Solidworks tips and tricks

[Peck]

Hey all you Solidworks guys out there, I'm looking to learn every tip and trick I can about the software and how to be faster (and I'm sure others would have no problem with learning to be faster too.) any tips and tricks you can throw down for me to practice would be great.

for starters, here are a few I already know:

• in assemblies, you can mate parts by holding alt while dragging a face or edge to touch the face or edge you want to mate it to.
• sketches can be used multiple times
• sketches can be moved from one face to another by using the "sketch plane" option when you right click on the sketch in the feature manager.

[akoscielski3]

Originally Posted by Peck

Hey all you Solidworks guys out there, I'm looking to learn every tip and trick I can about the software and how to be faster (and I'm sure others would have no problem with learning to be faster too.) any tips and tricks you can throw down for me to practice would be great.

for starters, here are a few I already know:

• in assemblies, you can mate parts by holding alt while dragging a face or edge to touch the face or edge you want to mate it to.
• sketches can be used multiple times
• sketches can be moved from one face to another by using the "sketch plane" option when you right click on the sketch in the feature manager.

Wow. You just taught me a few things thanks

The best way you cna possibly get faster is by designing more things. Last year i spent countless hours designing chassis, and for 2012 season i designed the whole robot by myself in 2 weeks. Which to me is really fast. The only thing i know about that is new to some people is when in a sketch, holding down Shift and selecting two lines you can change what position they are relative to eachother (eg Parallel, Coincident)

[Adam.garcia]

"S" is going to be your best friend. If you press the "S" key, a quick menu pops up wherever your cursor is. It is fully customizable. You can put all of your important "go-to" tools in the shortcut menu. It took me about 3 days to get used to using it, and the speed improvement is ridiculous!

[JD Mather]

Search for Tips and Tricks presentations at previous SolidWorks World conferences.

[Peck]

Originally Posted by JD Mather

Search for Tips and Tricks presentations at previous SolidWorks World conferences.

ok, is there any location where the highest quality video's/audio recordings/powerpoints/simular could be found or that you would recommend starting at?

[jamierose]

Originally Posted by Peck

Hey all you Solidworks guys out there, I'm looking to learn every tip and trick I can about the software and how to be faster (and I'm sure others would have no problem with learning to be faster too.) any tips and tricks you can throw down for me to practice would be great.

for starters, here are a few I already know:

• in assemblies, you can mate parts by holding alt while dragging a face or edge to touch the face or edge you want to mate it to.
• sketches can be used multiple times
• sketches can be moved from one face to another by using the "sketch plane" option when you right click on the sketch in the feature manager.

Pressing alt does create a mate, but at least in SolidWorks 2010, it doesn't always work.

Although I don't have too much experience with it, I once tried using it to mate two circular edges so I wouldn't have to create separate coincident and concentric mates. I tried multiple times, but nothing changed, and no mates were created.

On the other hand, though, it can save a lot of time for some quick mates, but you have to be able to see both things you want to mate at the same time. If you need to rotate the view for a mate, I don't think it works.

[FenixPheonix]

The direction you pull in when doing box select matters. When you pull to the right, it selects only the objects completely contained within the box (the box is blue then.) If you pull to the left, it selects all objects that are even partially in the box (it's dotted green then.)

FilletXpert. Use it. In the standard fillet property manager, during creation, you can switch it from manual to FilletXpert, allowing the program to intelligently extrapolate which edges you want to round. Once you click on an edge,

Change your menu layouts. How are extend edge and split edge not standard options on the sketch panel? (I know they're under other stuff, but they're useful enough that they shouldn't be.)

Weldments. Learn to use them, learn to love them. Never make a frame out of separate part files again. I know it can't do everything, but it can do quite a lot.

New Part. In assembly, it's under Insert Part by default (I've got it up along side it, though.) It allows easy creation of in context parts, totally relative to another part. Absolutely wonderful.

Mirroring in sketches. Saves half the time. Need I say more?

[Siri]

Customize your shortcuts. (Tools-->Customize-->Keyboard and/or Mouse Gestures) Especially when sketching, I barely use the menu anymore. It's amazing how much time is saved when line, center line, circle, rectangle, point, dimension, relation, sketch, trim, zoom to fit, normal to, iso-view, mate, extrude measure, mass properties... are each a single intuitive button away. Especially helpful when I have to CAD without a mouse.*



*Kids, never CAD without a mouse. And when you do, try not to develop a habit.

[akoscielski3]

Originally Posted by Siri

Customize your shortcuts. (Tools-->Customize-->Keyboard and/or Mouse Gestures) Especially when sketching, I barely use the menu anymore. It's amazing how much time is saved when line, center line, circle, rectangle, point, dimension, relation, sketch, trim, zoom to fit, normal to, iso-view, mate, extrude measure, mass properties... are each a single intuitive button away. Especially helpful when I have to CAD without a mouse.*



*Kids, never CAD without a mouse. And when you do, try not to develop a habit.

Do you mean the small icons on the top of you part view? I knew you could chnage them but not to these ones. i just put one in that is "normal view" which makes it a lot easier to look straight onto a view.

[mplanchard]

Like our www.facebook.com/solidworkseducation page. There are weekly tips and great videos. Go back a few weeks to the "cam" one. There are alot of great models. Learn from what others have done. Download the models and use the roll back bar to see how they were created.

http://www.facebook.com/SolidWorksEd...it.ly%2FQ4Ss9c

Marie