Graphics Systems SolidNotes

Command Search: What's Old Is New

Remember in ancient times, when you used a DOS prompt? Perhaps your command environment of choice was -sh on a Unix system, or maybe you rocked the $ prompt in VAX/VMS. In any case, you probably made good use of command search paths and aliases. In those days, you had command-line interaction and nothing else -- some people even liked it.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, where icon-driven interfaces are clicked with a mouse or touched with a finger. Even in this environment, the ability to type in a command is desirable: the more icons you have, the more desirable it is.

Thus, we find command search (or actually, pervasive search that includes commands) implemented in Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It's very convenient to go to the Start Menu in Windows and type "Printers" to get directly to that area of the Control Panel.  For example, I find the reason most people don't use it is because they don't know about it. The only more convenient thing would be for my device to carry out commands by voice (which is already there on some platforms, in varying modes of reliability).

So it comes to pass that SolidWorks has command search in the latest incarnation -- SolidWorks 2012. You can click on it in the regular search window (it's the one with the >_ icon) or, more conveniently, it's automatically activated and given keyboard focus every time you hit the S key (you DO use the S key for your custom shortcut menu, don't you?)

You can type in part of a command (try "hole" if you're in a part) and you'll get a number of matches. Hit "Enter" and the top match will execute, or click on another item in the list to do that command instead (arrow keys work in the list too). If you want to drag it into the Command Manager, you just rip it right out of the list. Or use the eyeglasses icon to the right of the command in the list to see where it is in your existing interface.

If you want, you can make your own "shortcuts" to commands you use often. Think of these as nicknames. I've nicknamed "Hole Alignment" as "ha" so if I type in "ha" it comes to the top of the list; an Enter key later and I'm using the command I want. You can make these in the Customize interface (there is a new column called "Search Shortcut").

Once you try Command Search, I think you'll really like it. And if you haven't tried it in Windows or on your Mac or your smartphone, give that a shot too. Before too long, I believe you'll be speaking commands to your computer but in the meantime, What's Old Is New.

Alternate Mode for Running Commands in SolidWorks

SolidWorks commands are usually "sticky": they continue to run until you turn them off. For example, if you choose to create a rectangle, SolidWorks keeps you in the rectangle command until you either click the button again to toggle it off or hit the Esc key.

If you would prefer that a command only run once, then turn itself off (automatically putting you back into the "arrow" or Select tool), turn on the option "Single command per pick" under Tools, Options, System Options, General:

Now, when you choose to run a command, that command will run only once. If you decide you want a command to "stick", you can accomplish that by double-clicking the command button instead of single-clicking.

When an Rx Won't Capture It

SolidWork's Rx utility is a great tool for logging repeatable issues such as crashes or errors.  While it works well with SolidWorks, what happens when you are using eDrawings, the 2D Editor, or Draft Sight?  I'd like you to consider some free and internal tools to help you log repeatable issues.  This will help your and your VAR in troubleshooting the issue and finding a solution.

The first is a free download from www.sysinternals.com or Microsoft.  Process Monitor allows you to quickly create a capture filter for a particular process (such as sldworks.exe) and see, in real-time, what registry and system calls are being made.  While cryptic at times, the technical support staff at your reseller and at SolidWorks corporate can use the logs saved to learn more about the process' behavior.  Warning: log files can become very large depending on how long you log for.

To create a filter, use the short-cut (CTL-L) or drop down.  The window looks like this:

You can see above that I've created a filter for the eDrawings executable.  A screen shot of a running filter looks like this.

Now I can see what the process is doing, what keys its touching, and if there were any failures.

To go a step deeper, you use the built-in Event Viewer.  In Windows 7, right from the search box you can simply type "Event Viewer" and select it to launch.  It looks like this and is comprised of logs for applications and system events.

Expand "Windows Logs" and select Application or System. Scroll through the log at top and look for warnings or errors.  These are the same logs captured with an Rx.  But, again, what do you do with eDrawings or Draft Sight? (or AutoCAD, or ProE, or .... you name the application)

Here are examples of App events and System events.

I hope you found this blog useful.  The next time you get an error or warning, now you may have one more tool in your belt to use to troubleshoot.

SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Tips and Tricks - Faster Browsing with a Preview

How can you make EPDM (SolidWorks Enterprise PDM) browsing seem faster?  Simple, just turn on the bitmap preview for SolidWorks files. Why would you do this? You still want to be able to zoom and rotate in the preview (eDrawings), and you’re not about to give that up right?  Here’s the good news you don’t have to give up your full eDrawing preview.  All you need to do is click on the bitmap preview and wait a few seconds for eDrawings to load.  When you enable bitmap preview for SolidWorks it is much faster than having the eDrawings preview because every time you change the selected file a new eDrawing doesn’t have to load inthe preview window(assuming you have the preview tab selected).  This means that you can now flip through dozens of SolidWorks files in seconds see a quick preview of each one, and then when you find the one you want, just click on it wait a few seconds and there’s your eDrawing ready for you to zoom, pan and rotate to your heart's content.

To enable this option  you will need to right click in the explorer window’s right pane(not the folder view) and you must not be right clicking on a file either.  The white space below the files is good or in the checked out by column is also a good option.  Find “View” in the list and as you guessed make sure “Show bitmap for SolidWorks files.” is checked.

While we’re at it, a few more suggestions are to enable the same option for dwg files and also to enable the full eDrawings UI… if you’ve been using enterprise for a long time don’t worry the UI buttons in the preview are really tiny now not like older versions so they are actually very useful. 

One other minor detail to this trick it must be done per computer per user.  There is no global place to set this by default.  It is a viewing option and each person has to decide if it is right for them.

SolidWorks Content and Weldment Profiles

For SolidWorks 2010 users there exists a small but good assortment of various 2D profiles available to create weldment members from.  The list includes angle iron, pipe, and square tubes in a plethora of sizes. It is a good place to start but you may have not known that SolidWorks provides the user with many more profile choices.  This data is stored in an area in the Task Pane called "SolidWorks Content."

The Content is not exclusively for weldments but also includes blocks for drawings and components for SolidWorks Routing.  To "download" this content to a folder location on your computer, simple hold down the CONTROL key of your keyboard and click one of the library files (such as "Ansi Inch" from the Weldments folder).  SolidWorks will prompt you for a location to store the compressed files to.  Once saved, open a WIndows browser and extract or unzip the file.

Particularly for weldment profiles, SolidWorks needs to know where the profiles are stored.  For example, if you installed SolidWorks with all of the default locations then the default profiles would look something like this...View this photo 

SolidWorks needs only one path for the weldment profiles.  You may either replace this path with the location of the Content you extracted or extract the Content and move it in to the existing location of your weldment profiles.  Regardless, the path folder structure is important.  

The top-level folder is the starting path SolidWorks needs set in the Tools, System Options, File Locations, Weldment Profiles.  The first sub-folder is the Standard (if you've downloaded Ansi Inch then this would be the name of the first sub-folder).  Subsequent folders make up the Type.  And within each of these folders are the actual SolidWorks library part files that host the sketch used to generate the profile along a path. An example path may look something like this...View this photo

Creating new profiles is very easy, then.  Use SolidWorks to open one of these library part files (.sldlfp), save the document as a new name, and modify the sketch as you desire.

As always your Reseller can assist you with this and any other questions you may have regarding SolidWorks' Weldment Profiles.  Additionally feel free to leave me a comment at the bottom of this blog.

Bypass Your Graphics Card

If you have display glitches or similar issues in SolidWorks that you suspect may be due to an old driver or unsupported graphics card, there is a pretty simple way to get some good confirmation. It's a setting inside of SolidWorks iteself called "Use Software OpenGL."

Where do you find it? Tools > Options > System > Performance. You will find a setting to turn on Software OpenGL -- it's a check box. Important: You can only set this option when you are in SolidWorks but you have no documents open. Since you're changing how the graphics are being dealt with, if you have documents open in SolidWorks you can't very well make the switch and hence the option checkbox will be grayed out.

Once you set this to "on", you are telling SolidWorks not to use the graphics card for OpenGL functions -- you're essentially bypassing the card. It's not as fast to work in this mode, but if you have an old graphics card, or one that isn't supported, it might be better to work this way. If you're using this setting as part of the troubleshooting process, you'll know that your problem is graphics card or driver related and can proceed accordingly.

BTW, in case you're wondering, we currently recommend the nVidia Quadro FX580 as our baseline graphics card for SolidWorks users.

Protect Your SolidWorks Serial Number

Have you ever worried that someone who has access to your PC for a short period of time may be able to steal your SolidWorks serial number?

SolidWorks provides an easy way to hide the serial number in the help about dialog while leaving just enough of it so that calls to support can be uniquely identified.  The part not hidden is used mostly for internal communication between SolidWorks corporate and the VAR and referred to as the Seat ID.  The only reason it's only used internally is because by the time you explain to someone what the Seat ID is you could have just asked for the whole serial number and figured it out yourself.  But if both parties know that you’re talking about the Seat ID it's not a problem.

Here's the solution:
1.  Make a new text file (name it something like 'Hide SW Serial Number'
2.  Paste this text into the file:
        Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

        [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks\Security]
        "Serial Number Hide"="1"
3.  Save the file
4.  Change the file extension from .txt to .reg
5.  Make sure SolidWorks is closed and Double-click on the .reg file and click Yes when it asks you to continue and OK to confirm the changes have been made successfully

Here's the Result:

Captains Log, Stardate 9160.5

“I have recently discovered the ability to add a time and date stamp after an entry in Notepad.exe. To create this stamp, type .LOG at the top of your .txt file. Make your entry and save the file. When you reopen your .txt file the time and date will be attached to the end of the entry.  Create more entries and save the file. Each time you save the file a new time and date will be attached to the end of the file. A useful discovery indeed. “

Simplify your Windows Explorer View

We all have a lot drives on our computers these days. From Local drives and all their partitions, to optical drives (CD/DVD), and flash card readers (that we can't even use unless there's media in them but for some reason they still show up in the list), to the plethora of network shares our IT department says we "need," even though we only use some of them every other month or so.

Here is an easy way to simplify all that extra baggage in Windows Explorer and see only the stuff you need to:

1. Create a new short cut
2. Browse to the drive or folder you want
3. Choose its' Name
4. Press Finish

(that's the easy part that you probably know)
an alternate to this would be to right click and drag the folder/drive you want and pick 'Create Shortcuts Here'

  

5. Edit the Target to say:
   "C:\Windows\explorer.exe /e, /root, "

    Where <Path> is the full path to the folder
    you want the shortcut to resolve to.

6. (Optional) Click the change Icon button and pick an Icon that makes more sense to you than the default shortcut.

(For the final result see the last picture below)

Notice that there are no other folders other than the C drive for a much cleaner view of only the file you want to see.

 

 

SolidWorks Help, You Really Move Me

Do you see the cute, little, angry viking to your left?

Is he "jumping for joy?" No, he just stepped on a thumbtack and is taken aback.  You would be too if you had just stepped on a sharp, pointy object.  But if you don't see him jumping then you have another problem.

Your SolidWorks Help document is chock full o' goodness. It's a very useful resource beacuse not only is easily searchable, but contains many practical examples. And some of these example are "videos."  You may have seen this icon before in the Help file.

Actually, "video" isn't the best of terms.  The SolidWorks Help document is a Web-friendly HTML document and contains other types of files. Namely "animated GIFs."

A GIF is a type of graphics file, similar to a bitmap (BMP) or a JPEG.  And an animated GIF contains multiple frames stored in the one picture file. But what if you can't see these cute animations actually happening?  What could be wrong.

The first place to check, and the thrust of this post, is maybe not so obvious. Because SolidWorks Help is Web-friendly, check your Internet Explorer settings.  A little dig time in Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, and you'll likely come across this:

Check to see if this setting is checked-off. Once set correctly, you too can quickly benefit from all the wonderfull goodness SolidWorks stores away for you in your Help documentation!