Not seeing sharp corners when using thick lines?
Have you ever noticed there is a gap on the corners of your lines when you have model edges or sketch lines? You will usually notice this when you try to use very thick lines on a SOLIDWORKS drawing. Why are you seeing this gap? Welp, as with most visual display characteristics in SOLIDWORKS, there is a setting for that. You actually have three options for corner appearance: Flat (default), Square and Round. This is found in your drawing’s document properties at Tools pulldown>Options…>Document Properties>Line Font on a setting called End cap style.
Flat is the default option and normally works fine for most cases. However, if you are using much thicker lines, you can utilize one of the other two options to get the look you need. It is important to note that this setting applies individually to each of type of edges, so you can use a different end cap style for sketches than you use for visual edges.
Square:
Round:
3DPrint.com and Game of Thrones
3DPrint.com recently released an article about a person named Nimi Becza who is such a fan of Game of Thrones that he created his own replica of a weapon wielded by the character Oberyn Martell. After modelling the weapon in SOLIDWORKS, he had it 3D printed (and then posed for the obligatory photos). Check out 3DPrint.com’s article (and photos), Game of Thrones Fan 3D Prints His Very Own Replica of Oberyn Martell’s Blade.
Great story about 3D Printed prosthetics to provide independence
There’s a great story this month about how a former teaching is creating 3D printed prosthetics for people without limbs in order to provide them with greater independence. The angle here is this appropriate quote:
“I only needed a desktop, computer aided design (CAD) software called Solidworks and a 3D printer,” explained Sujana
In addition to this awesome use SOLIDWORKS and 3D printing, a great new enhancement in SOLIDWORKS 2015 is the unique ability to 3D print directly to 3D printers using either 3MF or AMF formats on Windows 8.1 systems. Though the process is more complex than printing to a traditional paper (2D) printer, it is similar in that you no longer have to create intermediate files and switch applications.
Found a gem about David Copperfield
In an interview earlier this year, David Copperfield apparently mentions SolidWorks eDrawings iPad app. His comment doesn’t appear in the released edit of the interview video, but it is mentioned in the body of the article about the interview: David Copperfield is looking to tech for new tricks. His interview was at the CES 2015 and also his museum. In the interview, he talks about modern interaction with his fans and how he utilizes social media to add depth to and improve his shows.
North Alabama SolidWorks User Group
After my great Nashville visit, I headed on down to Huntsville, AL last week. I was able to meet with a lot of SOLIDWORKS customers and users. I presented at the April 2015 meeting of the North Alabama SolidWorks User Group (NASWUG) about the topic of Model Based Definition (MBD), how to apply it within SOLIDWORKS. I also demonstrated the new SOLIDWORKS MBD product which streamlines SOLIDWORKS for MBD processes and provides 3D PDF output for non-CAD consumption for the purpose of contributing to Technical Data Packages (TDP).
Watching @fcsuper giving his SOLIDWORKS MBD presentation at tonight’s NASWUG meeting! pic.twitter.com/OLEuXK00GX
— NASWUG (@naswug) April 16, 2015
There was a lot of great questions by user group meeting attendees about implementation Model Based Definition, the standards that support Model Based Definition (such as MIL-STD-31000), and Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) solutions available in SOLIDWORKS, such as DimXpert.
I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit Nashville and Huntsville, along with many SOLIDWORKS customers in these areas. I learned a lot, and I also hope I provided a lot of new information to those interested in MBD and SOLIDWORKS in general.