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Showing Articles written by Ryan Cole

DraftSight: The Best Choice for 2D CAD

DraftSight May 11, 2021

Even with all of the advanced 3D solid modeling tools available on the market, having access to a 2D CAD tool can help perform tasks your 3D CAD software can't. A question I get asked a lot is, "Can SOLIDWORKS work with my 2D CAD data?" The short answer is yes. The long answer is a little more complicated. 

Virtual Components: Parts That Aren't Parts

SOLIDWORKS Tips & Tricks Nov 11, 2020
Virtual components are fully functional with one exception: you can’t make a drawing from them. To create a drawing of a component, it must be a real part, meaning it needs to have a physical file condition on the network/drive. Virtual components reside in the assembly file itself and don’t physically exist. Other than this, there are no restrictions! Here are a couple of examples in which I have used virtual components.

SOLIDWORKS Composer 2020 What’s New

SOLIDWORKS Composer Nov 18, 2019
If you are like me, the traditional AVI output for Composer animations is nothing but headache after headache. SOLIDWORKS Composer 2020 now supports animation output in MP4 format, so there won’t be a need to find a (free) translator online and convert the AVI down to a reasonable size.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2020 – What’s New

SOLIDWORKS Visualize Nov 15, 2019
Visualize 2019 added support for MDL Materials (Material Definition Language – Nvidia) and PBR (Physics Based Rendering) Appearances. While there were some limitations with their usage in 2019, Visualize 2020 has added more functionality with MDL materials. Users can now tweak the appearance more than was available in the previous version. Hot on the heels of these new appearance types, SOLIDWORKS has added support for the AxF (Appearance Exchange Format) Material!