Thursday, August 27, 2009

Where in the World is the VaultAdmin Tool?

You are your company's SolidWorks Workgroup PDM administrator. Every time you install a new service pack of SolidWorks, your SWPDM VaultAdmin tool is missing. To correct the issue, you can browse to your SolidWorksExplorer.msi file in the swexplorer folder of the SolidWorks service pack download. Run this msi file and modify your SolidWorks Explorer install. You will want to do a custom install and pick SolidWorks Workgroup PDM VaultAdmin.
To prevent this from happening the next time you install a service pack using the Installation Manager, you can pick which products to upgrade.

You can now pick to install SolidWorks Workgroup PDM VaultAdmin with all of your other products to install.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Accessing Dimensions From Multiple Features

In order to have access to multiple feature's dimensions at the same time, RMB on the Annotations folder in the Feature Manager Design Tree. Then, select show feature dimensions. This will display all of the dimensions in the model at once so that they are easily selected for use in equations.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Save as and update references

In order to save the components of an assembly and update the references of each new part name in one easy step, simply choose file->save as-> then click on the references button. In this dialogue box, if you choose "more options" you can add a prefix or suffix to all components in the assembly that are selected in the list. Then you can choose the file location for the new files. This will update all the references while creating copies of the components.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

FIles of type dropdown

SolidWorks should remember the last filter that was applied in the Files of type" drop down box when a file was opened. If you choose all files as the filter, next time you choose file open it will revert back to the last SolidWorks file type that was chosen. However, if you choose "SolidWorks files" and open a document, it will show all SolidWorks file types next time you choose file open. The trick is to change the files of type dropdown to whatever you would like it to start from, then actually open a document from the list.