We all know and love SolidWorks for its modeling capabilities, but I’m often surprised by how many users are not aware of all the other functionality that comes along with the SolidWorks package.   Not only do you have the suite of SolidWorks, eDrawings, DWGeditor, and PhotoWorks, there’s also a variety of additional tools that can help make life a lot easier.   If you go into your Windows Start menu in the lower left corner of your desktop, go into All Programs, SolidWorks 20XX, (SolidWorks 20XX SPXX), SolidWorks Tools, you’ll find a few of these valuable resources.

Here’s a summary of how they can help you work more effectivly with SolidWorks…

Copy Settings Wizard:  Allows you to save out all your custom settings in SolidWorks including System Options, Toolbars, Keyboard shortcuts, and Menu customizations.  That way if you create a new installation, get a new machine, or need to work on a different system, you can easily apply all the settings that you’ve grown accustomed to.  This wizard will save out a *.sldreg file that you simply double-click to restore your settings to any installation.  This also comes in handy to standardize several SolidWorks installations to all have the same settings, such as file locations.

Property Tab Builder:  If you add custom properties to your SolidWorks files and feel like this process gets a little redundant, this tool is for you.  The Property Tab builder allows you to build a custom designed user interface to help automate creating that property information.  You build a template that can consist of text boxes, pulldown lists, number fields, checkboxes , and radio buttons.  Then users can access this template in the task pane at the right side of the SolidWorks interface.  You can predefine values or have fields dependent on user input. After filling out the form, SolidWorks writes to values to the custom or configuration-specific properties of the file. Here’s an example…

SolidNetwork License Manager:  This tool comes into play if you have network licensing at your location.  It can tell you what licenses are available and who currently has licenses in use.  This is also where you define the server location where the licenses are deployed from.

SolidWorks Network Monitor:  You can use this tool to share the task of converting all of your SolidWorks files to the latest version.  You schedule the task to convert files on a coordinator computer and allow several node computers on the network to perform the task as well so you can complete it in a fraction of the time.

SolidWorks Rx:  A very valuable resource for troubleshooting.  We use this tool in tech support quite often to have users complete one of the Rx functions: Problem Capture.  This allows you to “capture” an issue you may be experiencing in SolidWorks and even record a video if appropriate, and then send us a zip file package that will include information about your settings, system configuration, and event logs.  But this tool is also an important resource for users to take advantage of.  Some other functions of the Rx include a System Maintenance tool that will clean out all your temporary directories that Windows and SolidWorks might write to.  These directories can build in size over time and significantly slow your system.  You can use the Rx to schedule this maintenance to run on a regular basis to keep everything running smoothly, or periodically you can manually go in and run the maintenance yourself.  There’s also a Diagnostics page where you can take a look and make sure your system is configured correctly for using SolidWorks.   The most valuable information you’ll find here concerns the video card and driver information.  Using a graphics card driver that is certified for your system configuration is vital to get optimal performance in SolidWorks.

SolidWorks Task Scheduler:  This tool can be used to schedule tasks to be automatically run on your system.  Some of the things that are available include converting files to the latest version, printing multiple files, exporting or importing multiple files, tasks associated with Workgroup PDM, if in use, and much more!  Check it out!

Toolbox Settings:  This is the same configuration tool that you can access through SolidWorks to make any changes to your toolbox settings.

If you’d like any more information on using these tools, feel free to contact Symmetry Solutions Technical Support Team at 763.560.8600 option 4 or email us at support@symsolutions.com.