You may already know that you can have Workgroup PDM (WPDM) automatically create a PDF file when you check in your drawings.  But in case you don’t, there is an option in the SolidWorks Workgroup PDM VaultAdmin tool that will turn this feature on:

I had one of our users contact me recently inquiring if there was an easy way to pull the automatically generated PDF’s created when a drawing is checked into Workgroup PDM.  I knew of no way off the top of my head, but put the word …

SolidWorks 2010 has many improvements and new features that can help engineers and designers create and documents their designs more efficiently.  As is often the case in life, it’s the small things that matter, and small, simple improvements can make a big difference when designing or detailing a design.
SolidWorks seemed to have spent more time this go-around on polishing rough edges and speeding things up.  The themes for this release were user experience, reliability, and performance.
Below I have listed just a few of my favorite improvements in SolidWorks 2010 …

If you haven’t noticed, people are different.  They have different tastes in clothing, food, and music.  You say tomato, I say ‘mater.
So it follows that designers will have different modeling methodologies.  Sometimes, even circumstances or desired design intent dictate how you model something.
Take for instance this simple part with an o-ring groove in it:

I had a new SolidWorks user approach me a while back with the question, “How do I create something like this?”
I responded by showing them several different methods to achieve the same result.
One approach would be to …