SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News – December 2014

Welcome to this new edition of the SOLIDWORKS Support Monthly News, coauthored by members of the SOLIDWORKS Technical Support teams worldwide.

It’s almost time to vote!

Over the past few weeks, many of you have proposed great ideas of enhancements for the SOLIDWORKS World Top Ten List.

Checking the numbers as I’m writing this, I can see a total of 707 ideas! Wow! But aside from the ever-popular Parts/Features/Surfacing category (with almost 150 ideas) some categories like CircuitWorks, Costing, Electrical, Routing, etc. could benefit from YOUR fresh ideas! Not to mention Simulation.

So rush to submit them before December 12, 2014.

Then, it will be time to vote and there should be plenty to choose from.

The voting rules are:

  1. Any user with an active SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal login can vote. If you have only one seat of SOLIDWORKs but more than one registered user, all can vote
  2. Go to this forum and log in to vote
  3. You can vote for as many ideas as you want (not just those you proposed) – no limit
  4. You can vote an idea up (+1) or down (-1)
  5. You can only vote between December 15, 2014 and January 23, 2015

The SOLIDWORKS World Top Ten List is YOUR wish list. Make it what you want it to be. More than 90% of the enhancements in SOLIDWORKS are directly requested by customers. This is your chance to have your voice heard. You are likely to see your ideas or some you voted for in a future release of SOLIDWORKS!

Whether or not you’re attending SOLIDWORKS World 2015 in Phoenix, we look forward to seeing your ideas and hope to see you there.

 

Reminder:
December 12, 2014: end for new idea submissions.
December 15, 2014: voting on all ideas begins.
January 23, 2015: voting ends.
SWW 2015 banner

Shells in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2015: Part 1 (Basics)

Let’s talk about shells in SOLIDWORKS Simulation. In this multi-part overview, you will be given a tour of this functionality as implemented in SOLIDWORKs Simulation 2015. Going gently from basic to more subtle considerations, its reading is bound to refresh your memory if not teach you new things.

Tech Tips for Enterprise PDM Add-in for SOLIDWORKS

I selected for today 3 tech tips that include recent popular Knowledge Base solutions and some product relative new features.

1. Boost the performance for environments with very high latency

In few words Enterprise PDM Add-in for SOLIDWORKS provides source control and workflow tools within SOLIDWORKS product; this means SOLIDWORKS session will interact through the add-in with a database server to retrieve or update version information such as change state status or variables values.
For most of us this database traffic will have a negligible cost; however, there are some scenarios where for example SOLIDWORKS client is not responsive enough because is connecting to a vault over a very slow WAN or in a replicated high latency environment
In this particular case we can use a new solution that have been introduced with Enterprise PDM 2014 SP3 to disable the menu calls in order to not interfere with the modelling. By removing the extra calls to show menu options, there should be no database traffic overhead slowing down SOLIDWORKS. For details on how to enable/disable this behaviour see Knowledge Base solution S-066229.

If you are not using Enterprise PDM 2014 SP3 or newer you will not be able to use this “silver bullet” solution, but you can still reduce the database traffic by:

  • disabling “Automatically update the tree in the extra pane” settings from SOLIDWORKS>Enterprise PDM >Options>Server tab page:

 

automatic

  • removing the vault variable type columns from SOLIDWORKS>Enterprise PDM> Options> View Setting tab page. You will need to select the vault variable from “Information to Display list” and untick the checkboxes shown below. You should be aware that once you apply this change the columns will not be shown any more in add-in task pane:

SW EPDM settings

2. Distribute same settings over multiple workstations

For multiple users environments we may require to impose the same set of Enterprise PDM add-in for SOLIDWORKS settings for all workstations. This could be done for the case just presented or for example if we need to enforce to all users to have same settings for add-in task pane. Most of the options defined in the Enterprise PDM SOLIDWORKS add-in are stored in the registry for each Windows user profile. This means we can simply distribute same settings to multiple clients by exporting those keys to a registry file and import it on the other clients. To find out all the settings correspondent registry key values check Knowledge Base solution S-055979. Do note that there is a small exception for “Vault settings” that are stored in the database and not in the registry. However, those settings apply to everyone and can only be modified when logged in to the vault as “Admin”.

3. Child Quick Information column update

Another useful quick tip is that starting with Enterprise PDM 2014, Child Quick Information column will show warnings icons at the top assembly level for all lower level files. Previously, the icons only appeared up one level. Users needed to completely expand an assembly with more than two levels to view the status of lower level files.

SOLIDWORKS 2013

2013

SOLIDWORKS 2014

2014

Service Pack News

Service Pack 1.0 of version 2015 has been released. It fixes many issues and increases performance, but it also adds some usability improvements. They will improve your experience working with SolidWorks. Here is a short list of such enhancements:

SolidWorks Simulation

  • SPR 595316: PSD (Power Spectral Density) Acceleration Unit g^2/Hz is now available for acceleration PSD plot in Random Vibration dynamic studies.
  • SPR 633302: It is now possible to define a Pin Connector between circular edges of shells in a dynamic study
  • SPR 828936: In linear Dynamic stress plots, the Advanced options are now available to select a reference geometry/coordinate system.
  • SPR 826607 – It is now possible to import load case combinations from excel (in addition to primary load cases ).

Enterprise PDM

  • SPR 666888 It is now possible to use SOLIDWORKS open dialog quick filters with integrated search from SOLDIWORKS Enterprise PDM vault view.

To get the full list of fixed SPRs in any service pack of version, log in the Customer Portal and click on Fixed SPR list in My Support:
Fixed SPRs list

Noteworthy Solutions from the SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base

icon - SW Why does the following error show when installing SOLIDWORKS®, even when logged in with full admin rights: “Installation Manager encountered an error creating a registry key: . “?
This error may indicate that the PC has been affected by a malware virus which is restricting the permissions of the registry keys during the installation of SOLIDWORKS®.
Please consider running an anti-malware program to remove any existing malware from the PC before attempting to install SOLIDWORKS® again.
From Solution Id: S-067435

icon - SW Are there any issues running SOLIDWORKS with video cards and monitors that support 4K resolution?
There have been some reported issues with the user interface SOLIDWORKS 2014 and 2015 when the text scaling is greater than 150% or when running a resolution that is approaching the 4K resolution of 3840 X 2160. In the reported cases, most users where running a screen resolution of 3800 x 1800.
If your screen/video card is running close to the 4K resolution and you are experiencing SOLIDWORKS user interface issues, then lower your resolution in half or reduce the text scaling below 150%.
From Solution Id: S-067107

Icon - EPDM How do you manually install the SOLIDWORKS® Enterprise PDM 2015 Microsoft® Office Integration (add-in)?
Enterprise PDM 2015 includes a Microsoft Office add-in for Excel, Word and PowerPoint that allows you to perform vault operations on documents opened in the Office application.
Normally you would select the Office add-in (Microsoft Office Integration) option during the client installation if Office is detected on the system.
If for some reason you were not able to select the option via the install wizard, you should be able to manually install the Office add-in as described in the PDF attached to Solution Id: S-067213.

Icon - EPDM When upgrading to SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM 2015, how do I specify which SolidNetworkLicense (SNL) server my upgraded clients will use when connecting to the vault?
Starting with Enterprise PDM 2015, clients accessing a file vault will now require checking out a Enterprise PDM license hosted on a SolidNetworkLicense (SNL) server. The procedure to follow is available in Solution Id: S-067084.

Icon - EPDM How is an upgrade (update) performed on a SOLIDWORKS® Enterprise PDM test file vault created in 2015 Beta or PR1 to 2015 SP0 format?
In order to use an Enterprise PDM 2015 file vault created in 2015 Beta or PR1, the SQL stored procedures in the vault database must be updated to 2015 SP0 format. If the vault database is not updated, logging in to the file vault from a 2015 SP0 client will fail with the following warning: Could not log in to the database “vaultdb” on server “servername” or Cause: The program and the file vault are of incompatible versions”. See details in the zip file attached to Solution Id: S-067214.

 

icon - Simulation Starting in the 2015 version, why is COSMOSM® (GeoSTAR) not installed by the Installation Manager even when a valid SOLIDWORKS® Simulation Premium serial number is provided?
As of the SOLIDWORKS 2015 release, COSMOSM (GeoSTAR) is available only via download from the SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal Downloads and Updates page. From Solution Id: S-067130

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That’s it for this month. Thanks for reading this edition of SOLIDWORKS Support News.

Originally posted by Julien Boissat in the SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog

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