Once a parting line has been selected for a part the next step is to create a parting surface. Luckily this step is very easy if don’t in the correct order (ie. if the parting line has been created). Click the parting surfaces tool and the feature manager will pop up and the parting line

The parting line of a molded component is the intersection of the part and 2 mold components. Typically this refers to the line where the two sides of the mold meet. On many parts this feature can be visible to the naked eye but in good part design attempts are made to hide the line

Starting my Mold Tools design review it seems just heading down the list of tools is the best route, so we’re starting with the analysis tools. When designing for molding one of the first things that should be considered is how the part will be drafted, so it makes sense draft analysis is at the

First thing is first when working with weldments, creating the structural profile. Essentially weldments are bars, pipes, or lengths of items that maintain a standard profile and attach to each other (often via welds). The software comes with a few standards but the exam, and my needs, require making your own. So how are weldment

Get a free membership and access SOLIDWORKS tutorials & online training today. Recently the team at Solidworks rolled out another certification test. It popped up on their main blog and the personal site of one of the guys on the certification team, Mike Puckett. This new test covers the weldments features. This looks exciting and

Just looking at what is next on the list to study for. I’ve got a few side projects I plan to work on but there are lingering vouchers for the Mold Tools and Surfacing tests and figured I may as well study for them with what time I do have. Having worked for an injection

Tutorials of creating random sheet metal parts is fun and all but sometimes it’s nice to practice modeling something else. Water Filtration systems are fine, but what I am designing professionally is limited in feature scope. As I built out a library work is becoming more and more a drag and drop routine, which is

Whoa, it’s the last feature of Sheet Metal. Things here are pretty basic, select the feature in the tree or unsuppress it to get the flat pattern of the part. All of the flatten feature options are spelled out nicely in the Help Files, although none of them should effect the results for the exam.

The fold and unfold commands are unique from the flatten command in that they are time dependent. The Flatten feature appears at the end of the tree and can be suppressed and unsuppressed to view the flat pattern, but the fold and unfold features can appear anywhere in the tree. As with other Solidworks features