In today’s modernized labor market, hiring an engineer doesn’t always mean taking on the time-consuming task of hiring a full-time employee. Contract Engineering can be a great option to supplement your team’s capacity and experience at a moment’s notice. Let’s review a few reasons why Contract Engineering can be so advantageous. FASTER HIRING PROCESS Contract Engineering firms can provide flexible assistance to handle spikes in the workload or fill a knowledge gap quickly and effectively. Instead of dedicating your company’s resources to the process of hiring a new employee, a ..read more

How To Leverage Detailing Mode  The release of SOLIDWORKS 2020 brought a new mode for accessing drawings called Detailing Mode. Detailing Model allows users to open massive drawings in seconds regardless of how complex or large the drawing may be and make changes to annotations or dimensions. With SOLIDWORKS 2021 users can now do hole callouts, edit any type of dimension or annotation, or add a detail, break, and crop view. Detailing Mode is the perfect tool to make quick revisions to an already existing drawing or to immediately open a drawing for a quick design review. Using Detailing M ..read more

3D Interconnect and Best Practices  3D Interconnect is a technology from SOLIDWORKS that lets users work with CAD data from different CAD systems without having to use a neutral file export (like IGES). This is great because different CAD files can be dragged and dropped right into a SOLIDWORKS session without any translation needed and all metadata (material, part number, description, etc.) is brought into the session with it. The CAD file also maintains a fully associative link to the original file so if any updates are made to the file a refresh symbol will appear on the CAD file withi ..read more

The updates to SOLIDWORKS 2021 focus on convenience and collaboration. In the previous versions of SOLIDWORKS, the application would consume a lot of CPU memory while working with a complex assembly. With this update brings new performance-oriented features that allow users to bring vast and elaborate assemblies to life in a more enjoyable, faster, and cost-effective manner.  Some small tools have been brought along with performance features to make creating parts a brisk task. While parts are being modeled and brought into assemblies, SOLIDWORKS 2021 has brought a collection of enhanceme ..read more

Typically, prototyping is the phase that comes after an initial design but before manufacturing and production. It is an important step in the process of product development and bringing a design to life. Prototyping is often used in product design and development, proof of concept, testing, validation, and much more. Why you ask? It comes down to the old saying “better safe than sorry”. Prototyping is an excellent way to visualize and feel a theoretical design, usually put together by design engineers or CAD designers. It is almost always, or should be at least, a requirement in the road to b ..read more

Design for Speed – Tips and Tricks!  As a CAD designer speed is very important. You need to be as efficient as possible when working on designs to stay on budget and ahead of deadlines. Now, SolidWorks is a large program and there are a lot of things you need to know and be proficient in to be efficient when designing. First things first, proper design intent is essential. Ensuring that you have thoroughly considered how to create your initial sketch and features can save you significant time, not only when it comes to the original design, but potentially any future changes as well. So, o ..read more

The threading feature in SolidWorks offers you a much easier way to create threaded feature geometry on your parts. Previously you would need to sketch out the profile of your thread and the pitch with a helix. Now adding threads is as simple as a few clicks. This blog will be reviewing the thread feature and show you how to utilize this helpful tool in your designs! Feature Location If you have never used the thread feature it may be quite hard to find. You can easily find it using the search bar under the commands filter by typing in “thread” and selecting the tool. The feature can also be ..read more

When working with large parts or assemblies in SolidWorks, a computer may start to bog down and run very slowly. This usually results in slow load times and laggy operations. One way to help increase the speed of the computer is to turn off shadows in SolidWorks. This is a very quick change, and can help with lag when rotating, or zooming into parts or assemblies.   Turning off shadows is accessed through the View Settings, located in the top middle of the graphics window, as shown below in Figure 1. Figure 1: View Settings Location To turn off shadows, click the View Settings button, c ..read more

SolidWorks has many tools that can be used to increase efficiency while creating parts and assemblies. Mate References is one such tool. Mate References are added to parts and can allow for quicker mates when creating assemblies, which saves time in the long run. The Mate References tool can be found in the Reference Geometry dropdown menu in the Features section, as shown below in Figure 1. Figure 1: Mate References Location Once Mate References is selected, the menu will appear as shown below in Figure 2. Figure 2: Mate References Menu The first option is the reference name, which is a fie ..read more

When working with drawings in SolidWorks, Crop View can be a nice tool when a small area needs to be shown in larger detail. Crop view allows the user to draw a shape and cut away anything outside of it, leaving only the part of the drawing that is inside. The new view can then be scaled to better show details.  The Crop View tool can be found in the View Layout tab, as shown below in Figure 1. Figure 1: Crop View Location To create a Crop View, a closed sketch must be created around the desired area, as shown in Figure 2 below. The sketch has been darkened to show visibility. Figure 2 ..read more