Here you can uncheck processors you do not want the application using.  Only the processors with check marks next to it will be used for that application.  Setting the affinity of the SLDWORKS.exe process will also limit CPU usage for SolidWorks Simulation.

NOTE: This is only recommended when experiencing performance issues associated with heavy CPU usage.

In order to set the default value for a search card control you must define the variable value that will be populated in the control when it loads. The other cards allow you to directly set the value for the control which then populates the variable when the file or folder is created or saved.

- From the Card Editor open an existing Search Card or create a new Search Card.

- On the right side of the Card Editor application find the Card Properties control panel.

- At the bottom of the Card properties control panel select the Default Values button.

- Select the appropriate variable to set a default value for.

- Note that checkbox controls may have default values of ’1′ (checked) or ’0′ (unchecked).

When the search card is launched by users the card will load the search controls pre-populated with the default values from the list. In the example shown above the ‘Search Sub-folders Recursively’ variable being set to ’1′ will make the ‘Include sub-folders’ checkbox control appear ‘checked’ when the card is loaded.

The values can always be altered to suit the needs of the user before running the search operation however pre-populating common search criteria can make the task easier for users.

Multi-wire schematics can get complex very quickly and, from time to time, there is the potential to get different wires crossed that are of differing equipotential circuit levels.

SolidWorks Electrical will notify you of this occurring by changing the wire appearance to a blue wavy wire. This blue wavy wire is called an Equipotential Conflict and is referenced in the SolidWorks Electrical help file.

To change the color, line type and to turn them on or off change to the Project Tab, click the down arrow below the Configurations button, select Project and then select the Graphics tab. You will see an area for the Equipotential Conflict settings to adjust how SolidWorks Electrical displays the conflict.

There are situations where creating 3D Sketch geometry on a surface is required yet no reference geometry exists to do so easily. For example: a Split Line can be used with a Simulation study, an assembly mating condition, or utilized in complex Parting Lines for molds, in all cases you require precise placement of a 3D Sketch onto a surface. Rather than creating extra reference geometry, or other construction features for 2D sketches, try using a Face Curve.

To create a Face Curve:

The “Green” color indicates consistency between the symbols circuits and those of the manufacturers parts circuits
The “Red” color indicates that there is an inconsistency. Certain circuits symbols are not present in the manufacturer part. You have to add Auxiliaries or modify your drawing and add the symbols within the manufacturer part.
The “Blue” color indicates that the manufacturer part contains circuits which are  not represented in the symbol (reserved circuits).
The “Yellow” color indicates the presence of virtual circuits, that appear neither as symbols nor as manufacturer part references (added Manually).

To get edit a schematic symbol right-click over a schematic symbol select “Symbol Properties” and choose the “Manufacturer part and Circuits” tab.

While in the polymer database click the  icon and click the “Options” button.  Enter the acceptable values in the appropriate rows & columns and hit the “Find” button.

When searching the database for similar materials, start with the melt flow index or melt flow rate, the melt temperature, and the percentage of fiber content to find results best suited as substitutions for your ideal polymer.

From this point you can either use the dialog box to specify an exact angle or you can click on the sheet to freely rotate the view.

Create your animation video as you normally would in Composer but when it comes time to save the video do not use the Video Workshop. Instead switch to the High Resolution Image Workshop, set your pixel size on the High Resolution tab (maybe something like 1920 x 1080 for 1080p), then change to the ‘Multiple’ tab, check the ‘Animation’ option and increase the Images per second to 24 or above and click the Save As button. Make sure to save to a drive that has enough room for all of the image files. Keep in mind that for a 10 second video at 24 frames per second, it will create 240 high resolution images. The final step is use a video editing program to compile the images back to a video showing 24 images per second (or set each image duration to 0.0416 seconds per image) . If you are Windows 7 or Windows 8 you can use the free Movie Maker that is a part of Windows Essentials (please see the below link). For a more powerful, purchased program please review Camtasia Studio by TechSmith. (The same program DDi uses for processing our DDi CADCasts and Video Tech Tips.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials

You can also ‘Pin’ your recent file from the File>Browse Recent Documents dialog, which is also accessed by selecting the “R” key on the keyboard.

Tip #1 – Hard disc drives are slow.  Hard disc drives use a series of rotating discs to store and retrieve information. Because data is retrieved via rotating discs the speed in which the hard drive can read and write data is directly related to the RPM that the disc drive spins.  The faster the drive spins, the faster the read/write speeds will be.  Read/write speeds for hard disc drives are generally expressed in megabytes per second (MB/s) and can vary from ~30 MB/s to ~200 MB/s. Although these drives are slow, hard disc drives are the cheapest and can hold the most amount of data.  This makes them the most popular option.

Tip #2 – RAID configurations can help improve performance by distributing data across multiple drives. They can be chosen to improve performance or to provide a redundant fail safe in case of a hard drive failure.  If your goal is the best performance, choosing the correct RAID configuration is important.  Typically this is a RAID 0, but there are alternatives to this that improve both speed and redundancy.

Tip #3 – Solid State Drives are fast. These drives use NAND flash memory to store data.  This eliminates all moving components and can increase performance anywhere from 2-10x that of a single hard disc drive.  Typical read/write speeds for a solid state drive can vary from ~250 MB/s to over 500 MB/s. The downsides to solid state drives are cost and drive size.  Solid state drives are coming down in price and expanding in size, but are typically more expensive than hard disc drives and hold less data. One answer to this is a hybrid solution that uses both a solid state drive and a hard disc drive.  The solid state drive holds the frequently used data for quick access and the hard disc drive stores the data that is less frequently used.

While editing an assembly, if you need to quickly hide parts that are ‘in the way’, simply press the Tab button.  The top component directly below your cursor will be hidden, if you click Tab again then the next part below the cursor will also be hidden, all in order.  For example, in this assembly below, with my cursor on the Ace of Hearts, clicking Tab will hide the Ace Card part, then by selecting Tab again, the King will be hidden and so on.

 To show hidden part.

In order to show hidden part(s) simply click Shift+Tab on the keyboard while your cursor is over where the hidden part is located in the graphics area. As shown above, any component directly below your cursor will be shown using Shift+Tab.  If there are multiple hidden parts, they will be shown in reverse order.  For example, below the card displayed is Queen of Hearts, clicking Shift+Tab will show the King.  Without moving your cursor clicking Shift+Tab one more time will now show the Ace.

This tip can also be used in combination with the ‘Isolate’ command in order to hide or show additional parts from an isolated selection set or current Display State.

When editing workflow or folder permissions for Enterprise PDM vaults, there are many settings that will be common to multiple groups. Rather than edit each group individually it is easier to select a series of groups and apply the settings once. After the common settings are applied it would then be appropriate to return to each group on an individual basis and set the unique permissions for a given group.

To set permissions for multiple groups first launch the Enterprise PDM Administration application. Navigate to the Group section on the left, right click on the Group section label and select ‘Open’ without expanding or selecting a specific group.

The list of Groups in the vault will be listed. Multi-select using the typical CTRL-select method common to most Windows applications. Once the groups are selected right click on a selected group name and select Properties.

The standard Groups Settings dialog is shown except the Group Name text will show <More than one group is selected>. Apply the Administration, Folder, State or Transition Permissions that should be common to the selected groups.

To do this right-click on the “Results” folder and choose “Create Body from Deformed Shape.”  You will then choose between the configuration icon or the part file icon.

If you have chosen to create a new part file, the new part file will be saved in the same directory as the original model under the name entered.  If saving an assembly the deformed shape will be saved as a multibody part file.  This functionality will save deformed bodies for studies involving solid meshes, shell meshes, or mixed meshes.

1) Simply create an assembly with your weldment part *(no other parts are needed) and run Interference Detection from the pull-down Tools/Interference Detection or from the Evaluate tab on the CommandManager.  Make sure to use the following option, ‘Include Multi-body part interferences’.

2) In the weldment part file you can use the Combine Feature to check between 2 structural members. From the pull-down Insert/Features/Combine, simply select the ‘Common’ option and select 2 structural members to check if there is any overlapping volume between them.  You can use the Preview button in the command and you will see if there is any interference.  If there are none, you will get the following message: “Unable to create single body common to the input bodies” which would mean that there is no interference.

Step 01) Find where your ‘Styles’ are stored – Composer File menu, Preferences, Data Paths, find the Profiles path for where your ‘Styles’ are stored.

Default location is:
(3DVIA Composer)  ”C:\Users\{user name}\Documents\3DVIAComposer\User\Profiles”
(SolidWorks Composer) “C:\Users\{user name}\Documents\SolidWorks Composer\User\Profiles”

Step 02) Open one of your ‘Style’ files with notepad or equivalent *.txt program.
(Note: ‘Style’ files have a .smgStyleSet extension)

Step 03) Search for a value of “Profile.Modifiable Value” (quotes removed)

Step 04) Change <Profile.Modifiable Value=”1″/> by change the “1″ to “0″ <Profile.Modifiable Value=”0″/>
Again a value of 1 means that the style can be changed, a value of 0 means that the style will be locked and read only.

This tip will work for 3DVIA Composer and SolidWorks Composer.
The ‘Style’ settings files are written in xml and can also be modified with an xml editor.

In the example shown in the image below it can be seen that the surface has a hole which does not run into another surface region. This can be easily patched by selecting the edge of the hole and tapping ‘Delete’ on the keyboard. A dialog box will be presented with the choice of ‘Delete Hole’ or ‘Delete Feature’. Selecting the Delete Hole option will delete any hole created with a sketch, the Simple Hole, or the Hole Wizard features and create a seamless patch.

An alternate method would be to create a Surface Fill feature over the hole. This always creates a seam around the Surface Fill feature which may not be desirable.

The image above shows the results of a Delete Hole feature and a Fill Surface feature. Notice that the seam on the left is from the Fill Surface feature while there is no seam from the hole which was to the right.

Of course, remember eventually you still need to manufacture the part.

You’ll notice that it lists the appearance in a hierarchy format.  Think of this list as an interactive table and click on the area where you want to add or modify an appearance.  For example, if you wanted to add color to just the face click to the blank area directly to the right of the face row. (red arrow in image)