Alignex Blog

Times are changing.  The way we work and how our businesses were run ten or even five years ago has changed, hopefully for the better!  With my formative years in the 80s and 90s I was witness to the internet, cell phones, DVDs, MP3s and the ever-changing ways technology affects our way of life.  Some not always for the best. I had a minidisc player that was obsolete within six months as a result of flash memory.

With the latest buzz about new versions of SOLIDWORKS, it’s easy to get confused about some of the basics when it comes to upgrading to a newer version. For instance, technically UPGRADING SOLIDWORKS refers to moving major versions like 2017 to 2018, while UPDATING refers to service pack changes. We will use this convention throughout this article.

There is NO EASY BUTTON when it comes to working with complicated assemblies. Only a combination of small fixes and best practices can lead to better performance. If you experience long open times, graphics lags or issues working with mates, it may be time to review your process. 

Responding with LOL, lots of love, to a friend’s recent text that their dog passed away is tragically embarrassing. As I get older, I need to work harder to keep up with today’s latest trends and vernacular. To spare you some of my struggles, here is a quick list of some SOLIDWORKS lingo as well as some others I have found in the workplace!

When you are dealing with such a complex and function rich software like SOLIDWORKS, it's easy for a few hidden features to slip through the cracks. Although some of these offer only minor help to your day-to-day design work, some of them can have a major impact both now and in the future. One of these hidden gems many overlook is called the Enhancement Request. 

If you are currently using a stand-alone SOLIDWORKS license, you may not be aware that you have the ability to use that license anywhere you have SOLIDWORKS installed! Simply run through the deactivate process on your active system and this will free the license up to be activated on another computer. This allows you to quickly transfer your license from your workstation, to a lab computer, to your home computer or anywhere else you need to run SOLIDWORKS.

My name is Travis Quick and I am an Application Engineer with Alignex, based out of Edina, MN. This was my first year at SOLIDWORKS World and I’m excited to tell you about all the great things that went on! From the cool technology that was represented at the Partner Pavilion, to the great new things customers are doing, to getting to meet all the amazing people at SOLIDWORKS that help make this community such a wonderful group to be a part of.

Have you heard about My.SolidWorks.com? If you have, then you already know about the wealth of SOLIDWORKS information that can be found right at your fingertips. If you haven't, what are you waiting for? Joining is free and easy.

Learn how to use the compare functionality in SOLIDWORKS to identify the differences in your model from one revision to the next. With SOLIDWORKS Compare tools designers can quickly see updates without having to interpret revision notes.

After spending a lot of time on a sheet metal model, we often like additional details to be shown in our DXF export. The same steps we cover here can be applied to DWG files and non-sheet metal parts as well.

In this post we will be manipulating our options to create separate layers for various items in our DXF file. This will enable the end user to turn on/off various layers in their 2D program and get a clearer picture of the final design. Let’s begin!