Tag Archives: The SolidWorks Geek

Adding multiple arrows to leaders, by Alex Ruiz

“With a show of hands, how many are guilty of faking leaders in drawings? How many times have you or someone you love made a copy of a balloon or annotation and placed it on top of another? Just for the second or third leader, you sacrifice the integrity of the drawing. Come on, be [...]

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Hide / Show Extension and Dimension Lines, by Alex Ruiz

“How many of you after switching over to SolidWorks 2008 couldn’t figure out how to hide an extension line? There was a small change to how you hide or show dimension and extension lines that seemed to be made under the radar. The first time I needed to hide an extension line I was shocked [...]

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Drawing Sheet Background in SolidWorks 2008 – Revisited, by Alex Ruiz

“The very first post I did when I started this blog was about getting rid of the drawing sheet background in SolidWorks 2008. At the time I was under the impression that there was no way to turn off the ‘crumpled’ paper look of a drawing. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I [...]

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Creating Your BOM Template, by Alex Ruiz

“Earlier this month for Standards Tuesday, I spent a couple of weeks describing BOMs per ASME Y14.34-1996. If you missed them I highly recommend you go back and read those post since they cover a lot of information that would be helpful in creating your own BOM template, see Standards Tuesday – Bill of Materials [...]

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Using BOMs in SolidWorks 2008, by Alex Ruiz

“Welcome back to a new week filled with SolidWorks tips and tricks. Over the next couple of post we’ll be concentrating on SolidWorks Bill of Materials. SolidWorks 2008 brought some changes on how one uses BOMs in the drawing environment. A lot of the controls for BOMs that were previously available in the PropertyManager are [...]

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Using BOMs in SolidWorks 2008 Pt2, by Alex Ruiz

“Today we continue our discussion on using BOMs in SolidWorks 2008. Be sure you go back and read my previous post Creating Your BOM Template and Using BOMs in SolidWorks 2008 before reading on. I would also highly recommend Josh’s coverage of BOM at SolidSmack, SolidWorks BOM Superstar: 5 Moves to Avoid and How to [...]

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Improve Productivity – Use Shortcut Bars, by Alex Ruiz

“One of my favorite new features in SolidWorks 2008 is the addition of Shortcut Bars. Shortcut bars are customizable floating bars that pop up in the graphic area near your mouse pointer. By default each environment has its own shortcut bar that you can then customize just like another toolbar. With Shortcut Bars in addition [...]

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Buried Treasures, by Alex Ruiz

“Buried deep in the advanced mates lies a hidden treasure. The Width mate is a little known mate that makes mating tabs and slots possible without calculating distances or using reference geometry. This is not one of the many new mates in 2008, in fact this mate made its debut appearance in the 2006 release. [...]

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Mating in SolidWorks – Standard Mates, by Alex Ruiz

“Unless you are completely new to SolidWorks, you have more then likely used the Coincident mate. It is probably the most common mate used when building assemblies. Today, we are going to look more into using the coincident mate to limit the degrees of freedom in your assemblies. If you are familiar with the Coincident [...]

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Configuring Components in Assemblies, by Alex Ruiz

“If you have spent anytime with assembly configurations in SW 2007, you would know how many steps it took to set up components for each configuration. Then if the component had configurations as well, it added even more steps. I don’t want to go on about some of the horror stories I have encountered but [...]

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Component Selection Tools in Assemblies, by Alex Ruiz

“SolidWorks 2008 brought the addition of new tools for selecting components that will make your life easier. Throughout the upcoming weeks we will be covering them all but today we will be covering the new selection tools Volume Select, Select Suppressed, Select Hidden, Select Mated To and Select Internal Components.” …
Keep Reading: Component Selection Tools [...]

Posted in Select, Select Hidden, Select Internal Components, Select Mated To, Select Suppressed, The SolidWorks Geek, Volume Select | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Appearance of Things – Appearance Callouts, by Alex Ruiz

“The Appearance Callouts window is nothing new, in fact I believe it made its debut in 2006, but I feel myself using it a lot more in 2008. Since I started using it again, I discovered it really does make it easier to apply colors and textures to parts, bodies, features and faces. In watching [...]

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The Appearance of Things – Display States, by Alex Ruiz

“After reading Part 1 and Part 2 of The Appearance of Things, I hope you have found it easier to change the appearance of your parts. Now I am going to show you how to tie it all together using Display States. Like Appearance Callouts and the Display Pane, Display States are nothing new but [...]

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More Selection Methods, by Alex Ruiz

“Earlier this month I wrote about Component Selection Tools in Assemblies and I left out a couple of new selection tools in 2008. Today We will cover those missing selection tools; Show Hidden Components, Advanced Select & Select Sub Assembly. These selection tools will come in handy later this week when we cover Quick View [...]

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Selectively Opening Components in Your Assembly, by Alex Ruiz

“We have all had them, extraordinarily large assemblies that brings your computer to it’s virtual knees every time you open them. Sometimes you just want to work on a small area and opening an assembly is painfully slow. In 2008, SolidWorks introduced a new tool to help you in these situations: Quick view / Selective [...]

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Design Faster with Design Library and Mate References Pt2, by Alex Ruiz

“In Design Faster with Design Library and Mate References Pt1, I described the process for creating components with Mate References to be used in the Design Library. The Design Library is a great place to store assembly components you use most often in order to streamline the assembly process for new assemblies. This example will [...]

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Mating in SolidWorks: Introduction, by Alex Ruiz

“[W]e are going to start today with a brief overview of what are mates and some of the best practices. Then in coming articles I will go in detail about each available mate in SolidWorks 2009.” …
Keep Reading: Mating in SolidWorks: Introduction – The SolidWorks Geek.
Published by Alex Ruiz on 4/2/09 on The SW Geek

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