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