There are several places you can change the colour of entities and there is a hierarchy which controls which colour is used.

Most of us are familiar with the first 2 but often users are not aware of the third.

1.   System options

Access: Tools-> options-> System Options tab-> Colors section

2.  Layers.

Layers will override system options colours

Access: View-> Toolbars-> Turn on the layer toolbar.

The toolbar indicates which layer is activated so any new entity added will be in this colour.

Click layer properties for the list of layers and their colours.

3.  Line format.

This overrides both System Options Colours and Layer Colours.

This is the one that sometimes eludes users

Access: View-> Toolbars-> Line Format toolbar-> Line Color

You can change the colour of any entity by selecting it and then selecting the colour here.

If you select a colour without any entity selected then new entities created will be in this colour

If you tick default it will use the layer colour or colour in the system options

Also on the Line format toolbar, you will find the Color display mode.  This will switch between the line format colours/layer colours and the system option colours.

Bianca Roberts
Applications Engineer
Central Innovation, Melbourne

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

For example, you can deactivate your license on your office workstation and activate it on another machine when working from home.

To use this functionality you must:

• Enter your SOLIDWORKS path into the installation path textbox, E.g. “C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS”. in the #TASK License settings
• If you have multiple SOLIDWORKS versions installed, please use the installation path of the latest SOLIDWORKSversion. Higher version licensing takes precedence over the lower version.
• Enter an email address associated with your SOLIDWORKS license.

You can configure #TASK to automatically deactivate/transfer your SOLIDWORKS license when you shut down SOLIDWORKS.

NOTE:

• SOLIDWORKS license activation/deactivation can be performed a limited number of times, please see your SOLIDWORKS license agreement for more information.
• Activate/deactivate functionality is only available for standalone licensing.
• If you have multiple SOLIDWORKS versions installed, please use the installation path of the latest SOLIDWORKSversion. Higher version licensing takes precedence over the lower version.
• “Automatically deactivate license after closing SOLIDWORKS” will work only if #TASK is running.
• To avoid unintentionally affecting your transfer count, consider disabling the option to “Automatically deactivate license after closing SOLIDWORKS” or set the “Always ask me before deactivating the license” if you encounter multiple inconsistencies that result in Solidworks crashing or closing abnormally.

Mithilesh Kapre

Integration Specialist NSW

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

In this example, the unit is set to millimeter in the properties.

But when using the measure tool, it is displayed in meter.

The issue is related to the settings in the measure tool.

To fix it, click on Units/Precision and keep the measure tool active.

Make sure the ‘use document setting” is selected.

The unit should display correctly.

Tauseef Ahmed

Applications Engineer Central Innovation

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

By default #Task will appear like this

If you go into settings

On the Plug-ins Manager tab you will find the “Task Items Groups Manager”

Tick this on and you will be prompted to restart #Task

Now you will see a tab at the top of the tasks with the option to create new groups

Click the green + symbol to create new groups.  Slow click on the tab name to rename it and then add the desired macros from the online library by selecting the  symbol

You can then set up multiple groups with specific tasks

Bianca Roberts
Applications Engineer
Central Innovation, Melbourne

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

Before performing the repair it is a good idea to log on with the admin account or at least an account with full administrative permissions.  You should also disable antivirus and malware/spyware, and set UAC (Windows User Account Control) never to notify.

To start the repair, use the Windows search and type in “Add or remove programs”

Apps and features then list the programs installed on your machine.  Type Solidworks in the search bar, click on the version required, and select “Modify”.

If you don’t see any option to modify then Solidworks was installed via an admin image which can not be repaired through this interface.  You can uninstall and reinstall or contact technical support for an alternative method.

If you get the following message click “Ok”

Select “Repair your installation”

Tick the programs to repair and click “Repair”

Note: The Solidworks repair program will need to access the original installation files.  During the repair, if the files can not be located the installation manager will give you the option to browse to the required files.  If they have been deleted you will need to download the files.

The repair will verify all the files required by the program are present, fix any problems that may be found, and register all the files needed.

After the repair is complete reboot if prompted

Now you can check if your Solidworks problem is fixed.  If not contact Solidworks technical support for further assistance.

Bianca Roberts
Applications Engineer
Central Innovation, Melbourne

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

This blog will give you step-by-step instructions to create an RX capture.

How to Access RX?

1. Solidworks RX can be accessed through the “SOLIDWORKS Resources” task pane as seen below.

2. If Solidworks is not open you can access Solidworks RX from the installed programs list in windows or you can use the Windows search as seen below.

The Solidworks RX program provides a lot of useful tools.  This blog will cover the Problem Capture tool.  To Access it please select the “Problem Capture” Tab.

There are 3 steps to creating the RX capture.

Step 1: Capture

Choose the source that you want to record.  By default, it will be your SOLIDWORKS window, but if there are other programs that will help show the problem you can select specific monitors.  After selecting the source click “Record Video”.

You will then be prompted to either “Use Current Session” or “Restart SOLIDWORKS”. If it is possible to reproduce the problem after restarting Solidworks please click “Restart Solidworks”.  Otherwise, you can use the current session

Click record and show the issue.  If possible start with opening the file so the workflow can be followed from start to finish.

At any time you can pause or restart the recording.  When completed click “finish”.

Step 2: Package the files.

After recording the video you need to package the files

You can click “add files” to either add or remove files from the package.  Note: Solidworks RX by default will include all the references from the entire session so you may wish to remove some files that are not relevant to the problem.

Once satisfied the required files are included click “package files” to save the .zip onto your hard drive.

Step 3: The package is now complete.  You can optionally “Continue to step 3” which allows you to describe the problem and impact level or alternatively you can skip this step and put this information in the email.

The files are now ready to be sent to technical support.  If it is under 10MB you can email it to support@intercad.com.au.  If it is over 10 BM upload it to our hightail account https://spaces.hightail.com/uplink/centralinnovation and make sure to email us advising you have uploaded the RX.

Please ensure you include any additional information as this will reduce the time it takes us to solve the problem.

Bianca Roberts
Applications Engineer
Central Innovation, Melbourne

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

Lofted Bends in SOLIDWORKS are a tool that has been in the software for years and a tool that I think a lot of time gets over looked for the abilities of what it can do for a user.

When we look at the Property Manager for Lofted Bends we are presented with quite a few options. Typically, when I want to know more about the feature that I am working on and what it can do for me I hit the? mark in the upper right. In the case of Lofted Bends, it takes me to a general help page for Lofted Bends telling us the basics of how to build a part with Lofted Bends.

https://help.solidworks.com/2022/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/HIDD_SM_LOFTED_BEND.htm

To find out more about Lofted Bends you need to dig a little deeper into help and do a search for Bent Lofted Bends, unfortunately at this current time I am only able to find information about Formed Lofted bends in the SOLIDWORKS Training Manual for Sheet Metal.

Lofted Bend Requirements

There are some characteristics of Lofted Bends that are unique from a standard Loft or Sheet Metal Part and they are:

• Cannot be mirrored.
• Only open contours may be used as sketch profiles.
• The gaps in the profiles should be aligned for flat pattern accuracy.
• No more than two sketch profiles are allowed.
• Use of guide curves is not supported.
• Use of center line curves is not supported.
• K-factor applies to flat patterns of lofted bends only if the lofted bends are created from sketches that meet specific conditions.

Bent Lofted Bends

You can use Bent Lofted Bends to create physical bends, rather than formed geometry and approximated bend lines in a flat pattern. Bent Lofted Bends form a realistic transition between two profiles to facilitate instructions for press brake manufacturing.

With Bent Lofted Bends you have four different options as to how the bend regions are defined be selecting one of the Faceting Options, then specifying the values for the chosen option in the Facet Value field.

Faceting Options

You can also control the individual bend regions by selecting the pink spheres in the preview.

The last option is for Refer to endpoint to specify whether the created bends refer to a sharp corner in the profile or whether the sharp corner is replaced with adjacent bends to form an approximated arc in the corner.

Refer to endpoint = Checked            Refer to endpoint = Cleared

The rest of the options in the property manager are the same as any other Sheet Metal part.

The resulting Flat Pattern looks like what you see below (Bend Lines Sketch selected to show detail).

Formed Lofted Bends

Formed Lofted Bends have a rolled or drawn look to the bend regions instead of being separated by bends and flats like in Bent Lofted Bends.

To create a Formed Lofted Bends, the profiles must meet an additional requirement:

• Profile cannot include sharp corners.

You can see with the Property Manager and the resulting preview that we have fewer options and a Message about the difference between a Bent and Formed Lofted Bend.

The resulting Flat Pattern looks like what you see below, note there are no Bend Lines like in the Bent Lofted Bends example.

Jeeno Chandrasekaran

Applications Engineer Central Innovation

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

New South Wales – Head office | CAD software supplier

The best solution is one tailored to your needs. Let’s discuss your options, at our New South Wales Central Innovations head office. Or call us or email us.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2022

New to SOLIDWORKS 2022 is the ability to directly export your CAD data to SOLIDWORKS Visualize with one click.

Export Simple:

Export Simple minimizes the number of parts that appear in the Visualize Scene Tree, which is basically the equivalent of your assembly tree within SOLIDWORKS. It also groups your parts by their appearances, making it easier to change the appearance on multiple parts at once.

Let’s take a look at an example of a part model:

Save as .prt format

Here, we see the Test PE 100. Let’s see what the resultant Scene Tree looks like when we export this to Visualize using the “Export Simple” tool:

All of our parts that were assigned an “Polished steel” appearance within SOLIDWORKS have been grouped together within Visualize.

Jeeno Chandrasekaran

Applications Engineer Central Innovation

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

New South Wales – Head office | CAD software supplier

The best solution is one tailored to your needs. Let’s discuss your options, at our New South Wales Central Innovations head office. Or call us or email us.

Figure 1: Screen Duplication Example

What is happening?

If you’re running Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, in combination with a 4k external display, the OS will attempt to automatically choose an appropriate scaling setting for the display. Often, users will want to make adjustments to those settings to fit their desired layout. To enlarge text
and other UI elements, DPI scaling is usually set globally in the Display settings found in the Windows Control Panel.

However, this can lead to blurry text and other oddities in applications that do not work well with the global scaling settings.

To resolve this issue and bring SOLIDWORKS back into the waking world, follow the steps below.

How do we fix this?

Step #1

Browse using Windows Explorer to find the SOLIDWORKS Executable file (SLDWORKS.exe).

• By default, this is located in C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS 20XX\SOLIDWORKS (where XX represents the year) or in C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS

Step #2

Step #3

Step #4

Click Change high DPI settings and then check the box labeled Override high DPI scaling behavior. Ensure that the Scaling drop-down menu is set to Application.

Step #5

Lastly, reboot your computer and then launch SOLIDWORKS. This should resolve the SOLIDWORKS display scaling issues you were seeing and return you to normal operation.

• You can run “Import Diagnostics” on non-native SOLIDWORKS models, but you cannot heal or fix any bad geometry.  Modifying (fixing) any geometry could change the face and edge identifiers.  That, in turn, would break the update capability of “3D Interconnect”.
• Not being able to run “Feature Recognition” on an imported part that was not converted to the SOLIDWORKS file format.
• A STEP or IGES file opened as an assembly in its native format will not allow individual components to be opened in a separate window.
• You can’t float the individual STEP or IGES components in the assembly.  This means adding mates will not affect how they interact with one another.

Two Ways to Fix the Issues Above

You can turn off “3D Interconnect” by selecting Tools > Options > System Options > Import and clear “Enable 3D Interconnect”.  See the screenshot below.

If you don’t want to turn off the 3D Interconnect option, there is a quicker way to change a file to the SOLIDWORKS native file format. In the Feature Manager Design Tree, right-click the inserted third-party native CAD file and click “Dissolve Feature”.  See the screenshot below.

Note:  “Dissolve Feature” is something that can’t be undone.  You would have to re-import the file with the “3D Interconnect” option re-enabled to re-establish the original link.

Some SOLIDWORKS users have also noticed better results with eliminating surface errors in components by importing the assemblies with 3D interconnect and then using “Dissolve Feature”.

Central Innovation wants to make this process easy for our customers. If you require further explanation or feel the Performance issue or other unknown error, please contact us through email – support@intercad.com.au, support@intercad.co.nz

Jeeno Chandrasekaran

Applications Engineer Central Innovation

At Central Innovation, we can provide all – or part – of the solution. Including SOLIDWORKS, ARCHICAD, and many more industry-leading tools.

It’s something we’ve been doing for almost 30 years. Our commitment to customer service is second to none: we help you get the best out of your technology.

For a truly unique solution to your unique challenges, please contact us. Or read about some of the great services and solutions we offer.

New South Wales – Head office | CAD software supplier

The best solution is the one tailored to your needs. Let’s discuss your options, at our New South Wales Central Innovations head office. Or call us or email us.