If you have assemblies to work from you can build a bill of materials with columns related to part name, file name, and directory. Then you will know which ones are duplicated. It is a tedious problem. Couple of jobs back they used text names to identify files but dumped projects into folders...
Parallel will work but if things are slightly out of whack, perpendicular is more tolerant of misalignment.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
The models from the company formerly known as AMP are good. Burndy also has good cad models. Some have migrated over to 3DContent central. The AMP/TYCO models are by part number, so there is no configurable part for them.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro...
3D pdf is a nice option, but memory intensive. We share with outside resources using efiles mostly. You can make featureless bodies and assemblies if you want to hide the details. (tools>defeature)
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
Duk, the challenge with mates is to not overly restrict the parts. Try to use parallel instead of coincident and perpendicular for planes whenever possible.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
I was able to create a layer with color to get the border box to be colored and have the text be some other color, but could not get black text. I found no way to fill the box with color.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
You can create a custom material with the required density then use that as the material selection for your hose. This would not require the routing module.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
Rick Hendrick might do it that way, but I doubt you'll find a real CAD VAR selling different brands.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
Jack, that is not weird at all. As The Tick hinted, a printer on a network does not identify the same way to different work stations. The simple way is to compose the macro on your colleague's PC and run it from there. Otherwise, you'll have to learn the programming language to write code to...
We just back up to a hard drive and exchange it off site periodically.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
I was never satisfied with laser images from solidworks. We would make a dxf and open it on corel works, then print to the laser from there. I can now do a pdf directly from a solidworks drawing and work with that. It is important to select a single line font.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW...
Solidworks can see the name of the computers the software has been activated on and so if your company decides to kick you off they can.
"how do I know? I just do."
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2011 SP 4.0
HP Pavillion Elite HPE
W7 Pro, Nvidia Quaddro FX580
Just a reminder, you probably want to make these changes to line up with your shop practices, right? Sometimes when you do this you are getting away from drafting standards. Just saying . . . I always got questions about the funny symbols in the hole countersink etc., so I've changed mine too...
Lots of good advice here. I've been through this several times, usually as the only SW CAD operator.
First step is to create a backup of everything before you move forward.
Several of the work methods suggested will get you a stable model eventually.
Good luck.
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Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW...
