So 2012  is now released, and they have finally fixed a couple of things that had changed if you upgraded to Windows 7 or Vista. If you never used XP with a Workgroup vault, you may not be aware of these functions. You used to be able to browse the vault from the “SolidWorks Open” dialog. There was a link on the left in the favorites along with Desktop and My Documents. In 2012, they have brought this back for users of Windows 7 and Vista. It is a little different then it is in XP as it is not added to favorites, but it still gets the files you want to open.

The button can be found at the bottom of the open dialog. When selected, it opens a “Select from Vault” dialog that allows you to browse the vault. By default, it is set to check out and if you just select “Check Out” it will go back to the SolidWorks Open and this will then point to the check out location called out in the Workgroup client options. There is also the “Check Out Advanced.” This will open the standard check out dialog for Workgroup and populate with the selected files from the Select from Vault. This makes it easier to open a file to a specific configuration even if it was not last saved to that one.

There is also one thing that is not listed in the “Whats New for 2012″  but I have had a few customers bring this up as being an annoyance.This is also primarily seen in Windows 7 & Vista. This has to do with searching in the vault from inside SolidWorks. So you set up the search criteria and tell it to “Find” and it searches down the Vault View Tree. When it finds the first to meet the criteria it stops and highlights the file in the tree. Really it does, but it is very light and not always easy to see. Recently, I received a fixed SPR notification for this issue and you can now actually see the highlighted file. Once again, this is not an issue if you are still using Windows XP as you could adjust the brightness of the monitor if this was not visible enough.

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.

SolidWorks has had the complete uninstall functionality for the last couple major releases. If you are not aware it is no surprise as it is not very easy to find.

To use it you start the uninstall and the installation manager will open with a list of products to remove. You then need to right mouse click on the header and select “Total Uninstall”. This would remove all settings with no options to not remove specific items.

New in SolidWorks 2012 you can choose what to remove from the install

As you can see above you can select to remove almost everything SolidWorks. Program files is selected by default and cannot be unselected. You may also select registry entries, data file locations and also download files.

Once you have the appropriate items selected and you continue with the uninstall a dialog opens warning that you are removing more than just the standard uninstall does. Proceed with your selective uninstall if desired.

Recently, we have been getting a lot of calls from customers doing upgrades to their SolidWorks and Workgroup installations. This is a simple project, unless someone else completed the previous upgrade. If that’s the case, it is still fairly simple but there are a couple of things that can be missed or forgotten. Like the vault Admin tool on the client end, this is not selected for install by default. You will need to make sure it is selected in the products to install. It is a little hard to find if you don’t know where to look.

This screen shot shows what to select so this gets installed with the rest of the SolidWorks on the client. Workgroup is base on the SolidWorks Explorer  platform so it needs these components installed for it to work.

Now the main issue we have been seeing for the server portion is where is the location of the Vault. By default SolidWorks will place this on the root of C but most IT people I have spoke with do not like putting programs there. That is not a problem. If you need, it can be placed on the root of whatever drive you want to use. But ideally, it shouldn’t be buried in any folder, it needs to be on the root. This being said, if you are upgrading the vault and you are not sure where it is, find that out first. Then, when you start the  install you can make sure it points to the correct location. Otherwise the Installer cannot find it and it will use the default location, which is C. Then you will have it installed, but it will be an empty vault.

The screen shot above shows where it will install the vault. It should find the correct location but if it does not, look at the area I have highlighted. This will tell you where it is going to upgrade the vault to. If this is showing C:\VaultData\ and you know it is not there, select “Change”. This opens the area that will allow you to browse to the correct location.

Hopefully this will assist you in a smooth Workgroup Vault upgrade. The screen shots above are from the 2011 SP3 installation manager, so if you are using an older version it may look a little different. The 2011 vault installation uses the SolidWorks IM, while previous versions used the older Windows IM.

I hope this clears up some of the upgrade issues you may encounter. As always, if you run into any issues during an upgrade, our Technical Support team members are happy to assist you.

Quite a few years ago, I was taking mechanical design classes at a school where they also had an architectural design program. At one point the architectural department had a 3D printer on loan. Many of us were curious and went to investigate this new idea in printing. The machine used paper and it would feed a sheet of paper and glue it to the previous one and cut away the excess according to the file that was read by the software. This idea did kind of intrigue me but seeing I was in the mechanical field, it did not really stay with me. I never did see the final print as it took almost a day to print and I had only a few minutes to see it running. By the time I was able to get back to the machine, the part was no longer in the building.

Okay… let’s jump ahead a few years. At this time, I was working for a company that was looking to get a printer scanner and I was doing some research. Although it had nothing to do with what I was looking for, I ran across some other 3D printers and a new term was being used: rapid prototyping. I looked at what was available then and most were primarily using some sort of plastic in attempt to replace having to have a part machined in a shop. These machines were still not very office friendly. I still thought this was a great idea, but did not get a chance to see more than a sample part. I did some more research but that was put on hold as my company began implementing SolidWorks and I focused on that.

Now my responsibilities here at Symmetry Solutions include supporting our customers that have purchased a Z-Printer. As I continue to compare of all the different 3D printers on the market, I’ve found that the Z-Printer line is the only one that can add true color to the printed models. Most 3D printers are using some sort of plastic but some still use paper and sintered metals as well as ceramics.

The term “rapid prototyping” has kind of fallen by the wayside as these machines are now being used to make working parts. One case I recently saw on SolidSmack.com was a company that was making a car using 3D printing technology. The car is still in the investment stage and it is called Urbee. There are links in the article if you’d like to read more on this project. I have also seen a post were an architect was making a building using a ceramic-based printer. This is a different technology than the Z-Corp printers which use a powder and ink-jet technology. There are many advances taking place in the world of 3D printing. The future appears limitless for this technology-I have even heard speculation on using it to build colonies on the Moon or Mars. You can find out more about Z-Printers and rapid prototyping here.

Have you ever needed to select specific things in your assembly and were not sure of the best way to accomplish this? The selection tool has many options for what to select if you use the pull down.

As you can see from the image above there are a number of choices. The “Volume Select…” is similar to a general window select but in 3 dimensions which makes sense as we design in 3D. The Volume Select allows you to change the size of the box in all directions. When you hit “Enter” it will highlight all the components confined in the box in the Feature Tree.

Next you have “Select Suppressed” and “Select Hidden.” These are fairly self explanatory. They will highlight the suppressed or hidden items in the Feature Tree. This is very useful for an assembly that has a very long Feature Tree.

Then there is the “Select Mated To…” which, when you to select a component(s) in the assembly, will highlight all the components that have a mate.

“Select Internal Components” is useful if you have an assembly that has components inside other components. It will allow selecting them without hiding anything.

The last of the standard selection tools is “Select Toolbox.”  It will select all toolbox components in the assembly so you can possibly suppress or hide for a simplified configuration.

The last one on the list is the “Advanced Select…” This opens a select dialog that allows you to add criteria to what it will search. In the image below you can see the list for category 1. There are quite a few options. If you select certain criteria from category 1 it will also have criteria for category 2. Clicking on the “And/Or” tab can also allow you to define search criteria in more detail.

So once you have done any one of these options, you can always invert the selection to be opposite. Suppose you want to select all components except the toolbox ones. Use the “Select Toolbox” this will select all the toolbox parts. Then use the right mouse button menus and select “Invert Selection.” This will now unselect all toolbox parts and select all other components.

I hope this has provided you with a better understanding of the selection tool. If you have questions on any of this functionality, you can go to the online SolidWorks Help section and search for the specific selection tool you are looking at. And if you are needing additional help, feel free to contact our Technical Support Team at 763-560-8600, option 4.

As a rule, I do spend a bit of time each week browsing through other blogs about SolidWorks. I find things in these blogs that are relevant to some of my support cases. Some of them are focused on SolidWorks and some highlight other software and design tools as well. Below I have compiled a list of the ones I frequent, including some that are for specifics like PhotoView/PhotoWorks. If you have others that you follow, please leave a comment with the link to share with all of our blog readers.

http://www.fcsuper.com/swblog/ From a group of SolidWorks experts

http://www.solidsmack.com/ From Josh Ming

http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/ From SolidWorks

http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/ From Matt Lombard author of the SolidWorks Bible series.

http://www.deelip.com/ From Deelip Menezes

http://robrodriguez.com/wordpress/ From Rob Rodriguez PhotoView/PhotoWorks

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/devonsowell/ From Devon Sowell PDM

The other day a customer called in and wanted to show in a drawing one of the components of an assembly in a dashed state. I thought this to be a nice feature to have but did not know if it was possible. So I started looking into this and I stumbled upon Component Line Font from the right click menu. This allows you to change the default setting for Visible Edges, Hidden, Tangent Edges and Crosshatch.

Once you unselect ”Use document defaults” you can change the Line style or Line thickness setting for each. You can also set it to change for all views or just the selected view. Once you have applied this and click on “OK” the drawing will update. As I show in the picture below, the top component is dashed and the bottom one is solid line.

SolidWorks 2011 has included a new utility to help with download problems: the SolidWorks Background Downloader. The Background Downloader uses processes behind the scenes to download the installation package for service packs.  In previous versions, it was required that  SolidWorks be closed before downloading files.  Starting in 2011, this utility will allow the user to continue to use SolidWorks while it downloads the files. After the download is complete, the user will be prompted as to what they want to do with the download.  The options are: “Install Now”, “Delay the Installation”, or “Delete the Download”.  You can disable the Background Downloader and still run “Check for Updates” as in previous versions.

There are two ways to turn this function off. The first is during the install on the Download Options page. You can unselect the Background Downloader options (there are two of them). The other is if you installed SolidWorks and this is on, you can disable it from the icon in the taskbar. I have included a screen shot of the message from the taskbar above.

Even though the Background Downloader is selected to install by default for individual installs, it is not installed when using the SolidWorks administrative image.

Below is a link to Lou Gallo’s post about the SolidWorks Background Downloader and his take on the utility:

http://solidworksheard.com/blog/2010/12/24/solidworks-background-disabler.html

1. First, you will need to set up a customer portal account at www.solidworks.com select log in at the top. From here, select “SolidWorks Customer Portal” and then select “Click here” to create an account. Then enter the serial number and click next. Make sure the company information is correct and hit the “Yes” button. Finish creating the account with your email and a password.

2. Log into the customer portal and under “Downloads” select the link “Downloads and Updates”. This will bring you to the download page. Select the SolidWorks version and OS that you need. You will then be shown a download license agreement that needs to be accepted. The next page has a couple of steps. The first is just information about accepting any prompts from Internet Explorer. In step 2 you have the download link for the Installation Manager (IM). Step 3 talks about the full download options and recommendations that will come into play after you download the IM. Select the download in step 2. This will download an executable zip file that is the IM. You will need to run this and make sure to select all products you want to download for an individual install. If you are needing to download for multiple installs, there is a “Download Only” option. This will do a complete download of all available software just like what is on the install disk. This download will be about 5 gig. The individual download will be smaller as it will only download what is needed to install on that specific computer. When the download is complete for the individual, it will start automatically if that option was selected during the download process. The “Download Only” option does not start automatically and gives you a message at the end that you will need to run the IM from the download location. This location is My Documents/SolidWorks Downloads folder.

3. If you have the download from the “Download Only” option, go to the folder mentioned before or if you are directed elsewhere go there. Inside SolidWorks 2011 SPX.X open the sldim folder and double click the sldim.exe. This will launch the IM and make sure to check each of the options in here for what to install and where to install it.

If you run into any errors or the install does not complete successfully, please contact Symmetry Support at 763 560-8600 option 4 or email support@symsolutions.com  You may also send in error message screen shots or failed install log files. We will be happy to provide assistance and get you up and running with SolidWorks 2011.