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At times, SOLIDWORKS users will need to customize their drawings to meet company and industry standards. This generally starts with modifying an existing drawing template and sheet format, whether it’s the default templates and sheet formats included with SOLIDWORKS or an existing sheet format used by their company. This allows us to change everything that first appears in the drawing when you create a new one, along with several items you can’t see initially, such as settings or drafting standards.
SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard client can be installed at the same time as SOLIDWORKS. Installation uses the SOLIDWORKS Installation Manager located on the SOLIDWORKS DVD or downloaded from SOLIDWORKS.
Metal 3D printing has streamlined the process, removing the need for tedious, manual brazing. But the very property that makes copper desirable - its high thermal conductivity- adds its own unique challenges, as heat quickly dissipates away from the laser powder bed fusion melt pool, often leading to instability and significant residual stress. BLT (Bright Laser Technologies) addresses these hurdles with its "Full-System Engineering" approach, integrating design, materials, and machinery to produce copper thrust chambers nearly a meter in height.
A common problem in nonlinear static Abaqus analyses is the presence of instabilities leading to non-convergence. Instabilities are often subtle and easily missed, leaving the analyst largely unaware of why the simulation failed and what to correct to get to a converged solution. So, it is perhaps not surprising that Abaqus users often default to running simulations using automatic stabilization associated with the step definition (also known as static stabilization) to troubleshoot problematic models. However, automatic stabilization is not intended to be used as a one-size-fits-all tool to solve instabilities. In fact, when used inappropriately, it can produce unrealistic results that could lead to costly product failures.
In SOLIDWORKS, revision tables are used to track changes to drawing documents. To create one, select the Revision Table button in the Table toolbar or in the Table dropdown in the Annotations tab of the CommandManager, or go to Insert > Tables > Revision Table.
Animation Motion Studies, available in all SOLIDWORKS packages, allow us to create presentation-worthy animations of our models. In this article, we’ll be covering some basic techniques you can use to create animations that rotate and zoom in and out on your model.
The Update References tool in SOLIDWORKS PDM allows you to correct broken references of assemblies and drawings while giving you control over what is being updated, and getting it done in a much easier way compared to your standard slog through suppressed components.
While learning the “picks and clicks” of CAD is a necessary rite of passage, it has often come at the expense of actual engineering education. Every minute spent troubleshooting a broken mate is a minute lost to discussing design intent, manufacturability, or optimization. With the release of SOLIDWORKS 2026, that paradigm is shifting. By integrating meaningful, practical AI tools directly into the interface, the software is moving from a passive drawing tool to an active design partner. For educators across North America, this means a fundamental shift in the classroom: moving the focus from where to click to how to engineer.
As more SOLIDWORKS PDM users continue to make the leap from Windows 10 to Windows 11, our Technical Support Team has noticed a rise in reports of extreme slowness when loading a new File Explorer window.