The American Heritage dictionary defines a utility as:

(yū-tĭl’ĭ-tē)
n., pl., -ties.

1. The quality or condition of being useful; usefulness:
2. A useful article or device.
3. A public utility.
1. A commodity or service, such as electricity, water, or public transportation, that is provided by a public utility.

In SolidWorks, the utilities add-in available with seats of SolidWorks Professional or Premium can be very useful indeed!

SolidWorks defines Utilities as “a set of tools that lets you examine in detail the geometry of a solid model, and make comparisons to other models”.

With everything from automated tools to simplify your models to geometry comparison between separate files; these tools can give you valuable insight into your designs and give you the information you need to be successful.

Take some time to get familiar with SolidWorks Utilities by checking out this link:  http://help.solidworks.com/2012/English/SolidWorks/swutilities/SolidWorks_Utilities.htm

Before SolidWorks 2011 borrowing a license was a little cumbersome as you had to make sure to borrow a Standard seat as well as a Professional or Premium if you wanted extra add-ins. Also the list of possible products was extremely long and had nothing to do with what licenses you purchased.

In SolidWorks 2011 there were changes made to the borrow function to clean up the user interface. It now shows only what  licenses you purchased and you no longer need to select a Standard license to be able to use the software.

For example on my license manager I do not own a seat of Standard so it shows zero available but I have plenty of Premium. This is working as designed and if yours looks this way not to worry. Going forward you do not need to borrow the Standard. It will do this for you as the License Manager knows you need this.

That doesn’t mean you cannot borrow a Standard license if you want it takes a second step to do so. The process involves selecting, for example, the Premium that is available and click “Borrow”. Then the Select Product dialog comes up and this has a pull down that allows you to take either the Premium or just the Standard.

Once the product is selected I can then click OK and it will show me what I have borrowed and until when. Now at this time you need to disconnect from the server to be able to use the borrowed license. If you do not disconnect you will just take another license from the pool.

In a previous Tech Tip, Network Slowdown, we discussed some options to help your SolidWorks performance when operating over a network. One of the options garnered some interest: How to dedicate a processor/core solely to SolidWorks to help keep it from fighting or the processor. Well, here’s how
you do it!

First, Open the Task Manager and go to the Processes Tab:

Right Click on SldWorks.exe and click Set Affinity:

Then, select the CPU/Core you wish SolidWorks to use.

If you want to make that processor completely reserved for SolidWorks, it will take a bit of manual effort. You’ll have to go down the list of other processes and turn off their affinity for the processor you want
SolidWorks on. If you’re not running many other things that are eating CPU time that might not be as critical.

There are also Third Party programs out there you can download to help manage this as well.

This alone is definitely no fix all in the world of SolidWorks performance. However, if you’re looking for every ounce of extra performance, this can help a little!