CAD Forum

josh

Shoot... Wish I had known about this a while back. I basically rolled my own version, which was a bit of a pain in the butt. Thanks for the info!

josh

Only if the physics problem was multiple choice and included an answer that accounted for relativity that was marked wrong. If you're going to be pedantic, I'll pedant right back at you. It would be like answering "none of the above" when an answer is present that is correct according to ...

josh

There are times to be absolutely precise and times to be pedantic. For purposes of posturing and pedantry, you are correct. For the purposes of a "basic" assessment of SW knowledge and skill, the "construction line" answer is best. Granted, it does assume that the sketch was not ...

josh

What kind of hidden constraint can make those lines fully defined but not collinear? I suppose "fixed"?

josh

The IFC file is like a grocery sack. You can put a lot of different stuff in that sack. Opening the IFC file in SolidWorks is like opening the grocery sack in your kitchen. If that sack is full of Ramen noodles, no matter how you try to cook them up you ain't getting a T-bone steak. Whoever is expor...

josh

What release are you running? I’m running 2024sp2, and this is what I get as soon as I activate the 3-point rectangle:

josh

Nothing has changed that I’m aware of. If Tekla is not exporting useful data, there’s still nothing SW can do about it. The issue is with Tekla, not SW. As I mentioned previously, I have exported SW files to IFC and then re-imported back to SW. They come in as solids. There appear to be options for ...

josh

It's difficult to control the vertical alignment/centering of sketch text because when the text is attached to a line it's always attached at the base of the first line. Additionally, I can't find a way to specify the line spacing of multiple lines in the UI (please let me know if I missed it!). The...

josh

You actually want them to print as one combined piece, right? Unless you have a way to combine in the slicer/post-processor, the only way is per zxys001's suggestion - Save assembly as part, then use Combine feature or some small extrude features to combine all the bodies into a single one before sa...

josh

I don't use standalone EXEs, but I'm always up to learn something - Have you ever used CommandInProgress? I wonder if setting that to True before Display3-ing all of the bodies would suspend the graphics regen like it does for VBA macros? Might improve performance for your code in other areas too. h...

josh

It seems like putting SW back and forth between modeling operations and display operations takes extra time. You may want to try creating all the bodies, then displaying them all at once. To test this, I wrote some code to generate 3000 surface body spheres of diameters from 0 to 10 in a cube space ...

josh

How about uploading a copy for us to look at? It's hard to say much of anything completely blind. But in general, if you start with a plain rectangular prism and build everything off that, it'll be easier.

josh

Again... They do not exist "in" anything. They exist in the aether. The void. The body's entities do have absolute coordinates, or they couldn't exist at all. Applying a transform to this before displaying will move the body, of course. "Display" doesn't even make the body exist ...

josh

I don't think it exists "in" anything. I think the Display3 wording may be a bit imprecise. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it should say "where you want to display this temporary body", not "where this temporary body exists". That's why displaying the body in the as...

josh

Yes, you're on track. You need to get each type of thing specifically as you've found.

josh

Never mind... I see now you're using a baseline angular.

josh

What am I missing? I sketched these two lines, hit "Smart Dimension", selected both and added this dim. Is this not what you're looking for? You can change which angle it does by moving your mouse around before clicking to place the dim.

: image.png (7.31 KiB) Viewed 392 times

josh

I don't think there's a way to change it after creation. Delete and create again.

josh

Model Dased Befinition?

josh

One function of the macro I posted at https://www.cadforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=2672 is getting all notes on all sheets of a drawing. Some of that might be helpful to you.

josh

SW electrical is really a different program that doesn't have much to do with SW... I know a number of sources for SW API support, but not for SW Electrical. There is a subforum on here for SWE but it doesn't look super busy. Sorry!

josh

Is this for SolidWorks Electrical?

josh

Are you trying to figure out the best way to create the model, or just how to make the bend table on the drawing?

josh

Sorry, I can't quite tell... Are you trying to figure out the best way to create the model, or how to make the bend table on the drawing? Do you need LRA or just XYZ?

josh

I'm guessing maybe you already found this code by handleman (guess who that is)...

https://www.eng-tips.com/threads/note-w ... es.155117/

josh

charlesculp wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2024 10:28 am I updated my avatar for you.

Ya still look way too young... :-D I'd card you.

josh

I hope that's an old pic you're using there for your profile... I've considered you somewhat of a colleauge for almost as many years as you look old in that pic.

josh

You mean AutoCAD DWG file? Check AutoDesk section of the forum?

josh

I like your list. Very Useful. Most things follow our own practices. I don't quite agree with item k, which says to avoid sketch arrays and use array features. I think sketch arrays are pretty handy and powerful, especially when you use sketch constraints to control them instead of using numbers in...

josh

for i in range(numberOfLines): lineFormat = Annot.GetTextFormat(i) # Apply any changes you need here Annot.ISetTextFormat(i, True, newFormat) The argument for [Get/Set]TextFormat does not refer to the line. It refers to the piece of text. A multi-line note still only has one piece of text. From the...

josh

Controlling formatting for individual portions of a note is done using SWML. Editing the note formatting using the UI or API calls are really just a way to read and write this SWML. You can use my NoteBrowser macro to read and edit the content of notes and see what the SWML is for certain formats, a...

josh

It was something the macro assigned. Notes have a "name" property that you can modify using the API. All of the notes in the group were created by the macro, so (if recall correctly) they were all named with a format sort of like [common prefix for all notes created by the macro][designato...

josh

Repair the position.... My macro made multiple different notes and grouped them together, calculating their position relative to the "main" note. The groups mostly worked OK, but certain things like changing the drawing scale would completely screw up the relative positions, and the only w...

josh

Yes, grouping is rather broken. I wrote a macro for a customer that wanted some special grouped notes... I had to write a "fix all" routine that would go find all the groups and fix their position when they got out of whack.

josh

So I couldn't stop myself... I made a couple tweaks and added a userform.
Sketch text position is specified as the center of the text, so this code calculates that center.
Solid fill is possible by creating triangular sections of boundary hatch.

josh

This came to my mind today due to a post on the main SW forum... Here's a little companion macro to force SW to re-read GTOL.SYM so you can see changes you're making easier. Sub main() Dim sCurrent As String Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks Set swApp = Application.SldWorks sCurrent = swApp.GetUserPref...

josh

I've most often seen this when there's a dialog box open somewhere off-screen mid-command. Does "esc" or "enter" or anything get you back? Can you unplug a monitor or two to force things onto one screen?

josh

GetSpecificAnnotation does not select the balloon. It only gets it. You have to select it before using EditBalloonProperties2.

josh

I don’t see any reason this is not modelable in SW, using a number of different methods. Which methodology to use depends on what you intend to use the model for and how, and what your manufacturing parameters are. Do you need flat patterns for each plate piece? Does it need to be modeled as a singl...

josh

Posted this on the SW forum as well... Maybe this will get the ball rolling... It's theoretically all parametric, although in practice SW balks at creating the sweeps due to geometric condition. I was only able to get it to work with 1mm diameter wires. Of course, the base and the rim still need to ...

josh

Is there a resource/library available to access this type of string callout to understand how to callout similar things? There’s not really any documentation I’m aware of… You kind of just have to play around. That's what I did to create this. I’ve attached my NoteBrowser macro that will show you t...

josh

Top one is a real Datum Target.
Bottom one is created using the SWML string:
<border type=7 size=0 padding=0><STACK divider=no><MOD-DIAM>1.25<OVER>A1</STACK></border>

josh

It’s not possible to hide an internal 3D sketch plane. The plane is some sort of sketch entity, not an actual reference plane object/feature. Because it’s a sketch entity, you cannot individually hide it. This is the same as any other sketch entity (line, arc, etc). No type of sketch entity can be h...

josh

If you are actually confused, you can educate yourself. In engineering school I was taught to use both lbm and slugs for calculations involving mass. Both have official definitions that are based on the SI kg. It’s not that complicated. If you're just trying to be funny or pedantic, it's falling a b...

josh

You can't put zero either, unfortunately. Well, I mean, you can, but if you do it will ignore it and just put the actual count. You can put 0.000001, and the BOM will show up as 1e-6... I haven't found a way to make it round to zero. :-D

josh

Our VPN performance is about the same. Any sort of serious SW files is just a lot of data going over the pipe, probably getting encrypted/decrypted etc.

josh

Posting same thing as I posted over in the SW forum, just for future here. Is the folder already listed in the Material Databases category of Tools>options>File Locations? You can't manually add a material from a DB that's not already in one of the locations listed there, so I imagine it's the same ...

josh

Ouch! Crashed drive is no fun! Hope you didn't lose too much other stuff!

josh

In case you ever wonder who did something in this particular SolidWorks file, I present the "History" macro. It will output to Excel the feature properties of each feature in the tree. Name, username of creator, date created, and date last modified. Feature properties exist for all file ty...

josh

Ugh. It has to do with toolbar settings. The available functions are DIFFERENT depending on this setting: image.png When this setting is checked, right-clicking on breadcrumbs gets you this: image.png When this setting is NOT checked, all you get is this: image.png Notice that the Open icons are mis...

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