“Get the MOST out of SolidWorks”

Went to a great event with these guys (the Fareham team are ours) last week at the Lifeboat College in Poole.
Entitled “Get the MOST out of SolidWorks” we thought we would trundle along & see what it was all about.
What we went to was a really good event with a good turnout for an event that wasn’t really aimed at a new release or for being a ‘sales’ event. It was just a useful morning spent with some SolidWorks users, some networking & some great Tips & Tricks!
We came away with a couple of pages of notes of stuff we had forgotten SW could do.
Silly things
Obvious things
Also some things we thought it could do but didn’t know how.

We're getting pretty good at this 3d Modelling mallarky

Good to point out at this point – we don’t use SW all the time, we have 2 seats of Inventor & 1 of SolidWorks & that pretty much the ratio of what we use.  
Some things in SolidWorks are great & Inventor really cannot touch them (surfaces, obviously) but also Photoview360. We are working on a little product development project at the moment & it is a great function that is now embedded within SW.

Some of the (stupid) things we wrote down:
• Hold down the ‘control’ key to disable snap when drawing
• How to customise your mouse gestures
• Look at more of the ‘Expert’ options when adding features (Fillet; Features; Draft)
• How to use “pack&go” as a (very) basic document control system if you don’t have PDM (we don’t)

We wrote loads down about Photoview (cos we are using it now) & (if we are honest) switched off when it came to the simulation stuff – do not use it (do not intend to start – we will leave that side of things to the experts). But it was great that they, well Richard, managed to cover such a diverse range of stuff in the 3 hours we had & it was of interest to most people in the room at some level.
We knew about 3D PDF’s, but not about splitting & merging PDF’s by downloading a free product – just gives the ability to add that extra bit of oomph to the things sent to clients.

Overall, it was a nice way to spend a dull (weather not company) Friday morning with a visit to the FAB Lifeboat College, some cups of coffee, brilliant cookies with just a touch of geek thrown in for good measure.
We loved it & hope they consider doing it again! It’s these sorts of things that add a bit of value to our subs.
Well done Greg & Richard for running it & thanks to the Lifeboat College for the venue.

Advertisement