Tuesday May 11, 2010 at 2:43pm
The Solid Solutions SolidWorks Tips and Tricks page has been updated!
It has been redesigned to load faster to get you to the tips and tricks you want to see as quickly as possible. There are currently 4 pages full of useful hints, tips, tricks and techniques you can use with SolidWorks to become a more productive user.
http://www.solidsolutions.co.uk/SolidWorks-Demo-Videos/Tips-and-Tricks.aspxThese are all also on the Solid Solutions Management Ltd YouTube channel. If you are a registered user of YouTube.com (free to register), you can Subscribe to the Solid Solutions channel. Subscribing means you are emailed as soon as a new video is uploaded, delivering a link to the latest SolidWorks videos directly to your inbox. There are currently over 30 videos and over 100 subscribers and it is growing all the time.
To view the Solid Solutions YouTube channel visit
http://www.youtube.com/user/SolidSolutionsManLtd and click Subscribe!
Got any suggestions for a video or a SolidWorks tip or trick? email
mrushton@solidsolutions.co.uk and you will be credited with coming up with the tip or trick. We can add a link to your own or company website and if we are suitably impressed or did not know about the tip, we will send you a free USB memory stick!
Monday April 19, 2010 at 3:53pm
New Solution Helps Designers Calculate and Reduce the Environmental Impact of Their Materials and Production MethodsA top design industry publication has named SolidWorks® Sustainability software as one of the most innovative products of 2010.
The editors of Design News magazine chose SolidWorks Sustainability as a Golden Mousetrap Award Best Product winner based on its ability to help designers create more environmentally-friendly products. SolidWorks Sustainability helps users determine their designs’ carbon footprint, energy consumption, and air/water impacts. The software calculates those effects by considering the source of raw materials, manufacturing processes, how products will be used, and how they will be disposed of — all before they are manufactured. That insight helps designers to make their products more sustainable without costly late-stage changes in processes or supply chains.
“Design News congratulates the winners and finalists of the 2010 Golden Mousetrap Awards for the great work they’ve done to develop new and innovative products for design engineers,” said Managing Editor Jennifer Roy. “These products, as always, showcase the highly imaginative ways that today’s engineers are ‘building a better mousetrap,’ and we thank them for their contributions.”
This is Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks’ second Golden Mousetrap Award in the last three years. The company’s SolidWorks 2008 CAD software won in the best product category as well. Design News has been recognising engineering innovation and creativity through the Golden Mousetrap Awards for more than 20 years. This year, Golden Mousetrap awards were given in four major categories: Electronics, Motion Control/Automation, Hardware/Software, Materials/Fastening/Joining/Assembly, and 20 subcategories.
“This much-appreciated recognition is almost more about the era we’re in right now than it is about any one product,” said Kishore Boyalakuntla, Manager of Simulation product management at DS SolidWorks Corp. “Environmental consciousness came almost out of nowhere to become a major consideration for consumers making buying decisions. Product designers who want to respond to that shift need tools to evaluate their designs’ environmental impact. We’re glad to have been among the first companies to meet that need.”
For more information on SolidWorks Sustainability look at the
SolidWorks Sustainability webpage by clicking here or contact Solid Solutions on 01926 623160.
Monday March 29, 2010 at 5:43pm
SolidWorks has been driven predominantly by user enhancement requests for many years. This is not set to change and in addition to what is being included in SolidWorks® there are a number of other products and services SolidWorks® are looking into providing to assist you with your work on a day to day basis. In order to focus the development, a short survey is currently online to find out what you think. This could make a real difference to you so is well worth the short time to fill in the survey, it could save you a lot of time!
The survey takes approximately 25 minutes to complete, and will provide Dassault Systemes SolidWorks with critical input on new product features and services. During the survey you will be asked to judge your interest in features for potential new products. Your input is extremely important to us.
Click here or copy and paste the following URL to take the survey and influence the future of SolidWorks...
http://www.surveygarden.com/SolidWorks/SWsurvey.php
Thursday March 25, 2010 at 5:37pm
Beginning with SolidWorks 2010 SP3, the 2D editor formerly known as DWGeditor will be re-named to SolidWorks 2D Editor. In addition to the re-naming, this product will no longer ship as part of the standard SolidWorks installation. SolidWorks 2D Editor will now be available to most SolidWorks customers via a quick and easy download from the SolidWorks customer portal. Click LINKS at the top of the page to access the Customer Portal.
The license entitlement to this 2D editor capability for existing SolidWorks customers remains essentially unchanged. For your reference, here is an excerpt from the SolidWorks 2D Editor end user license agreement (EULA) that will be posted on the SolidWorks customer portal:
“If you are a valid licensee of SolidWorks, SolidWorks PDM Contributor and/or SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Contributor (each a “Qualifying Product”), then you may install and use one copy of this Software for each one license of a Qualifying Product that you own. Additionally, for each one license of a Qualifying Product that you own and for which you are current on SolidWorks subscription service, you are granted a license to install and use two additional copies of the Software. Subject to the foregoing, SolidWorks grants to you a royalty-free, nonexclusive license to use and copy the Software in accordance with this Agreement for your own internal business purposes.”
For more information, please do not hesitate to call us on 01926 623160.
Tuesday March 16, 2010 at 12:38pm
All of the Solid Solutions Demonstrations, What's New and Tips and Tricks videos are hosted by YouTube. New videos are added regularly onto www.solidsolutions.co.uk and many can be found on the Demo Videos page (see the link at the top of the page).
However, Solid Solutions has a YouTube channel! If you register with YouTube, you can Subscribe to the Solid Solutions YouTube channel all for free, and you get an email every time a new video is uploaded. This could be a new tip for any of the SolidWorks products, a preview of a new piece of software, updates to existing products, training or an introduction to an area of SolidWorks you may be interested in. To date there are 30+ videos which have received over 50,000 hits and the channel currently has 75+ subscribers. To get real value from the largest SolidWorks reseller in the UK, third largest in Europe, sign up now.
To subscribe to the SolidSolutionsManLtd channel, simply search for SolidSolutionsManLtd on YouTube.com or
click here.Tuesday March 16, 2010 at 10:50am
Technical Support from Solid Solutions has been recognised by SolidWorks as being a very proactive, comprehensive service. By calling the support line (01926 623160), you are straight through to one of the dedicated Technical Support engineers. By using email and technologies such as GotoMeeting and GotoAssist, we can be on site, virtually, seeing your screen in a matter of minutes. We can even take control of your PC with your permission.
All of these services will continue, but as of October 2010, you will be able to log support calls via the Customer Portal. By logging in and going to the Service Requests area in "My Support", you can fill in the forms detailing your issue and attach files (much larger than you can email) and it is sent to our support team. Progress on these issues can then be tracked, through the customer portal, but you are also sent emails everytime there is an update.
This way, you are prompted to give us all the information we need in order to deal with your issue more effectively - something which is harder to do via email. Also, in the Customer Portal is the new improved Knowledge base, with answers to frequently asked questions just a couple of clicks away. This is the same knowledge base which we have access to, enabling you to resolve your issues much quicker than ever before.
By logging Service Requests through the Customer Portal, everything is done in one place. No longer will you need to send in an email with the description of your issue, followed by uploading files to an FTP site. You do not even have to pick up the phone!
SolidWorks Corporation also have visibility to these Service Requests and they can be escalated to SolidWorks more quickly if required but also, common themes can be identified allowing development to focus on these areas to improve the quality of all the SolidWorks products even further.
If you have any questions on any of these changes, please contact us on
support@solidsolutions.co.uk or
mrushton@solidsolutions.co.uk or call on 01926 623160.
Monday March 1, 2010 at 6:54pm
SolidWorks CAD software, with over 1.2millions licenses sold to date, is without a doubt the most used 3D CAD software in the world. You only need to search on job websites, Google Trends or even YouTube to see how much it is being used. However, over the last few years, SolidWorks Corporation has a lot more strings to its bow.
SolidWorks Simulation (formerly known as CosmosWorks) has been around a long time now, and is a well established, well proven suite of tools. It really add value to a lot of different industry sectors by allowing you to be sure you have the best design, early on in the design process. It can also drastically reduce the cost of your product development by reducing prototyping, reducing physical testing and also down to potential failures.
Simulation, stress analysis or FEA, whatever you want to call it, is often seen as something which is very high-end and only the complex high technology industries and products use it. With SolidWorks Simulation, with the same intuitive, logical interface as SolidWorks, and with no need to export files to another system, many more people can access this technology. SolidWorks Simulation can really help you to gain a competitve edge. To see more, contact us to discuss which area of SolidWorks Simulation can add value to your business or process.
SolidWorks Simulation is not just about "is my design strong enough?" it can go much further. It can help reduce manufacturing costs, reduce material cost, reduce weight, improve performance or even reduce the environmental impact of your design. To go through all of the capabilities would take a very long time so instead, here is a video which goes through a lot of the functionality in under 3 minutes!
Monday February 22, 2010 at 5:20pm
2010 CAD COMPETITION
February saw the launch of a CAD modelling competition to find the best Student SolidWorks modeller. The competition is split into 4 categories;
• Automotive and Transportation
• Consumer Products
• Electronics
• General,
and the brief, is simply to submit an excellent SolidWorks model (part or assembly), ideally, based on an existing product (since the competition is about modelling, not design). The competition is open to any age of University student in the UK. It is completely free to enter and there are a number of prizes. Some of which have been supplied by Solid Solutions Management, proud sponsors of this competition.
The models submitted will be judged on a variety of different areas;
•Complexity of the model (30%)
•Modelling techniques chosen (15%)
•Robustness of the modelling techniques used (20%)
•Accuracy and realism of the model (20%)
•Organisation of the feature tree (15%)
The panel of judges is made up of top industry professionals including our very own Managing Director, Alan Sampson.
•The grand prize is a 2 month, paid, summer placement at Innovate Product Design
•Contestants will be divided into four university year groups – one grand prize per group
•A great opportunity to showcase your abilities to employers across the world!
Competition deadline - 31st March 2010
"The Cadooku CAD competition aims to match CAD modelling talent with the design engineering industry. It will showcase the best work from the next generation of design engineers, so recruiters can identify employees of the future."
"Winners will be featured on
www.cadcompetition.com and
www.cadooku.com, a model exchange site visited by thousands of users per week, including top industry recruiters. The best talent can also look forward to press exposure in top industry magazines, including DEVELOP3D, Eureka, New Design and Design Week. All in all, the competition is a great opportunity and offers fantastic free publicity for your skills, so get modelling!"
Good luck!
Thursday December 3, 2009 at 9:21pm
Friday November 27, 2009 at 12:13am
It's the busiest time of the year at Solid Solutions right now, so not a lot of time for blog updates!
After some very successful SolidWorks 2010 launch days around the country, there has been a real spike in interest in 3DVIA Composer. As a result, a demostration video has been added to the 3DVIA Composer page on our website.
(Here). This provoked a thought. Some of our videos on the website have text callouts instead of a voice narration. This is so that they can be watched in an office environment easily and still be understood without the need for headphones or irritating your colleagues! Others, do have some narration. Looking at the viewing figures, they seem pretty much equally popular. What do you think? Do you prefer the text callouts to a voice over or do you prefer the personal touch you get from a presenter?
We would be very interested to hear your thoughts on both styles and which you prefer. We would also be interested to know whether you would follow a Solid Solutions twitter account if we were to introduce one. If we did, what sort of things would you want to know? Tips and tricks? Latest news?
We would love to hear from you to see how we can add value to you, your company and your use of SolidWorks, Simulation, 3DVIA Composer and Enterprise PDM. Please leave a comment or email
mrushton@solidsolutions.co.uk. Thanks!