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

I very well could have had this conversation while doing tech support…
Dude: Well, I can see that this is some powerful software, but it’s taking a long time to solve and things shouldn’t be this complicated.

Me: Yeah… that’s a pretty… pretty big mesh. I can’t even see the part.

Me: What are you trying to study here?
Dude: The assembly. (Duhhh!)
Me: Yeah, but what about the assembly? Is there a particular part you’re worried about?
Dude: Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I am pretty concerned about this part.

Me: Okay, we can eliminate these parts and apply equivalent forces on the faces.

Me: Alright, let’s get started! We can use a rough mesh to find the contact forces.

Me: Now, we can eliminate the top pieces from the assembly and create split lines where we would like to apply the equivalent forces.

Me: This is a perfect opportunity to use 2D simplification. Let’s create a new study.

Me: Now, we can afford a pretty heavy mesh control on the component of interest.

Me: If we go into properties and select the option for “Improve accuracy for no penetration contacting surfaces” we’ll get the same results as before with a fraction of the run time.
Dude: Thanks Nick! You’re the best!
Me: I know… I know.

Do you ever get the feeling that your computer is doing things behind your back?  Does it take a long time to boot up in the morning?  If so, then you probably have programs running in the background that open on startup that you aren’t aware of.  To see a list of these, run the msconfig program built into your Windows operating system.

In Windows XP, click on Start, then Run, and then type in msconfig. 

In Vista or Windows 7, click on Start, and then type msconfig in the Search box.

Click on the Startup tab and uncheck the ones you don’t want to run at start up.  The next time you reboot, those programs will not start.

So you’re working on an assembly. Everything is inserted and all of your mates are set. You’re just about done and looking things over when *poof* the entire asssembly disappears. You zoom to fit: nothing. You try zooming to a component: nothing. You do a Ctrl-Q: Still nothing. You close the part and re-open it: Nope, still gone. You’ve checked in the AssemblyXpert to make sure parts aren’t too far from the origin: everything is fine. All the parts are still there and you can edit the components and mates, but nothing but the background is in the graphics area.

The problem might be a glitch in the file that reset the bounding box of the assembly to be outside of the model space. How did it glitch? Well, not even SolidWorks knows yet. They do, however, know how to fix it!

To reset your bounding box and hopefully be able to view your assembly, do the following:

• Move your cursor to the graphics area.
• Hit space to bring up the “View Palatte.”
• Double click “Isometric.”
• Type CTRL-Q.
• Then save the assembly.

After that, you either rejoice that your assembly is back and viewable, or call your Tech Support Team!

As a member of the Technical Support Team at Symmetry Solutions, each year we are required to be recertified by SolidWorks.  Part of the recertification test is focused on new functionality and features for the latest release of SolidWorks.  As you may or may not know, there is a “What’s New” file for every new release of the software that documents these changes.  You can access this file from your help menu in SolidWorks.  Like many, I am one of those people that scan the document for some highlights when I install each new release.  However, since my recertification test was approaching, I thought I would give it a more thorough read.  You know what I discovered (again)?  There is a lot of good information in that document.  I won’t try and summarize the entire thing, but here is one tip that I think may be useful if you are in the process of updating hardware:

“You can transfer a license from a computer even if SolidWorks is no longer installed on that computer. You can download and run SolidWorks Activation Wizard from the SolidWorks customer portal to transfer the license.”

So now when you get that annoying message about “Activation Count Exceeded” because you forgot to transfer the license off of your old computer, you no longer need to call technical support to resolve the problem.

Note, the tool is new and currently only applies to SW2011 installations.

Take some time and read through the “What’s New” document (again).  It may not be the most fun reading material available, but I recommend it for all SolidWorks users, as it can help you get the most from your software.

P.S.  You will be happy to know that all the members of your SolidWorks Technical Support Team here at Symmetry Solutions passed their recertification test.