When you Restart your computer it’s considered a “warm boot”.  Performing a Shut Down is referred to as a “cold boot”.  During a “warm boot” power to the memory chips is not completely lost as it would be on a “cold boot”.  Therefore, if you want to ensure that memory on your system is completely flushed, Shut down your computer and wait approximately 30 seconds before rebooting.  On a system utilizing SolidWorks, it’s recommended that you perform a cold boot daily.

OK, this blog is not a rant or rave – it’s just a gentle push to get you technophobes out there to learn how to be comfortable using your computer. So here goes…

• A pilot knows how to take off and fly but didn’t think he needed to learn how to land. He figures gravity will take care of it.
• A surgeon didn’t bother learning anatomy. He figures he’ll just dig around and eventually find your appendix.

These aren’t going to happen, thankfully, but the idea is no different than if you don’t learn how to do your job completely because you haven’t learned how to use your computer.

I’ve been involved in teaching people how to use software for over twenty years. Back in 1988, the majority o f the people in my class had never used a computer before. That was understandable. But that’s not the case today. Your computer is probably a critical part of your job and it’s as important as a pilot learning how to land or a surgeon learning anatomy. If you can’t use one of the tools of your job you cost the company money.

Fear is usually the main reason for not learning how to be comfortable using your computer. Some important things you need to know if you do something wrong:
1. Your computer will not blow up.
2. You won’t take down your company’s network.
3. You won’t take down the electric grid.
4. You won’t start WW III.

If you’re not comfortable using your computer and getting around in Windows you can:
• Take a class – you should be able to find a free or inexpensive class at your local school or library.
• Read a book – There are lots of books available like the “for Dummies” series or “The Complete Idiot’s Guide” series. These are written for people who aren’t experts but need to learn. Ask at a book store or the library.
• Check out the internet – OK, I know. You can’t use a computer now, so how can you check the internet? Well, there are people to help you –coworkers, family, friends, or a librarian.

Remember you don’t have to learn HOW a computer works; you just need to learn how to USE it.

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.

This week our tech tip will not be about SolidWorks. It’s time to give a little attention to the 3DVIA Composer users out there.

IMPORTING STEP FILES
When importing STEP files, be sure to clear the “Merge file into one actor per part” flag. This is important in that it ensures that the geometry nodes in the assembly tree contain names of the part rather than Object 1, Object 2, etc. Now when it comes time to update the STEP file, the update will have a higher success rate.

Happy Publishhing

Have you found that some of your SolidWorks files have just been getting bigger and bigger? No, it’s not because your files have been snacking on all of those computer cookies.

The problem is due to excess display data. Basically the files are so concerned about how they used to look, they’re not concerned about how big they’re getting. What used to be a light file is now a 140MB behemoth. Like anything trying to move something heavy, SolidWorks (and likely your network) will bog down under all that weight.

I recently had a customer that had a 50Mb file that was a sheet metal plate with 4 bends and about 20 slots. The older version of the file was about 5MB, but every time he saved the file it gained 300-500KB. Even with 8GB of memory, his computer would slow to a crawl when any assembly with parts like that was running.

The good news is, SolidWorks 2011 SP3 has introduced a feature that can get rid of that excess weight. It’s easy to use, but does have some side effects. The feature is “Remove all display states.”

You can find it by right-clicking in the Display States area of the Configurations Tab. Using this feature not only removes all of the display states and custom appearances and other visuals, but it also removes all of that background display data that has been piling up. Rebuilding those visual features may take some work, but any diet usually does! After rebuilding the display states and appearances, your file will still be much smaller.

The 140MB behemoth? After the “Remove all” diet it went from 141MB to 4MB. Happy dieting!