect where mates need to be and correct them with very little user input.

I needed to know more.  I broke some mates and challenged SOLIDWORKS to fix them.

I opened the box bottom file and did a SaveAs, which would replace the existing bottom with the revised file. Then I modified the hole pattern, saved and closed the file.

I suppressed the bolts while I was performing my edits so I could focus just on the two box parts and how they interfaced. Interestingly, SOLIDWORKS did not see a problem with this concentric mate between the hole in the lid and the now non-existent hole in the box. SOLIDWORKS should have reported this as an error, but it did not. Once again, I decided to create a new lid starting with a new part and using the Replace Component feature.

SOLIDWORKS reports several broken or missing mates. I select the green check to see if I can use the Auto-Mate tool to correct any of them.

I still have my hardware suppressed. So, we will see if those mates resolve once I fix the broken mates between the lid and my box.

When I right click on the Coincident mate (the mate between the lid’s bottom face and top face of the box), the Auto-Mate tool appears.

When I select the Auto-Mate tool, a dialog appears telling me that the mate has been fixed and then the dialog fades like a fairy godmother into the mist.

In the browser, the mate now shows as good.

Another broken coincident mate is between the side face of the box and the side face of the lid.

When I selected the broken mate, the Auto-Mate tool was available to make the repair.

I selected it, and once again Auto-Mate was able to make the repair successfully.

Time for the more challenging broken mates. Will Auto-Mate be able to match the hole in the box with the hole in the lid and successfully redefine the mate?

Yes, it did!

The final broken mate is going to be a bit more challenging. I replaced the single hole in the middle with two offset holes, but Auto-Mate is still available to make the repair.

I can’t really fault Auto-Mate with not being able to figure out which hole to use. I selected the Edit button and made the mate manually.

Once I selected the mating holes, I could replace the broken mate.

Next, I unsuppressed the hardware to see which mates are shown as broken.

It appears that SOLIDWORKS was able to manage the mates for two of the fasteners, but I needed to re-define the mates for the remainder. This might have been avoided if I had used the feature pattern method of placing the fasteners.

I deleted three of the fasteners and kept one.

The remaining fastener still has a mate error. The coincident mate between the top face of the bolt and the top face of the lid. Can Auto-Mate repair this?

Yes, it can!

To prevent future issues with the fasteners, I selected the remaining fastener and used the Pattern Driven Component Pattern option. This will place fasteners using the hole feature, so if the hole feature changes, the number and position of the fasteners will update with the change.

I simply select one of the holes in the lid and the fasteners fill in.

SOLIDWORKS has made major improvements to how the software troubleshoots assembly mates. The new Auto-Mate feature speeds up the process and allows users to clean up their assemblies in half the time it took in previous releases.

About the Author

Elise Moss has worked in Silicon Valley for the past thirty years as a designer and mechanical engineer. She is currently traveling the United States with her husband and their two horses, exploring backroads and historical trails. She is writing about her horse travels on her blog shakespeareantrails.substack.com. Her professional website is mossdesigns.com. She continues to write textbooks for Autodesk software. Her AutoCAD 2024 Basics textbook may be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and directly from her publisher at sdcpublications.com.

There are many ways of implementing this technique and SOLIDWORKS has several different tools you can use to make it happen. Each has different strengths and weaknesses, so it may be difficult at first to fully understand the methods. But once you use it a couple of times or see a couple of examples, I think you'll get it.

Master model is essentially a technique where you create a single model, say an alarm clock. You make the alarm clock as a single part, but in reality it will be manufactured from several individual plastic parts. The smooth shape of the clock is broken up into individual parts, which are engineered individually with detailed assembly and functional features and then brought back together as an assembly.

Several tools in SOLIDWORKS enable users to perform aspects of Master Model methods. Each of these tools do something slightly different and some will only work with certain types of data (solid vs surfaces):

• Save Bodies
• Split
• Insert Into New Part
• Insert Part
• Save Assembly as Part

I have split the Master Model tools into two classifications, Push and Pull. We use family-type relations to help define the roles some models play in the process. For example, a parent part would be the first in the process and a child part would be one that comes later and is dependent on the parent.

Push Master Model tools drive the process from the initial part (the parent), pushing the data out to individual part files. The feature that is left in the tree from this operation is left in the parent part, so you can find the child from the parent. The features that push data are Save Bodies and Split.

Pull Master Model tools drive the process from the dependent side (the child), pulling data in from other sources. The features that pull data are Insert Part and Insert Into New Part. These features are left in the child part, so you can find the parent from the child, but you can’t always go the other direction (find the child from the parent).

The reason it is important whether you are using a push or pull method is because the feature that keeps all of the information has to be located in one place, not in multiple places, and you have to be able to navigate up and down the dependency links.

Let's work through each method with this simple RubberDucky model. RubberDucky has three parts: a battery cover, a left half and a right half. We don't know what the batteries do, but all good products must be electronic, right?

Split

The Split tool requires surfaces or planes to split the part into multiple bodies. In this case, I chose to do that with the L-shaped extruded surface at the back to create the battery compartment cover, and the larger planar surface used to split the rest of the duck in half.

You could use the Right Plane to split the duck in half, but it would also split the battery compartment cover in half, and you'd have to join them back together.

Split can be used on solid or surface bodies.

The column of check boxes indicates that the bodies will be split. Bodies will only be saved out if you have file names in the File column. The interface never says this explicitly; I guess somehow, you're supposed to know.

If you put file names in and want to get rid of them, click the scissors icon to get rid of all the check marks. This will split the bodies within the part file without saving them as external parts.

Split does have a couple of functions that are new in the past several releases. It now enables you to save a body to a new file or an existing file. However, you can't just select any existing file. You are limited to selecting files which have been previously linked to this feature before. The point of this is to give the user some options when it comes to file management, in particular when the number of bodies produced by the Split feature changes. If you need other part geometry added to this part later, you can use the Insert Part function, which will be mentioned further down in the article.

Another change to the Split feature in recent releases is that instead of only splitting solid bodies, it will also now split surface bodies.

There are a couple of things going on with the Split feature that might be considered bugs. First, the “Propagate Visual Properties” is not propagating all of the face colors. The eyes of the ducky retain the colors, but in some cases the beak does not.

The second problem is that you cannot manually rename the bodies being saved out. (This is an optional function of this feature; you can also simply split the part into bodies without saving the bodies to external files). If you try, you get the invalid file name error. The directory mentioned is where all of the function DLLs are stored. This appears to happen in versions 2020 pr1 and SP1. This worked if I allowed SOLIDWORKS to automatically rename the bodies.

There is an SPR written against this functionality, so it could be fixed at some point. To work around it, you can create and save a dummy part to the directory where you want to save the bodies as parts and this feature will function correctly for that session.

Save Bodies

Save Bodies is available by right clicking on the Solid Bodies folder in the FeatureManager. It is not available for surface bodies.

Save Bodies also looks like the bottom half of the Split feature PropertyManager, except that it also gives you the ability to create an assembly from any bodies you save out as parts. For this reason, use Split only for splitting solid bodies and then use Save Bodies to save the bodies to parts and reassemble them into an assembly. That bit of automatic functionality saves a lot of time and bother.

The problems mentioned for the Split feature regarding renaming the bodies also happens with the Save Bodies feature. To work around this, you could go ahead and create the automatically named parts, close down SOLIDWORKS and all parts. Rename the files in Windows Explorer (usually not a preferred method, but bear with us) and then edit the Split or Save Bodies feature to use the Existing file option to connect the feature to the renamed part files.

Split and Save Bodies are both Push functions; they push the data out from the parent document. You make a part, split it into bodies and then push the bodies out to individual parts. The Split and Save Bodies features reside in the parent part, making it easy to find the child part from the parent.

The feature put into the child part is called the "Stock" feature. To find the parent from the child, right click on the Stock feature and select Edit in Context, and it will take you back to where the Split or Save Bodies feature created that part. If you notice and recognize the -> symbol, it means in context when you see it in a part in an assembly. This is the same sort of relationship but there is no assembly.

Insert Part

Insert Part enables you to take a part that already exists and insert it into the current part. You are pulling data in, so this is obviously a Pull function.

With the RubberDucky example, if you wanted to use Insert Part to create Master Model type relations, you would have your RubberDucky part already split into bodies and then create a new part and insert the RubberDucky into it.

Here is the workflow for the Insert Part feature:

• Start with an open part. This can be a new part with no features or an existing part with a lot of features.
• Initiate Insert Part from the Insert menu or you can use the icon, but it isn't on the toolbar by default. You can find it via Tools > Customize > Features.
• Select the part to insert from a list of currently open parts or use the Browse button to insert a part that isn't currently open.
• You can use the Configuration drop down list to pick which configuration you want to insert, or use Default.
• Select which types of data you want to insert with the part. Note that you can chose solids and/or surfaces, as well as other types of features. This will bring in all solid or all surface bodies (unless you have created configurations with just the bodies you want to transfer).
• The part will locate such that old origin will be aligned to the new origin by default, but you can use Move/Copy Bodies to position the new part.
• Using the Link box, you can choose to break or maintain the link. Once the link is broken, you can't re-link it (be aware that the Mirror Part works much like this Insert Part feature, including the link breaking option).

Once you have used Insert Part to bring the RubberDucky into this new part (make sure the Solid Bodies box is checked), you can use the Delete/Keep Bodies (right click on a body in the Solid Bodies folder) and delete two bodies, keeping one.

Repeat these steps for two more parts, keeping a different part each time.

Yes, this is a lot more work than the Save Bodies method, but sometimes it is the feature you need to use. For example, if you want to bring forward something other than a single solid body.

If you want to find the parent part, just right click on the RubberDucky feature and select Edit In Context. Again, notice the In Context symbol ->.

Breaking Links After the Fact

If you have created an Inserted Part and chosen initially to preserve the links, you get the familiar In Context body feature, shown here to the right with the Buggy Body.

Let's say that after you have created it, now you want to break the link because you want to make some changes that aren't compatible with the original model. To do this, you would right click on the Buggy Body feature and select the External References option.

This brings up the External References dialog and from here you can break the link. Also as a part of this, you can bring in all of the features from the original part. This type of functionality is also available in the Mirror Part tool.

Insert Into New Part

Insert Into New Part is slightly different from the other push/pull features. In this case, you initiate the feature from the parent but the feature winds up in the child.

Insert Into New Part can transfer solids and/or surfaces, but if you initiate the feature from a folder it will only transfer the same type as the folder. If you want to transfer both solids and surfaces, initiate the feature by right clicking on a solid body in a folder or a surface body in a folder, but not on either folder itself.

Also notice that the interface enables you to select which part file to insert the selected bodies into. Just be careful, because if you select a part with existing features, it will overwrite the part. You are better off to just type in a new name when prompted.

When you have created the new feature, you get the same Stock feature that the Split and Save Bodies features created in the child part, but Insert Into New Part doesn't create any features in the parent part.

Here is a summary table to help you decide which features to use when.

Summary

Using these Master Model techniques requires expert knowledge of multibody operations, and they are standard operating procedure for plastic assembly design and other design processes. These techniques can be confusing, especially if you have to navigate up and down the parent/child ladder and in and out of external references, but they help you avoid the typical shortcomings of in-context relations using assemblies.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

Here are some of my favorite tips and tricks you can use to save time when working with SOLIDWORKS.

Get a Customizable Mouse

Imagine never having to touch your keyboard again and have your control, shift and escape keys dusty from disuse. Too good to be true? This can happen with a simple mouse upgrade.

Many users learn the basics of modeling using a very basic mouse—something with a left button, a right button, a scroll wheel and a cord that was way too short. I was forced to rely on keyboard commands to perform simple tasks hundreds of times a day.

That all changed when I upgraded my mouse. If you have permanent use of a workstation, I highly recommend investing in a mouse that has as many programmable buttons as you think you will use. There are hundreds of options out there, all with different features. You can even go wild and get a 3D mouse if you like.

Look at all those beautiful buttons.

You may not get used to the feel of a 3D mouse, although many users swear by them. But the value of a 3D mouse is in all those buttons, which can be programmed to do whatever you want in SOLIDWORKS. For example, on my personal mouse I have a button mapped to the Escape key, so that I don’t have to reach to the top of my keyboard. I also have a button that acts as a Shift + Click for selecting multiple edges or faces, as well as one mapped to the Normal To command instead of the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + N. Some mice even have number pads, so you can achieve true one-handed modeling.

You can use your free hand for high fives.

Mouse Gestures, Sort Of

Now that you have a fancy new mouse, it’s time to put it to work. You have probably already heard plenty about mouse gestures and why you should use them. If you haven’t, there are millions of articles just like this one explaining how they work. But if I’m being honest, I really don’t use them. Having four directional options isn’t enough for me, and moving up to 8, 12 or 16 gets way too messy. However, I finally found a workaround that turned mouse gestures into something I could use: mapping my custom shortcut bar to one of the directions.

Just right-click, swipe down, and have instant access to your most-used tools.

The shortcut bar, like mouse gestures, can be customized for sketches, parts and assemblies. Simply go to Options > Customization > Shortcut Bars, and drag and drop all the tools you want. Then, go to mouse gestures and map the shortcut bar to your favorite direction. Here’s an example of what mine looks like:

All my most-used sketch tools in one compact place.

Now, you can finally stop feeling guilty about not using mouse gestures.

Speed Up Your Sketches

There are two sketch features (of many) that I wish I would have known from day one.

Extend a curve from a line.

Let’s say you need to draw a line and then a tangent curve at the end of the line. So, you select Line, draw it, hit Escape (or double click), select Curve, draw an arc from the end point, select both the line and the curve, and apply a tangent relation. Easy enough, right?

Let’s make it a bit easier with three steps.

Easily make a tangent curve after a line.

1. Draw a line, click to create an endpoint, and move your cursor away without exiting the line tool.
2. Move your cursor back to the endpoint without clicking.
3. SOLIDWORKS magically turns your next line into a curve that is already tangent to the original line.

Dimension an angled line from its origin.

Before I knew about this little trick, I would always use a vertical construction line to dimension an angled line. That would leave me with a construction line that had served its purpose and cluttered up my sketch.

What an unsightly construction line.

Little did I know that you can dimension an angled line from its own origin using the global coordinate system. Again, this can be done in three simple steps.

Use the global coordinate system to dimension an angle.

1. Select the Smart Dimension tool and click on the angled line you want to dimension.
2. Click on either endpoint of the line, and then click on the arrow corresponding to the direction you want to dimension your angled line against.
3. Click once more to create the dimension.

This trick will not only save you a bit of time but will also help keep your sketches free of construction lines.

Break Up with the Mate Property Manager

Think about the last assembly you made. How many times did you click that little paperclip in the corner to create a mate? Think of all the time you wasted opening the Mate Property Manager and selecting all your options there. The good news is that for simple mates, there is a better way: the Quick Mates Context Toolbar.

Let’s say you have a peg that goes into a hole on another part.

Made for each other.

Instead of opening the Mate Property Manager, let’s select our two mating faces and see what happens. Remember to use Shift + Click to select multiple faces or, better yet, use the button that you programmed to do that on your brand-new mouse.

The mighty Quick Mates Context Toolbar.

After selecting both faces, the Context Toolbar pops up. Since SOLIDWORKS (rightly) assumes that you want to mate these two faces, it gives you some options for all the mates that can be performed. Simply click Concentric and the mate is created and added to the feature tree.

A perfect mate created without the PropertyManager.

Some of the more complicated mate types, such as mechanical and dynamic mates, may not pop up in the Context Toolbar, but this tip will make creating simple mates a breeze.

Make Your Very Own Macro Button

I usually end up 3D printing my designs as a first prototype or even as a final part. To do that, however, the part needs to be saved as an STL or 3MF file type, something that the printing software can read.

The basic way to do this would be to click Save As, select the desired file extension, and make sure the saved file ends up where you want it on your computer. If you 3D print as much as I do, this can get a bit tedious. So here is my final, and favorite, tip: Write a macro program to save your part as an STL, or any other file format.

A macro is a simple scripted program that performs a specific task. You can read this primer on macros here. It is well worth your time to learn the basics because once you have created a simple code, you can add a button to SOLIDWORKS that will run your macro.

Add your own buttons to the main toolbar.

Clicking this Save as STL button will do exactly that and put the saved file exactly where I want it on my computer.

After doing the hard work of creating a macro, adding a button like this is quite easy.

Go back to your customization page by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the Settings gear. Once there, click Commands, and then find Macro in the list on the left. The option on the far right is for a New Macro Button. Click and drag this up to your top toolbar.

Right-click on the blank button that you just dragged up. A Customize Macro Button window like this will pop up:

Customize your new macro button.

Click the three dots next to the empty Macro field and find your program wherever it resides on your computer. You can even add an image to your button and set what your tooltip says when you hover over the button. Click OK, and assuming you wrote your program correctly, your new button will work like a charm.

And there you have it, my five favorite time-saving SOLIDWORKS tips. They may only save a few seconds each time you use them, but those few seconds can really add up over a long design session.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the ebook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

About the Author

Zachary Wilson is a Mechanical Engineer, product designer and 3D printing enthusiast from the snowy mountains of Utah. With a love of engineering formed at a young age, Zac has always strived to bring the joy of creation to center stage. He is a firm believer that engineering should not only be accessible by all, but is something that everyone should be able to get excited about. His recent 3DEXPERIENCE World presentation, entitled “Make 3D Printing Make Sense” is a perfect example of that ideal.

Or you can get serious with these tips.

Tip 1: Use the Copy Settings Wizard

Let’s say you are already a SOLIDWORKS badass, and you have your toolbars and menus customized to the way you work. You may already have messed around with the mouse wheel (more on that later) and just when you have everything exactly the way you like it, your workstation goes south or maybe you change jobs. How much time had you spent getting everything just the way you like it?

Enter the Copy Settings Wizard. This tool gathers up all your system preferences and any customization you have done and saves it to a small file you can upload to the cloud, store on a jump drive or email to yourself. If you are a CAD Manager, you can set up everybody’s system to use the company’s templates, toolbars and tools by creating and deploying this file. The whole operation takes less than five minutes, but saves hours of clicking, searching and trying to remember, “How did I do that?”

You can access the Copy Settings Wizard from the Tools menu or the Help palette on the right side of the display.

Tip 2: Are You Feeling Lucky?

AutoCAD, Word, Excel, cloud files… All these have an Autosave function. SOLIDWORKS does not. The reason for this is that once you perform a Save, you can no longer Undo. A lot of designers like to experiment with different ideas, and they didn’t want an automatic save disrupting their flow. So, SOLIDWORKS has no autosave.

Instead, it has an “auto-nag.” Depending on the setting, you can have SOLIDWORKS prompt you to save your work. I call this the “Are you feeling lucky?” option. Don’t think your workstation is going to crash and lose all your work? No power outages in the near future? In one case, my TA was helping a student on a project and his knee accidentally hit the power button on the front of the workstation chassis.

As we all know, this stuff happens. You don’t want to lose half a day’s work. I ask my students: What’s your pain threshold? How much work are you willing to do over?

To access autosave, go the Tools menu and select Options. Highlight the Backup/Recovery category on the left panel.

I have my auto-nag set for every 30 minutes. You can also have it completely disabled and never be nagged again simply by unchecking the Show Reminder box.

I also have my backups set to 1. This means SOLIDWORKS will save one backup copy of my previous version after every save. It will overwrite that backup copy after every save. This ensures that my drive doesn’t get filled up with backup copies. I have the file I am actively working on, plus one backup of the previous saved version. That’s sufficient for me.

I also have my backups stored to a cloud location…just in case.

Tip 3: Normal Is Better

When you are working in a 3D environment, it is easy to get lost and disoriented. When I am creating a sketch, I want to work on the sketch so that my view is normal or perpendicular to the sketch.

Luckily, SOLIDWORKS has an option for that.

One of the first options I enable when I install a new version of SOLIDWORKS is to have the auto-rotate view normal to sketch plane. This means that when I start a new sketch or edit an existing sketch, SOLIDWORKS will automatically re-orient the view so that I am looking at the sketch as though I am drawing on a sheet of paper, i.e., normal to the view. This saves me mouse clicks and keeps me on task.

To get here, go to Tools → Options and highlight the Sketch category in the left panel.

Tip 4: Arrow Keys Are a Sharp Way to Navigate

Yes, the 3D View cube that SOLIDWORKS has is awesome, but arrow keys can be a quick and easy way to reorient your view of the model. If you set the arrow keys to 90 degrees, then you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to quickly switch from a top/bottom/left/right view without going near the cube.

To get here, go to Tools → Options and highlight the View category in the left panel.

Tip 5: Make Your Mouse Roar

Many users don’t know that if they hold down their right mouse button and move the mouse in the window, a mouse wheel will come up. The mouse wheel can hold up to 12 tools or shortcuts for your favorite operations. Not only that, it is also based on whether you are in an assembly, part, sketch or drawing. This means that, depending on which environment/mode you are in, the mouse wheel contains different tools.

To customize the mouse wheel, select Customize on the Standard toolbar below Options.

Select the Mouse Gestures tab.

You can define up to 12 gestures or shortcuts for each mouse wheel mode.

SOLIDWORKS provides you with their best guess of which tools you might use in each environment, but I prefer to customize it to the way I work. Luckily, SOLIDWORKS makes it easy for you to swap out the tools you prefer.

Simply search for the desired tool, and then drag and drop it into a slot to replace a tool that you won’t use.

Before you set up your mouse wheel, I suggest you spend a day paying attention to which tools you use as you work. I created a table with each environment. When I used a tool, I would write it down. Then, if I used it again, I would mark a line next to it as a counter. At the end of the day, it was easy for me to see which tools I used the most. Those were the tools I put on the mouse wheel.

I suggest that you spend some time going through the SOLIDWORKS options. Change the settings to your liking. Modify the mouse wheels to the way you work. Then, once you have your system really humming, use the Copy Wizard to capture the customization so you never again have to start customizing from scratch.

I know this will all take some time, but you will end up being more efficient and getting a higher throughput. If your employer sees you as more productive, this translates into higher pay and career success. If you are self-employed, less time completing tasks means you can bill more hours and make more money. Additionally, when it is easier and faster to do the work, that is less stress on you. You can meet your deadlines with a lot less sweat and tears.

Now, go forth and be productive!

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the ebook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

About the Author

Elise Moss has worked for the past 30 years as a mechanical designer in Silicon Valley.  She has written articles for Autodesk’s Toplines magazine, SolidProfessor, engineering.com, AUGI’s PaperSpace, DigitalCAD.com, Tenlinks.com and EngineersRule.com. She is president of Moss Designs, creating custom applications and designs for corporate clients.  She has taught CAD classes at Laney College, DeAnza College, Silicon Valley College and Autodesk training centers.  Autodesk has named her as a Faculty of Distinction for the curriculum she has developed for Autodesk products, and she is a Certified Autodesk Instructor.  She holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from San Jose State University. 

It also reveals a little about how we learned the program. Regardless of whether you are self-taught or have been through formal training, when you are learning SOLIDWORKS you start with sketches, with tools from the Sketch toolbar and with tools from the Feature toolbar, and you produce solid models.

This is how the process continues for many. You never need to look for different tools, and you certainly never need to look at the Surfaces toolbar. You only have to Google “SOLIDWORKS surfacing” to be told that it is there to produce models that are not possible with solid modeling tools. All the examples shown are made of organic shapes and smooth curves.

However, hiding in plain sight are a range of surface features which can greatly assist with your day-to-day solid modeling. To use these surface features when solid modelling, let’s reflect back on the original intent that SOLIDWORKS first had for surfaces, and that is reference geometry.

We’ll run through a few of these surface features and see how they can be incorporated within our daily solid modeling.

Cut with Surface

There is a little bit of irony that the Cut with Surface feature is to be found on the Surface toolbar. If you customize your toolbars and look for Cut with Surface, you will find that it is listed under Features and not Surfaces. Either way, it is a simple and efficient tool. It does exactly as the name indicates, and uses a surface to cut the solid.

SOLIDWORKS also uses planes to cut away a solid. It is often easier to select a plane when the plane is parallel to the side you want to remove material from.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

However, there is more often a need to use the Cut with Surface tool in conjunction with the Offset Surface feature.

Offset Surface

The Offset Surface tool is used to recreate a surface with a zero distant offset or to create another surface at a distance away from the selected surface.

Figure 3.

That surface can be used in numerous different ways. A common use is when you need to scribe a part with the shape of another part. In this case, we have an oval shaped sink which sits on a countertop. We will cut the shape out of the countertop.

As it is in an assembly, we can use Edit Part on the countertop and use Offset Surface, to recreate the selected surface of the sink the required distance from it. That distance could be a zero offset. If you do change to a zero dimension, you will see the command change from Offset Surface to Copy Surface.

We can now use Cut with Surface to create the cut.

Figure 4.

What do we do with the Surface now that we no longer have a need for it? We could simply hide it but it will be better to delete it. When using this combination of solid and surface bodies, SOLIDWORKS will assist by creating different folders in the feature tree for both the surface and solid bodies.

Delete/Keep Bodies

There is a Delete/Keep Bodies tool which is another feature that hides by default on another toolbar – in this case, the Direct Edit toolbar. This too can be used to remove the surface. However, you may prefer to access this tool by selecting the body from inside the Surface Bodies folder and using the Delete key on the keyboard. This will automatically launch the Delete/Keep Bodies command with the body shown selected. Hit the Enter key to confirm.

Figure 5.

The use of Offset Surface is only limited by your unfamiliarity with it. Once you start using it, it becomes one of those go-to commands. If you work regularly in large assemblies and need to reference parts from different sub-assemblies, you will appreciate working within the part. As shown above, the ability to recreate a surface from one part in an assembly to form another part allows you to work within the part. The surface might be used as a reference to create a sketch or to create a new part from the surface.

Delete Face

Delete Face is a versatile tool because of the options it has, which change what the tool can be used to achieve.

Delete Face with the option to Delete is a way to change a solid body into a surface body. By deleting a face of a solid body, you lose the solid body and are left with surface body, and you will enter the realm of surface modeling. But that is for another article. Let’s concentrate on how we can use this tool with a solid body.

The Delete Face with the option of Patch is one of those miracle commands. With a single command, you replace the need to use three or four other commands to achieve the same result. It is especially useful if you are working with imported data or bodies that don’t have features.

For example, a drawer slide provided by the component supplier is not the correct part. You wanted a simple drawer slide, not a self-closing version. You could chase the supplier for the correct part—or have the part you need in a minute.

Using Delete Face > Delete and Patch, you can select all of the faces that are not required and it will delete those faces and patch the surfaces to retain the part as a solid body.

Figure 6.
  

Figure 7.

How about a sheet metal part with the wrong radius, or with holes that are not required?

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

The Delete Face using the Delete and Patch option is a timesaving feature with its ability to remove multiple faces and replace them with a single feature

Looking at the final option of Delete Face > Delete and Fill, it is similar to Delete and Patch but is used to replace multiple faces with a single face. Many models have tangential faces of the same radius which will display an edge. This might be common where you have mirrored a part to be symmetrical. While this might not be an issue in the model, it is normally not how you would like the faces to be displayed. With Delete and Fill, you can replace those faces with a single face.

Figure 10.

Figure 11.

Surface tools can be used to assist with solid modeling. However, Delete Face > Delete and Fill has a hidden trick useful for imported models, which often suffer from translation issues. It’s not unusual for a model to have surface issues when it is created in one program, saved to a neutral format and then brought into SOLIDWORKS. It is also not unusual to have what looks like a solid model be a surface model. Plenty of models do not show any gaps and appear to be a solid body.

Figure 12.

Use Delete Face > Delete and Fill to remedy the situation. Selecting any face to fill not only replaces the face but in the background, the model is checked to make sure it is sealed and automatically made into a solid model.

Figure 13.

How you model in SOLIDWORKS should constantly evolve. This can take place over many years as new commands or options appear and the SOLIDWORKS interface evolves with each year’s release. And one of the greatest changes in modeling techniques in the last few years has been the surface features used with solid modeling, as mentioned in this article.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

About the Author

Michael Lord has spent his working life in Product Development & Engineering at TRAKKA Pty Limited, an Australian manufacturer of Motorhomes (RV) & Special Purpose Vehicles. He is also a Group Leader - Sydney SOLIDWORKS User & representative on the SWUGN Committee (Pacific Region). Further thoughts on the use of SOLIDWORKS can be found at michaellord.me.

Figure 1. Starting sketch of a machined part based on the overall footprint of the part.

Things get a little more complicated when we’re asked to create models which will be injection molded. For today’s example, we’ll be working with a design that has no flat faces: a plastic kitchen ladle (or spoon).

Figure 2. Selecting a starting sketch is more difficult when there are no flat faces.

You might feel a little perplexed regarding where to begin on a model like this.

We’ll show you how to use tools such as Projected Curve, Trim Surface and Thicken Cut to perform a variety of surfacing commands on complex 3D models—and how the shape can be created by utilizing simple 2D sketches.

Start With an Image

When creating models of swoopy or lofty parts, it is helpful to have an image of the model (or something similar). I took some pictures of a spoon I had in my kitchen and used photo editing software to remove the background.

For more info on working with images, see the article “Using Photos in the Design Process.”

After cropping the images to create a new model in SOLIDWORKS and scaling the images to the correct size, they are positioned on the top and front planes.

Figure 3. Add top image and side image to a new SOLIDWORKS model.

Create Two New 2D Sketches

The 2D sketch is created on the top plane of the model. We’ll make a spline with four points and manipulate the spline to match the outer curve of the spoon.

Figure 4. Spline on top plane matching the curve of the spoon.

We’ll create another 2D sketch on the front plane and repeat the same steps to trace a new spline over the side view image of the spoon.

Figure 5. A spline traced over image of side view.

Once this is finished, we exit the sketch. We now have two 2D sketches, one on the top plane and one on the front plane.

Using Projected Curve

Whenever we have two 2D sketches, we can project these two sketches together to create a 3D curve. This technique is commonly used to generate a 3D guideline for a sweep or loft. We’ll do this with Curves > Project Curve from the menu.

Figure 6. Curves > Project Curve.

We choose the option for “Sketch on sketch” and then select the two spline sketches previously created.

Fiure 7. Creating a 3D projected curve.

The two 2D sketches are projected together, generating a 3D curve which will be used as a guide curve for a lofted surface.

Creating a Centered Guide Curve for the Loft

Since the model is going to be mirrored, the second guide curve is going to be created at the center of the model.  Once again, we’ll use the image to create a guide curve on the front plane.

When working with splines, it can be helpful to show curvature combs (shown in the image below). To view these curvature combs, click the right mouse button on the spline and choose “Show Curvature Combs.”

Figure 8. Centered guide curve showing curvature combs.

We’ll extrude this sketch into a surface body using the Extruded Surface command.

Figure 9. Extruded Surface command found on the Surfaces toolbar.

Extruding the spline into a surface will give us additional control during the lofting and help with mirroring this model smoothly across the center plane.

Figure 10. Creating a surface extrude from the centered sketch.

Creating Six Loft Profiles

Next, we create a series of loft profiles using 2D sketches. Having a 3D guide curve in place makes it very easy to lay out six loft profiles.  

Figure 11. Creating six loft profiles for the design, each a 2D sketch.

Creating a Surface Loft

Now that we have the six profiles, we can select the Lofted Surface command from the Surfaces toolbar.

Figure 12. Lofted Surface command on the Surfaces toolbar.

The six 2D sketches are selected in order as the loft profiles. Then we select the projected curve and the edge of the extruded surface (along with the center of the model) as the two guide curves.

Figure 13. Selection of profiles and guide curves for the lofted surface.

After selecting the second guide curve (which is the edge of the extruded surface) we will use the option of Tangency to Face as shown in the image above. This will enforce a condition where the entire loft will remain tangent to the extruded centerline surface and this will help ensure a smooth centerline transition when the model is mirrored.

Figure 14. The loft completed and mirrored.

The loft is now complete and after mirroring this lofted body, the model looks pretty good. We have successfully created a complex set of guide curves and a series of loft profile sketches, all using simple 2D sketches. Now, let’s add some final touches.

Using Trim Surface

Another tool commonly used in surface modeling is the Trim Surface command. Trim Surface is very similar to the Cut Extrude command that is used when working with solid geometry. We will use a 2D Sketch and the Trim Surface command to remove bits from the surface model.

Figure 15. The Trim Surface command.

We will round off the rear of the spoon and add a hole. Both features can be created with a single 2D sketch on the top plane and a Trim Surface command.

Figure 16. Sketch used for final trim on rear of handle.

Now we launch the Trim Surface command.

Figure 17. Use Trim Surface command to remove these areas.

We choose the option “Remove selections” and specify that that we want to remove the surface regions shown. When finished, we see the areas we specified are removed from the surface model.

Thicken to a Solid

Our surface model is looking pretty good, but it is still not a solid model. We can turn it into one with the Thicken command found on the Surfacing toolbar.

Figure 18. The Thicken command in the Surfaces toolbar.

We will thicken the model by adding 2mm of solid material to the inner direction of the surface model.

Figure 19. Thicken Surface to 2 mm.

The model is no longer a surface body. It has been transformed into a solid body.

Figure 20. The model is now a solid.

Using Trim Surface to Create an Indent Cut

To finish off the spoon, we’ll create some esthetically pleasing geometry—an indent along the length of the handle. We start by making a surface that is a copy of the top faces of the model with the Offset Surface command.  

Figure 21. The Offset Surface command on the Surfaces toolbar.

We will choose to offset the top two surfaces of the model by 0.00 mm.

Figure 22. Offset top two surfaces by 0.00 mm.

We create a 2D sketch on the top plane of the model representing the shape for the indent geometry.

Figure 23. Sketch for the indent geometry.

We use this geometry to trim the newly created surface offset, removing the outer geometry from the surface.

Figure 24. Trimming away outside area of offset surface.

Now we can take the newly trimmed surface and use it to perform a Surface Thicken Cut, found on the Surfaces toolbar.

Figure 25. Thickened Cut on the Surfaces toolbar.

Figure 26. Creating a thicken cut at 0.5mm in both directions.

We’ll do a thicken cut in both directions (the middle option) which made a cutting shape of 1mm thickness.  This is useful in surface modeling as it will help to avoid the slivers of material that end up around the edges of the cut if the cutting shape was flush with the top of the spoon handle.

Figure 27. Final model.

After adding a few fillets, we have a completed model—and are ready to create prototypes and share the design with the customer.

Conclusion

A design with no flat faces will often present a surface modeling challenge. But this doesn’t mean you have to make complicated 3D sketches. In this example, we saw simple 2D sketch geometry was used to create projected curves, loft profiles and trims. This geometry can be easily changed without breaking the feature tree. And the result will be a nice, swoopy, lofty model that will impress both your boss and your customers.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

About the Author

Toby Schnaars (AKA: TooTallToby) has been a SOLIDWORKS user, instructor and enthusiast for the past 20 years.  He has fielded over 10,000 tech support cases and has instructed over 200 SOLIDWORKS training classes.  He has earned the ranks of both Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert and Elite Applications Engineer (CSWE + ELITE AE). 

Toby regularly posts videos of SOLIDWORKS tips and tricks on his YouTube channel TooTallToby. 

An organization can have many different types of software, such as CAD, data management, electrical, publishing and more. The first decision a company has to make is to determine who will administrate each of these applications. Will one person administrate them all? Or will there be one person or group that will handle each piece of software.

The decision you make will likely be influenced by the availability of manpower. But keep in mind that it can be hard to find someone that has the knowledge to administer all these different applications. A person that specializes in electrical may not have the skills to administrate CAD. Also, the workload to administer all these systems may be too great for a single person and can result in burnout, applications not being administrated correctly and/or your administrator exiting your organization.

While it may not be possible to have an individual for each application, a compromise may be to have one administrator that handles a number of similar products. For instance, if your data management software and your electrical software both use the same database backbone (i.e., Microsoft SQL), then your electrical person may be able administrate both of those pieces of software. If you do mainly mechanical design, your CAD administrator may be the best person to also administrate your data management software. Generally, some additional training is required.

What should be avoided is having an administrator who lacks solid knowledge of the software they will be administrating. Having someone assigned to administrate software they have little knowledge of will lead to frustration, a long learning curve and perhaps the loss of the administrator. Further, it is likely that software which is foreign to an administrator will not be configured or supported optimally.

This is not to say that that your electrical expert cannot bridge the gap and also be able to administrate CAD successfully. This depends on the innate ability of the potential administrator to learn a new discipline. You will need to provide time for your administrator to develop these skills. Yes, experience is good, but a learn-it-on-go approach can lead to bad practices. Most software sellers or resellers offer training. On the whole, you should strive to ensure your administrator is an expert in the software they will support.

An honest appraisal of a potential administrator's ability to learn needs to happen. Some people learn better than others. The user with the most experience is not always the best candidate to administrate your applications. Generally, it's the people who are more comfortable with change that make the best administrators.

Each piece of software has a periphery of related software, systems and processes. While your administrator may not need to be an expert in each one of these areas, they should have a good working understanding of those segments. As an example, while your data management administrator may not need to be an expert on networks, they should have a good understanding of how networks work. Your electrical and data management administrators will benefit from a general understanding of databases. Understanding of hardware can help your CAD administrator understand and evaluate performance. Carefully analyzing these peripheral items connected to your software will help you evaluate potential administrator candidates and help lay out a training path for the selected candidate.

An administrator will rarely work on their own. A successful administrator will need to work with team members, other teams, contractors and vendors. These include but are not limited to end users, IT, management and contractors. An administrator needs to know or be able to determine the people that they will support and who will support them.

The administrator needs to know of or learn the software vendor's contacts, such as tech support, training and sales, for all the software that they will support. The administrator will also need to know which methods are used to communicate with the vendor, where to locate sources of vendor information (knowledgebase articles, blogs, channels etc.) and how to access bug fixes and escalation procedures if and when they are required.

Because your administrator will need to interact with several different contacts, the administrator needs to have good communication skills. Since information can come from multiple sources, your administrator needs to have good organizational skills in order to document and prioritize this information. In a very real sense, a good administrator is a good project manager.

An administrator will often need to involve several disciplines in a project. For example, a project involving IT, software vendors and end-users in a software update will require an administrator with good leadership skills and the ability to delegate responsibility. The administrator must communicate effectively with various groups in order to coordinate their efforts.

Much of the information that your administrator requires is available online. Accessing this online material is often the fastest way to find a solution. An efficient administrator needs to be methodical in how they perform their research and organized on how they compile it. Being comfortable working online is a must.

Being proactive is key to preventing issues. An adept administrator will consistently scour sources to look for methods to improve the use of the software they are responsible for. Many software vendors offer webinars. Your administrator should make a point of attending the webinars that are relevant to the work of their users.

But what may be the most important attribute for a good administrator is a thorough knowledge of their company's structures and processes. This knowledge is important. This is learned knowledge, not an innate skill.

Often, the person with the most experience is picked to be an administrator. While experience is important, such a person may lack the soft skills covered previously in this article. Processes can be learned and contacts can be developed but soft skills are more difficult to acquire. Don’t let experience trump soft skills with your administrator candidate.

Also, those who are deeply familiar with your company's structures and processes may be resistant to changing those systems for which they have become the "go-to person." Or, change may be something that is outside their comfort level. An important part of being an adroit administrator is the drive to find new methods and tools to make a system more efficient. Along with that drive, this administrator needs to have the skills to ferret out these efficiencies. As noted earlier, these skills can rarely be learned.

This does not mean that the company CAD guru does not have something to offer. It may well be that this person possesses the skills I have already mentioned but even if they don’t, they can still be of great benefit to your administrator. The guru can be teamed up with your administrator to take advantage of their combined skills and knowledge.

Another partner that your administrator should have good working relations with is your IT department. There are many aspects of software that will require IT involvement. A competent administrator will know when to solicit IT’s help and provide the information that IT will need. There will also be others with whom your administrator will need to interact with. This is why communication and people skills are so important to an administrator.

To help make a quality administrator, an administrator needs the training to learn the tools they will be using. An administrator will also need the time to grow into their role. Investing in developing an administrator will pay large dividends.

In many companies, administering software is a sideline at best. Many companies believe their software vendor’s support team will be the de facto administrators and personal trainers. But as resellers freely admit, they generally will not administer software on a day-to-day basis.

Management and users should be careful not to overload administrators. A well-trained and experienced administrator is too valuable to lose. If your administrator feels overwhelmed, they may start looking for employment elsewhere. Splitting tasks between administrators or making assistants available can help lighten the load. An overload, once detected, is reason to consider a second administrator. Having a backup is good insurance in case one administrator is sick or leaves your organization.

For larger projects, such as server moves and software updates, you may want to consider contracting an organization.  Most resellers offer these services and have a great deal of experience with those projects. They will likely complete the task faster with less down time, and the end result will likely be better which also results in less down time and less frustration.

The benefits of a good administrator are plentiful and varied. Spend time choosing and developing your administrator and your engineers and designers will enjoy long lasting and far-reaching benefits.

About the Author

Joe Medeiros as an Elite Applications Consultant at TRIMECH, a premier SOLIDWORKS reseller servicing customers throughout North America, offers SOLIDWORKS customers expertise in implementing and using DASSAULT SOLIDWORKS solutions.

Joe has been involved in many aspects of the DASSAULT SOLIDWORKS product family since 1996 and as an award-winning blogger, he regularly writes about DASSAULT SOLIDWORKS solutions.

1. Use AutoCAD Aliases

For newer users migrating from AutoCAD (especially those who prefer to use the command line), this tip can significantly reduce the DraftSight learning curve. Although many DraftSight commands have different names compared to AutoCAD, any AutoCAD alias can be used to activate the equivalent DraftSight command.

For example, even though the equivalent to MOCORO in DraftSight is QUICKMODIFY, typing MOCORO into the command line (or even just a portion of MOCORO) will show both the AutoCAD alias and the corresponding DraftSight command name. Then, simply click or press Enter to activate the command. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

You can continue using AutoCAD aliases indefinitely or slowly learning DraftSight command names over time.

2. Automatic Dimensions

Automatic dimensioning is a great way to make quick work of an otherwise tedious situation that would typically require the individual placement of multiple dimensions. Before this tool can be used, however, a dimension bounding box must be established. After selecting the objects you wish to automatically dimension, use the command DIMBOUNDINGBOX to create a bounding box for the arrangement of dimensions.

Then type the AUTODIMENSION command or find it in the Dimension dropdown menu in the ribbon. A properties window will appear allowing you to control the dimension scheme (baseline, continue or ordinate), the dimension placement, the origin and the geometry to be included in the automatic dimensioning. Geometry can be added and removed by selecting entities graphically and using the +/- buttons in the window. Once you have set the properties, simply click the Preview button to take a look at the results and if satisfied, click Apply.

3. Power Trim

As the 2D drafting companion to SOLIDWORKS, DraftSight has inherited a handful of productivity tools directly from the world of 3D. Power Trim is one that you will not be able to live without once you have tried it.

Power Trim can be found in the Modify section of the ribbon under the Trim icon, or can be activated with the POWERTRIM command. Once active, simply click/hold and drag over any number of entities you would like to remove, and they will automatically be trimmed back to the nearest intersection with any other geometry. Trimming has never been easier.

4. Associative Patterns

Patterns on their own can save you plenty of time by reducing tedious, repetitive creation of identical geometry. However, traditional patterns lack any sort of intelligence and cannot be dynamically modified once created. Associative patterns, on the other hand, behave like features that can be adjusted—instances can be added and removed and spacing can be changed at any time with just a few clicks.

With an entity (or multiple entities) selected, input the PATTERN command or use the available icon in the Modify section of the ribbon. Once activated, be sure to select the Associative checkbox in the dialog or a traditional pattern will be created. Set the desired spacing and number of instances as you normally would and confirm.

Once created, you will find that clicking any of the pattern entities selects all of the instances and additional handles become available. Click and drag the first handle to reposition the entire pattern as a group. Click and drag the second handle to dynamically modify instance spacing, and then click and drag the third handle toward the source geometry to remove pattern instances or away from it to add instances. If preferred, the pattern can be double-clicked or the EDITPATTERN command can be used to adjust the pattern options using the original dialog.

Patterns have never been more intuitive.

5. Reuse Dynamic Blocks

Understandably, many DraftSight users are AutoCAD veterans and often have libraries full of dynamic blocks created with AutoCAD that they would like to reuse. The good news is, you can. All versions of DraftSight allow you to insert, view and configure existing dynamic blocks from AutoCAD, while DraftSight Premium and Enterprise Plus also allow those blocks to be edited.

Simply insert the dynamic block, specify position/size/rotation and then select the block to view the configuration handles. The handles will control the visibility state of the dynamic block just as they did in AutoCAD, making it exceptionally easy to swap between different variants.

If you happen to have DraftSight Premium or Enterprise Plus, dynamic blocks can be converted to Custom Blocks (the DraftSight equivalent of dynamic blocks) in order to enable editing. Right-click the dynamic block and use the Convert to Custom Block command. Once converted, the Custom Block may then be opened with the Block Editor to adjust or add visibility states as required. Now you can gain even more design efficiency by reusing legacy data from AutoCAD.

6. Geometric/Dimensional Constraints

Constraints can add intelligence to your work, otherwise known as design intent. Put simply, geometric and dimensional constraints allow you to control how your design elements will behave when changes are made to them.

For example, the sizes of lines, arcs or circles may be defined by the various dimensional constraint types, while the geometric constraints allow for relationships such as parallelism, perpendicularity and concentricity to be established between entities. Constraint commands may be activated from the Constraints tab of the ribbon.

Once activated, select the entity or entities to apply the constraint to, and in just a few clicks you will have a more robust design that can easily be changed without any extra work. Don’t forget, you can use the Enter key to repeat your last used command for a fast application of constraints.

Additionally, coincident relations are very important for keeping entities connected during future changes. You may notice the icons that appear indicating the type of constraints present in the design. If you would like to turn these off, click the Options button (pictured above) and use the Hide All function or selectively choose the constraint types to hide.

Dimensional constraints function differently from traditional dimensions in that they directly control the size of the entity. In the before and after photo shown below, several geometric and dimensional constraints were added to the design and D2 was changed from 10 to 12 (using a simple double-click), automatically lengthening the required entities while keeping everything else intact. While they may take a bit of practice to learn, the power of constraints make them worth learning.

7. Reusing Customization Files

If you are a long-time AutoCAD user, you may be concerned that you are going to lose (or think you have already lost) all of your customization from your old AutoCAD environment. Fortunately, DraftSight can make use of almost all AutoCAD customization files. The table below summarizes the customization types and extensions that are supported by DraftSight:

Note that PGP files are not supported by DraftSight. This was to allow standard AutoCAD commands to be mapped to corresponding DraftSight commands, and reading in a PGP file could have caused conflicts with the default mapping. For command aliases in the PGP file, you will need to manually add aliases with Options > User Preferences > Aliases.

8. API for Customization/Automation

DraftSight’s API (application programming interface) can be used to automate many common processes within the software and allows you to create your own add-ins. Several programming languages are supported, including LISP, C++, C#, VB.NET and JavaScript for maximum flexibility.

But even non-programmers should know of the API’s existence. Perhaps you would like to import a batch of PDFs from a specific folder at a certain time of day every day. This is not a native function within DraftSight but you can invoke the API to create one. You might also use the API to integrate DraftSight with an ERP system, for example, or develop your own custom menus and toolbars. Options are unlimited with the DraftSight API. To get started, check out the DraftSight API Help Documentation.

9. Importing PDF to DraftSight

Trying to recreate geometry represented in a PDF in order to turn it into an editable DWG/DXF is one of the most tedious jobs one can face and, in most cases, it is unnecessary. So long as your PDF is not “flat” (meaning the geometry, letters and numbers are saved within the PDF, and it is not simply a picture in PDF format) the Import PDF command can be used to make quick work out of converting a PDF into an editable DWG. If you are importing an entire drawing, you will want to begin with a blank DraftSight document. Then, use the PDF command found in the Import tab of the ribbon.

The resulting dialog has several options—including a button for even more options. You can discover more about all these options within the Help Documentation on Importing PDF Files, including the ability to retain and create layers automatically. If you are only importing a single PDF, use the Insert as Block option (use the Batch Processing option for multiple files). If your PDF contains multiple pages, you may select one or more to import from the preview window.

Once the options are set, click OK and, if required, specify position, scale and rotation of your imported PDF. You will likely notice that the PDF is imported as a block and, as such, you will need to use the EXPLODE command to separate everything and allow for editing. Additionally, if you have PDF files representing smaller design elements, they can be imported into existing DraftSight documents and kept as blocks. Here is a quick side-by-side of an original PDF and the resulting DWG after importing:

Note that PDF Import is only available in DraftSight Premium, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.

10. Network Licensing

DraftSight is often used as a collaboration tool, rather than as a company’s primary design application. Therefore, designers may use the program rather infrequently. It is likely that DraftSight licenses are shared between many users. Network licensing makes this possible by storing licenses on a server and distributing licenses as needed by users.  Network licensing allows anyone and everyone on your team to leverage DraftSight when they need to, making it easier than ever to design and collaborate in 2D. DraftSight Professional and Premium, by contrast, do not allow sharing of licenses in the same way.

Please note that network licensing is only available with DraftSight Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. These versions also offer optional perpetual licensing, allowing your company to own the software permanently without requiring an annual subscription/maintenance fee.

Bonus Tip #1: Copy/Paste to SOLIDWORKS

If you happen to be using both DraftSight and SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD, here are some bonus tips.

Because DraftSight is a Dassault Systèmes product, there is a degree of interoperability between the two programs, including the ability to copy and paste entities from a DraftSight document directly into a SOLIDWORKS sketch. Simply select the required geometry in the DraftSight document and use the Copy command. Then, open your SOLIDWORKS document, select a plane/planar face and use the Paste command.

Here is an example of some DraftSight entities that were pasted into a SOLIDWORS assembly:

It is likely that your copied DraftSight entities will need to be adjusted for position and scale once they have been pasted into SOLIDWORKS. To make quick work of this (especially if you don’t intend to fully-define the copied entities with dimensions/constraints in SOLIDWORKS) use the Modify command found in Tools > Sketch Tools to quickly adjust the scale and position of all the sketch entities simultaneously. Alternatively, the Make Block command can be used on the pasted sketch to provide similar options.

Bonus Tip #2: Dark Mode

New for DraftSight 2022 is a dark mode which darkens menus and ribbons along with the rest of the UI. Simply access Options > System Options > Display > User Interface Style and choose the Dark option to enable dark mode. You will need to restart DraftSight for the changes to take effect.

Conclusion

Here’s a feature matrix for each tool or feature discussed in this article, along with the versions of the software that you can find them in.

For more information on these commands, check out the DraftSight Help Documentation.

CAD Admin is Different from Other Management Jobs

Part of the problem is that CAD administration is often not seen as a discipline unto itself. It is not given a name, a title, an official set of responsibilities or seen as a desirable career path. In smaller organizations, you wind up with someone in charge of software but there is no formal authority, no budget, no plan, no recognition from management and no formal place in the company structure. It is just extra work that someone gets to do.

In larger organizations, hopefully the CAD Admin is a full-time position that has shared responsibilities with information technology, product design (and possibly manufacturing) and documentation. They are in control of the change process, documentation and possibly are the gate keepers for the product development process as well.

CAD administration is a technology management position, and would rarely have any direct reports. A CAD Admin is not usually directly managing people; the main thrust is to manage the software that governs the PLM processes.

But to really execute this position within the company to its greatest potential, the CAD Admin must affect the people around the processes. To do this, the CAD Admin should be involved in mentoring CAD users or other documentation professionals along the path to mastering the ideas and processes that come together to enable product development.

What Is Mentoring?

Mentoring accomplishes things other than training your replacement. It is a method of specialized and individualized training in a less-than-formal setting, often with just casual contact throughout the workday. Although it can be casual, however, it still requires planning, or at least a conscious set of priorities.

There is no training program for CAD Admins, and there are few books on the topic. Many people who do the work have learned on the job and by making their own mistakes. A company with enough resources to plan into the future will help develop this type of expertise internally using internal people who appreciate the company.

How to Select a Mentee?

The first question to confront has to do with who you select as this “mentee.” Generally, and depending on the size and requirements of your organization, you might have a couple of CAD learners at any given time, each at a different stage. In any group of CAD learners, you will have one or more who are more interested than the rest.

CAD Admin is something you do because you find it interesting and even compelling. I’m trying hard not to use the word “passionate” because passion is an emotional state and technology managers do well to avoid a lot of strong emotions connected to work-related issues. Emotional reactions often interfere with orderly business operations or add unnecessary stress to others’ workdays.  Becoming overly involved in a topic or pursuit can lead to burnout. This could be a separate article, but you may want to let your mentee know—possibly with a personal anecdote—about not getting overly emotional about a project lest it lead to their burnout.

You can train protégés both in person and at a distance. In fact, I’m doing that now by writing articles for users I’ll never meet, which is one method of mentoring people who are eager to learn. Both mentors and mentees are self-selecting groups. People who want to learn become people who want to teach.

Finding our way back to the core topic, what do you teach a protégé you are mentoring to turn them into a super user? In the course of discharging your CAD Admin responsibilities, there are various decisions that must be made and to make those decisions, you must have certain priorities in mind. For example, do you upgrade to the latest version of the software? When do you start that process?

Lead By Example

The best learning is not done by lectures and reading, it is done by example. Create situations where your mentee can watch over your shoulder as you navigate various tasks or decisions. Being good at a particular task mainly requires experience, but making good decisions requires the ability to prioritize and knowing when to shuffle those priorities.

Part of the problem many companies find with management roles is that new management hires are expected to know how to manage from some book or college class but they often never get to actually do it until they are thrust into a job—and then they find themselves in over their heads. Bringing in a manager from outside the company also means that internal employees have been passed over. This way, the company loses an opportunity to reward internal employees and the person you bring in is going to have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to company and product knowledge. Advancement from within is valuable from many different angles and companies benefit from it in many ways.

You may even want to take the mentee into a meeting with your manager to see how actual company decisions get made. You will hear that you should have passion for your job, but as stated earlier, passion is an emotion and strong emotions often lead to bad decisions. Emotion needs to be balanced by rational considerations. Decision making cannot be totally devoid of emotion. Compassion may be needed for us as humans, but allowing technical company decisions to be ruled by emotion is not advisable. Think about the worst decisions you have ever made. How many of them were centered around emotional situations? If you think of good decisions you have seen leaders at your company make, how many required stepping back from the emotion of the situation and rationally looking at a wider scope?

So Much More Than Just CAD

It’s easy to see CAD Admin as a sexy job when you think of it as being a CAD boss all day long, but there is so much more than just CAD involved. Think of all the software that touches your company’s products all day. Many companies with a CAD Admin position call it something else, like a Product Development Technology Manager or PLM Manager. Interest in the position may wane upon realizing you have to become a database admin as much as network and computer hardware issues. You are not just answering CAD questions all day. You have to answer questions about software you are not familiar with. You are suddenly responsible for helping the FEA people as well as the rendering people. This requires a deep dedication to helping people, whether you have to research the issue yourself or take it to the reseller or manufacturer. This kind of dedication is impossible to teach and must be inherent in the candidate.

How To Prepare

If you have a protégé who really wants to build the skills to become a CAD admin, sometimes the best path is to go somewhere else. There are not that many companies where you can gain experience in such a wide range of product development technology. Sometimes you may have to guide your mentee out of your organization.

One option is to guide them toward employment with a software reseller. Resellers represent the gamut of technology from computers, 3D printers, scanners, CAD, CAM, FEA, services, training, tech support and more. Even with this type of position, you have to be careful that you do not get pigeon-holed into one particular aspect. Software resellers are the one place where you can easily get experience in a wide range of product development tools. Resellers do tend to have a certain rate of employee churn, so you can expect most of their employees to be younger, or junior level and moving between disciplines within the organization should be easy enough.

Learning and being exposed to a wide range of technologies for an early career professional can also be a way to help decide which direction to steer a career.  It is great on-the-job learning to be able to work in a range of disciplines before selecting one to stick with or specialize in.

Conclusion

If you are a CAD Admin and you need to train a replacement or an assistant, use opportunities from your daily work to introduce them to the job and evaluate their temperament for the work. The kind of person interested in CAD administration will usually present themselves. You will find them hanging out in the CAD office more often than others. Make sure they are in a position to see what you do on a daily basis and get exposed to the wide range of situations that CAD Admins have to deal with—because it’s not just about CAD.

Good enough is subjective, amorphic—and perfectly appropriate place to call it quits. A good enough design, product or outcome satisfies the stated objectives and is a feasible solution.

Good enough is not, however, the best solution. Good enough often leaves the best solution undiscovered.  

We have reasons to avoid pursuing the best solution. Cost is the main reason, the ever-present constraint on the number of solutions attempted. Other constraints include lead time, performance targets, manufacturability or regulatory rules.

The best solution is a costly goal because the goal line, like perfection, can never be reached. Every solution comes at a cost and attempting another solution will draw from available resources. In this way, each solution competes against the previous one. When do you stop iterating and move to the next step in the process, knowing you have the winning solution?

Winning implies competition, as does best.

One might not think of engineering as competitive. But businesses that employ engineers are always in competition. Grants and contracts are a competition and so is market share. The globalization of industry and the steady democratization of skills has created fierce competition, with more participants, in every industry. While not every internal project is directly competitive, most projects will support a mission that is ultimately competitive.

Engineers have grown accustomed to iterating, but normally do 1 to 10 iterations per problem. They understand the value of iterating, learning with each iteration, or “refining the design.” It normally leads to good enough.

Of course, every engineer will have to balance the number of iterations against the cost to produce those iterations on a per-project basis. There is significant pressure to find ways to increase the iteration/dollar ratio. Tools that increase this ratio are providing competitive advantages that are hard to ignore.

Over the last few years, three tools have caused a shakeup in how engineers think about the pursuit of the best solution.

1. Topology optimization
2. Generative design
3. Additive manufacturing

Each of these tools presents considerable advantages by themselves, but when strung together they have the potential for creating (and confirming) a winning design while reducing overall cost.

Topology Optimization

Topology optimization is an objective-based design method that utilizes finite element analysis (FEA) to determine feasible shapes for a given set of loading conditions.

Topology optimization software frees the engineer from having to guess the overall shape or form of the part. A poor guess can lead to a dead end. This is why so many designs resemble one another. Blazing a new trail can be risky. Engineers are playing it safe.

In a conventional design workflow, the engineer will draw their part in CAD and validate their design using FEA or other numerical methods. If the FEA results show that there is room for improvement—perhaps the factor of safety is higher than required or the lifespan is longer than necessary—the engineer may iterate the design. They may choose to sacrifice performance for gain in another category such as manufacturability or cost of materials. Repeated multiple times, this process eventually results in a good enough part.

Typical FEA visualization. Colors are used to communicate stresses, displacement or other metrics. The engineer can use these visualizations as clues to an optimized shape.

But if the goal is the best shape, the engineer might as well be searching for a black cat in an unlit gymnasium. Other than visual clues, there is little help provided to find the best solution.

Topology optimization flips the process. It begins with the loading conditions. An engineer will set the objective and constraints of the problem and then turn on the optimization. The model is broken down into finite elements and solved. Finite elements with no stress means the finite element is not necessary. If a stress is too high, more finite elements are needed. This way, an optimal shape is systematically derived.

Topology optimized control arm. Three loading conditions are evaluated and confirmed to have room for optimization. Algorithms reveal resultant load paths, which are interpreted as the minimum volume of material necessary to meet the engineering criteria.

The resulting shapes can take life-like shapes and be reminiscent of natural designs all around us. From tree limbs to dragonfly wings, nature has proven to be an exceptional objective-driven designer. But however optimized these designs are, they need to be manufacturable. That has been a barrier to wide adoption of topology optimization.

Topology optimized wheel. The load paths that emerged from the loading conditions resemble patterns found in nature.

Additive Manufacturing

Among the many benefits of additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) is that it enables topology optimized shapes to be manufactured cost-effectively. “Complexity is free,” frequently quoted by the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, may not be true, but complexity is definitely encouraged.

In traditional manufacturing, increased complexity definitely correlates to increased cost. The more complex part will cost more to produce. Project managers are especially averse to individually complex parts because they understand their downstream risk. When a shape is too complex, we’d rather break it down into multiple, simpler parts to be assembled.

However, within the last decade additive manufacturing has emerged as an acceptable method of manufacturing complex parts and has fueled a paradigm shift toward complexity. In a time where complexity is encouraged, topology optimization can deliver.

Generative Design

So, is it starting to sound as if topology optimization and additive manufacturing combine for an easy win? We offer a few caveats:

• Topology optimization works in the concept phase of the design process. The output of this stage is a low-precision model that satisfies the basic requirements of the part.
• This shape must be processed in a CAD tool such as SOLIDWORKS for detailed design.
• The detailed design is validated with more robust FEA and CFD tools than typically found in topology optimization software.
• The validated design is cleared for manufacturing and the drawings or CAD files are transferred to those responsible for making the part. This is where additive manufacturing becomes an option.
• After manufacturing, the part is inspected for quality assurance.
• If the part is destined for assembly, it makes its way there. Otherwise, it is sent for packaging and shipping.

A winning engineering design requires optimization within every stage of this workflow. This quickly becomes difficult because of the sheer volume of possible combinations. At each stage, decisions are made that affect later stages but also previous stages. This is not linear like an assembly line. It’s more like a spider web.

But what may be challenging for an engineer is perfect for iteration through automation.

There are challenges to automation within every stage, but until topology optimization, there was no automation possible at the beginning—the concept stage of a design. Topology optimization tools, by minimizing the effort required of the human operator, enable an unprecedented level of automation at this stage.

Most topology optimization software isn’t currently capable of complete automation, but it is a good start. Rather than a discrete objective, a topology study could be given an array of directives. So too, the constraints (such as manufacturing method and material) could be varied and a user-selected number of iterations could be evaluated. The extreme computational intensity can be mitigated by pushing the number crunching to the cloud, another recent and necessary advancement in technology.

A single component, multi-variable generative design study will result in several viable options to select from. (Image courtesy: Buonamici, Francesco & Carfagni, Monica & Furferi, Rocco & Volpe, Yary & Governi, Lapo. (2020). Generative Design: An Explorative Study. Computer-Aided Design and Applications. 18. 144-155. 10.14733/cadaps.2021.144-155.)

A generative design tool will utilize topology optimization in addition to other layers of optimization, resulting in an array of possible solutions. The array is presented to the engineer for evaluation. The engineer might make a selection based on information not included in the generative design study, such as current supply chain disruptions. Manufacturing methods, material selection, cost of inspection, etc. can and should be investigated at the conceptual stage with this method.

This is the promise of generative design: a holistic automation that ends with the presentation of potential solutions, and from them, we can select the best of the best. It’s our choice.

Learn more with the whitepaper Designers Greatly Benefit from Simulation-Driven Product Development.