This message will appear because SOLIDWORKS License Service (Flexnet) cannot resolve the unique computer ID that is generated. It also may have just stopped running. This is a problem when you’re getting a license but it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it’s an easy fix. So, let’s get started.

How to Fix SOLIDWORKS Failing to Identify a Computer Identifier

The first thing you’ll need to do is to navigate to your Windows Services. Click the Microsoft Start button (lower lefthand corner), type “services” and click Services App.

Scroll down to FlexNet Licensing Service and FlexNet Licensing Service 64. You should notice under Status that neither is listed as running. FlexNet Licensing Service and FlexNet Licensing Service 64 are the tools SOLIDWORKS uses to handle all licensing tied to the product. If the services aren’t running, then we can see issues like “SOLIDWORKS failed to obtain a computer identifier”.

Right-click FlexNet Licensing Service and click start.

Do the same for FlexNet Licensing Service 64. Now, both should be running.

At this point, SOLIDWORKS should start without any issues. If you are still receiving errors, be sure to contact technical support so that we can get you sorted out.

I hope you find this helpful. Thanks for reading.

Have a safe and blessed Thanksgiving.

Roger Ruffin
Sr. Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

Individual: For those who will be using SOLIDWORKS Electrical and will not be sharing their electrical data between users.

Network: For those who will be sharing their electrical data between users over a network connection. This installation involves a server and client installation.

I’ve broken up the installation instructions into two parts; one for individual installations or upgrades and another for network installations or upgrades. You just need to find the appropriate section and follow the instructions in that section.

In order to access the installation media, please refer to the first part of our installation guide for SOLIDWORKS 2023.

Note: Prior to any upgrade or changes to existing SOLIDWORKS Electrical software or networks, have all users create an environment archive to ensure that you do not lose your data in the case of a failed upgrade.

Install SOLIDWORKS Electrical for Individuals

There are two scenarios for installing SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023 for a single-user local installation. You can start with a new installation or upgrade, found in section 1a, or add it to an existing installation of SOLIDWORKS. You’ll find those instructions in section 1b. Once you finish either of these sections, continue to section 1c, as all the remaining steps are the same for both.

1a. New Install/Upgrade:

Select the Install on this computer option and click Next.

1b. Adding to an Existing Installation:

Select the Modify your installation option and click Next.

1c. Remaining steps

On the next page, you can add the serial number for SOLIDWORKS Electrical. After you’ve entered your serial number(s), click Next.

The following screen is the Product Selection page. Here, you have the option to install any additional products. If you’re not taken to the Product Selection page and find yourself on the Summary page, you may select the Change link in the Products section to return to the Product Selection page. The below image shows the appropriate settings for an Individual Install with the end user machine being the SQL Server host.

• Note that SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D requires SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD and is only included with purchases of SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D or SOLIDWORKS Electrical Professional. It is not included in SOLIDWORKS Schematic Standard or Professional.

Click Next to get to the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Options menu, or Back to Summary followed by Change in the Electrical Options portion of the Summary page.

On the Electrical Options page, you will specify the desired folder of your Data Location and specify the SQL Server Name. See the image below for the default entries.

A Note About SQL Server and SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023

If you’re using an existing SQL instance, enter your existing login and password. By default, the SQL Server Authentication login password for the “sa” user is blank.

You may wonder if you could use an existing SQL instance that’s shared with another program. We really don’t recommend this option and strongly suggest that SOLIDWORKS Electrical has a dedicated instance of SQL Server.

If you have not set up a SQL Server instance before, you can install a new one as shown in the image below. You can specify the name of the new instance and give it a password below. The password must meet Windows security requirements, which you can find more information on in the “Potential Errors” section at the bottom of this article.

Click Back to Summary or Next to return to the Summary page and click Install Now (or Modify Now if adding to an existing installation of SOLIDWORKS).

Network Server Installation or Upgrade

If you intend to have a collaborative environment for the SOLIDWORKS Electrical software, you can follow the steps below to install or upgrade the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Server components on your server host system. This must be done on the server host system and should not be installed from the client system unless your system is set up as the SQL Server host and sole user.

It is extremely important to upgrade the server components prior to the clients. If you upgrade and connect a client to the server prior to upgrading the server components, you could run into mass data corruption and loss of information.

Prior to moving forward, it is recommended to use SQL Standard rather than SQL Express if you expect to have more than 5 users accessing the server at one time. In addition, the server and client machines will need to be on the same subnet.

• One thing I want to make note of is the version of SQL Server. As of SOLIDWORKS 2021, you cannot use SQL Server 2014. So, if you’re upgrading from 2021 or older, make sure you check your SQL Server version.

Upon starting the installation manager, select the Install on this machine option. On the Product Selection page, your selections should be as shown in the image below.

The reason for including the client install on the server is that it provides the ability to make environment archives from the server machine where your information is stored locally rather than connecting to it over your network.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical Additional Options

You can continue following the steps we provided above for the Individual Install/Upgrade process until you reach the SOLIDWORKS Electrical Options page. You will want to install all features for the server and specify the following:

• Data Location
  • Please work with your IT department to determine a suitable location for the Data Location.
  • You can put this on the C:\ drive of the server or set it elsewhere on another drive local to the server host.
  • You need to make sure this is a shared location for all SOLIDWORKS Electrical users.
• Collaborative Server
  • Name
    • You can leave this as “localhost”
  • Port Number
    • By default this is “26666” but you can reconfigure it as needed for your network firewall
• SQL Server
  • Name (formatted as [Name]\[SQL Instance Name], by default this is “localhost\TEW_SQLEXPRESS”)
  • Password for ‘tew’ user (by default this is “SQLpwd4ew”)

Following the installation, you will also need to set up both inbound and outbound firewall TCP and UDP port rules for ports 1433-1434 and 26666-266##. The later series of ports will start with 26666 (or what port you specified) and increment up to the number of users expected to be on the server at one time. (If you expect to have a max of 5 users, you would set up rules for 26666-26671). When setting any of these rules, we will want to select Allow the connection and have all boxes checked when prompted When does this rule apply.

Network Client Installation or Upgrade

The instructions to upgrade a Network Client are nearly identical to the Individual installation. The main difference is that you can uncheck the Collaborative Server and Data options on the Product Selection page, since these will be provided by the network server.

Once you get to the Summary page, select Change in the Electrical Options section. Fill in each section of this page as follows.

• Data Location: should be formatted as \\[Server IP address]\[Folder specified in server installation]. It is important to use the format referenced above. Using a mapped drive location will cause issues.
• Collaborative Server Name: Server IP address
• Port Number: 26666 is the default
• SQL Server Name: formatted as [Server IP Address]\[SQL Instance Name]

Potential Issues When Installing SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023

Causes

Invalid permissions

• Machine
• SQL

Connection

• Firewalls
• Anti-virus
• Network connection
• Install settings

Password

• Incorrect password
• TEW password length (also seen as 27506)
• You may see this error come up as 27502 (if they have SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional). Or you may see it as 27506 (if there is no SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional but you’ve enabled password restrictions)

Install settings

Causes:

Invalid permissions

• Upgrade from major version
• SQL database owner

Installation settings

• Incorrect options chosen
• Admin image

Causes:

SQL cannot create an instance

• Permissions
• System restart

If you need help with any errors please don’t hesitate to contact us for support.

Curran Kneebone
Support Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

The update is straightforward and doesn’t take long. That said, there are a few things to watch out for.

Before You Start

The first step making sure no users are actively borrowing licenses. If you upgrade the server while someone has a license, that client will run into errors when they try to return the license with the new license manager.

Now, with all borrowed licenses returned, you need to deactivate the license. If you don’t do this, you may have problems re-activating the license even though it is on the same computer.

Select the “Server Administration” tab, then select the “Modify” button.

Next, check the option to “Move your product licenses to a new/upgrade computer”.

If you have more than one serial number, select the “Select All” option.

Once you’ve deactivated the license, you can then proceed to the upgrade.

You can use the same media/download as you would use for the clients, however, you will want to select “Server Products” from the menu. With the license manager being previously installed. It should default to this option. You will get a notice about a pending reboot, but you will see this always by default even if you have rebooted. It’s recommended to reboot before the installation, but it’s not required.

Upgrading a SolidNetwork License Manager

For upgrading a SolidNetWork License manager follow these instructions:

Start the installation manager and select the option to upgrade the license server.

You should not be required to re-enter your serial number since this stored in the registry and does not get removed by default.

Once the installation has been completed, there is still one major step to finish. You are still required to re-activate.

Launch the license manager. It may prompt you to re-activate as seen in the message below. If not, you will need to click on Modify.

Run through the process of activating. Once this is complete, you are good to go!

Installing a New SolidNetwork License Manager

For a NEW installation of the SolidNetWork License Manager follow these instructions:

Fill in your serial number and click next. Check the terms acceptance box and then download and install.

Launch the SNL manager from the Windows Start menu, it will be located under SOLIDWORKS 2023 Tools, SolidNetwork License Manager Server. Then you may see the message below. Go ahead and click yes. If not continue to the Modify button.

Verify the information on the next screen and click next.

Select your serial number(s), verify the information on this last page, click next and you’re done!

John Van Engen
Support Manager West
Computer Aided Technology

CAM Standard & CAM Standard TBM

The installation process is simple with CAM. All you have to do is run the 2023 SOLIDWORKS installation manager and CAM is one of the features you can automatically include by default.

After the installation is complete, open SOLIDWORKS and activate the SOLIDWORK CAM add-in. Make sure you note that you can activate it for either the current session (left check) or to automatically load at startup (right check).

Once you activate the add-in, right-click on the Command Manager, then go to Tabs, and select SOLIDWORKS CAM and SOLIDWORKS CAM TBM to them to the Command Manager.

Current SOLIDWORKS CAM Users

To set up an existing Machine Post and Tech  DB, you can copy the database to C:\ProgramData\SolidWorks\SOLIDWORKS CAM 2023. If you don’t have the database stored in the default location, you can link it from within the Tech DB

Note: You may have the ProgramData folder set to hidden. To show hidden files and folders, open Windows Explorer, select the View tab, and check the box for Hidden Items.

To manage your database(s) and Tech DB, open SOLIDWORKS and go to the SOLIDWORKS CAM tab. Next, click on the Technology Database button.

Once the Technology Database loads, please close SOLIDWORKS.

In the Tech DB, select Settings from the tabs on the left.

• If you have a current database select the Import Database tab and click Browse to link it.
• To manage or add additional databases, select the Manage Database tab.

SOLIDWORKS CAM Professional

The installation process for SOLIDWORKS CAM Professional is similar to SOLIDWORKS CAM. The big difference, however, is that it needs the product serial. If you do not know your serial or would like to purchase SOLIDWORKS CAM Professional, contact your VAR (Computer Aided Technology).

Run the SOLIDWORKS 2023 installation manager (or modify an existing installation) and when prompted for the serial information, expand the SOLIDWORKS CAM item and add the SOLIDWORKS CAM Professional serial number.

Click next through the remaining installation windows to complete the installation of SOLIDWORKS CAM Professional.

We hope this series has helped you successfully install SOLIDWORKS 2023.  Please check back to the CATI Blog as the dedicated support team will continue posting new series of articles every month that go further into the details of many of the SOLIDWORKS tools. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Daily Dose of SolidWorks Support.

Chris Villeneuve
Technical Support Engineer II
Computer Aided Technology, LLC

Related Content

You may also be interested in how to install SOLIDWORKS 2023.

If you have network licenses of SOLIDWORKS, you might need help with upgrading your SolidNetWork License Manager.

There were several great enhancements in SOLIDWORKS CAM 2023, which one is your favorite?

Did you know that SOLIDWORKS is sunsetting the MasterCAM and GibbsCAM add-ins?

If you aren’t a SOLIDWORKS CAM user, you should check out this SOLIDWORKS CAM Overview.

Introducing the HandySCAN 3D Scanner (Silver Elite Series Edition)

Today, I am going to explore the new HandySCAN 3D scanner from the Silver Elite series. This powerful scanner comes packed with proven, patented optic technology that makes it an all-in-one device for scanning parts of all shapes and sizes. You will immediately notice the quick plug-and-play setup time. The moment you hold the scanner, you’ll recognize the well-balanced, ergonomic design, making it easy to operate comfortably. The buttons are thoughtfully placed and it seems just as intuitive as VXelements, Creaform’s proprietary software. This makes it easy to wield without fumbling.

But it isn’t just comfort and ease of use that make the HandySCAN 3D scanner a revolution. By capturing 480,000 measurements a second, this scanner is the fast path to quickly go from a physical part to ready-to-use files.

Additionally, the HandySCAN 3D scanner uses seven blue (grid-formed) lasers. This lets it easily capture what are typically difficult-to-get surfaces.  The triangulation of the reflective targets provides self-positioning. This lets the scanner and the part to move, while the scanner maintains its orientation. The benefit here is that now we can capture details of the part from various angles. Possibly even more notable is the single-laser line that is useful for capturing the small details in hard-to-reach places. Having all this versatility while holding accuracies up to .0012” (.030mm) makes this scanner one of the most useful tools in both Reverse Engineering and Quality Control inspection workflows.

How Do You Get One?

I hope you are excited as I am about getting a professional-grade scanner at a truly accessible price—starting in the low $20K range. Get ready to join over 5,000 and growing users worldwide that are benefiting from this multifaceted tool in the rapidly growing industry 4.0. Please check with your local sales representative to get the best pricing including limited and introductory offers. Let’s Grow Together! Learn more about us at GoEngineer.com

Ryck Hoopes
Applications Engineer, Manufacturing Solutions
Computer Aided Technology

eDrawings Support for More Non-SOLIDWORKS Files

First, the most significant update is to eDrawings’s support for non-SOLIDWORKS file types, which has not changed since 2019. Users will take advantage of updates to supported versions of ACIS, Inventor, CATIA V4, CATIA V5, CATIA V6/3DEXPERIENCE, Creo, JT, NX, Parasolid, Solid Edge, and STEP files.

After all, what good is a file viewer if the only files it can open are from the pre-pandemic era?

Display Model Measurements as Fractions in eDrawings 2023

Second, there may be occasions where you need to display model measurements as fractions. That is now possible with eDrawings 2023.

Simply open the Measure pane and under Units, choose ‘Inches’ or ‘Feet and Inches’ and then select ‘Display in Fractions’. Finish it out by entering the desired denominator for the fraction.

You also have the option to Round to the next highest fraction if the measurement does not have an exact fractional value for the specified denominator. This option will save time and reduce errors in converting measurements to fractions.

Wireframe AND Hidden Lines Visible

The third update for 2023 brings an update to Display Styles. Wireframe is now truly an option, along with Hidden Lines Visible.

In 2022, Hidden Lines Removed was incorrectly labeled “Wireframe”, and that has now been corrected.

Enhanced Language Support for Web-Based eDrawing Files

The fourth and final enhancement to 2023, and specific to eDrawings Professional, is the update to Save As Web HTML. This functionality was introduced in 2019 and is a super-easy way to create an HTML-based version of your eDrawings file.

In 2023, after opening the HTML file, there are multiple options for displaying the user interface in a localized language.

This is great! Sharing our files with users that speak a different language just got easier!

Whether it’s updates to the file types that eDrawings can open, measuring in fractions, updated Display Styles or multiple language options in HTML, eDrawings 2023 provides several enhancements that will ensure accuracy and make you more productive.

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions of SOLIDWORKS 2023. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

Chris Snider
Sr. Director, Software Solutions
Computer Aided Technology

What is Design Innovation Month?

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology. This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes! Best of all, it’s free of charge! Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event.

It’s that exciting time of the year again! This October, we get to show the public what’s new not only SOLIDWORKS 2023 CAD, but also SOLIDWORKS 2023 Simulation! Every year, SOLIDWORKS gives us new enhancements and tools to improve the performance, usability, and more of SOLIDWORKS Simulation. We review all the great customer feedback, and the developers at SOLIDWORKS use that information to improve SOLIDWORKS with each release.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest new enhancements in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023. You can also watch this in video format:

Improved Underconstrained Bodies tool

In previous years, we used the Underconstrained Bodies diagnostic tool to detect any rigid (or free) body modes. Bodies that are not adequately supported by fixtures, connectors, or contact conditions can translate or rotate freely. The problem is that the rigid body movement did not offer a realistic visualization of the whole assembly.

In SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023, the Underconstrained Bodies tool performs a Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) for faster detection of free body modes and a more realistic visualization of unconstrained displacements for the whole assembly. Also, SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional and Premium users can use the Underconstrained Bodies tool to include contact interactions and bolt connectors when detecting rigid body modes of components. Check out Figure 1 below to see this in action.

Fig. 1 Underconstrained Bodies 2023

Penalty Stiffness Control for Contacts

New in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023, the Contact Penalty Stiffness Control tool allows you to set a scale factor of 1.0 to reach an accurate solution for studies with contact interactions in linear static studies. However, you can select a lower scale factor to obtain an approximate solution faster to assess design iterations and the overall behavior of the model. This will trade some contact pressure accuracy to achieve convergence easier, with faster solving times. See Figure 2 below to see a preview of how this looks.

Fig. 2 Contact Penalty Stiffness option

Bonding Between Nonfacing Surfaces

When creating bonded local interactions (contacts sets) on non-facing surfaces in previous years, the program would error out. This prevented you from creating the bonded connection in your preprocessing setup.

Now, in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023, we see great the bonding interaction has been improved by allowing surface-to-surface bonding on faces that are not facing each other and have no projection area between them. This new capability applies to linear static, frequency, buckling, linear dynamic studies, as well as fatigue and design studies associated with linear static studies. See Figure 3 below.

These were just a few of the great enhancements to SolidWorks Simulation 2023. The more advanced Underconstrained Bodies algorithm, the new Penalty Stiffness Control for Contact tool, and Bonding Between Nonfacing Surfaces and more will help you get convergence in your simulation results faster and with better accuracy.

Now go make your products even better with all the new SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2023 enhancements!

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions of SOLIDWORKS 2023. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.” 

Nick Pusateri

Senior Application Engineer Specialist, Simulation

Computer Aided Technology 

What is Design Innovation Month? 

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests 

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology. This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes! Best of all, it’s free of charge! Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event. 

From 2D to 3D in Electrical 2023

In SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023, communication and design are more efficient in both 2D and 3D. You can now define a part’s properties in 2D and have them propagate to the associated 3D model. From there, you can use these properties to complete a table, like a bill of materials. The weight information (which also transfers from 2D to 3D) will override the mass properties. All of the properties for the 3D component are stored in one location defined by the manufacturer’s part. This makes it easier to communicate accurate design data with mechanical teams.

Labels in Your Project Configurations

Electrical project configurations are a great way to employ specific settings, and in 2023 we can now also specify Dynamic Connection Labels. This will allow the electrical team the flexibility to create tables and labels for connectors on the fly, while still using the project configuration settings and company standards.

Multiple SOLIDWORKS Electrical Report Improvements

Reports create the desired project deliverable that we need, and sometimes those are in various formats and orientations. In SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023, when exporting a PDF, we can automatically output the report or page in the correct orientation. This is a big time saver.

The improvements to reports don’t stop there. You can now insert report tables anywhere in a project, and you can also copy and paste reports while maintaining associativity. Altogether, these improvements increase control, eliminate manual update tasks, and expedite the PDF export process.

SOLIDWORKS Electrical now supports a wide variety of formats for images, so you no longer need to convert everything to BMP format. Creating symbols and adding logos or graphics in their native format streamlines the process and maximize efficiency.

These were just a few of the great enhancements in SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2023. The expanded capabilities to manage components and their properties, along with added flexibility to reports and document schematics, plus more, will improve communication, save time, and increase productivity.

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions of SOLIDWORKS 2023. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

David Foster
Sr. Application Engineer, Electrical
Computer Aided Technology

What is Design Innovation Month?

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology. This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes! Best of all, it’s free of charge! Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event.

Assembly Pattern – Configurable Instance to Skip

Creating assembly patterns can save time and maximize proficiency. In previous versions of SOLIDWORKS, multiple configurations paired with multiple pattern features made it difficult to create the different permutations without extra features that feel…. redundant.

Now in SOLIDWORKS 2023 designers have the option to configure the instances to skip in the assembly patterns. Additionally, you can select the options for specifying which configurations are affected by those skipped instances.

Component Replace – Level of Replacement Control

For this roller assembly, we may want to switch the roller to a type with a rubberized wheel. The Replace Component command in 2023 now allows you to replace a single bearing, all the bearings in the top-level assembly, or all instances of that bearing in every level of that complete assembly. A preview window opens to provide feedback, ensuring accuracy when replacing components.

Assembly Mates – Automatic Repair Mates

During the “replace” command a rebuild error occurs. A simple mismatched face ID can derail your productivity. With SOLIDWORKS 2023, you will be excited to see a new “Auto Repair” feature built right into the context toolbar. It’s also found in the right-mouse-click menu of the mate group. The Auto Repair looks for a similar Face, Edge, Vertex, or Reference Geometry and attempts to reattach the missing items. This is a huge time saver for keeping your mates and SOLIDWORKS 2023 assemblies error-free.

BOM Part Numbers – Document Property for Default Part Number

Along with the new features making assembly configurations even more useful, our Bill of Materials has new features as well. In SOLIDWORKS 2023, a new Document property is available for the Default part number to be used in a BOM for a new configuration. You can save this setting in your template, ensuring everyone uses the correct company standard part number every time.

Assembly Features

We often need to provide access to hardware by cutting several components. An assembly cut is perfect in this situation. Even better, in 2023, we have all the standard end conditions available to us – the same as in part modeling mode.

With the feature scope modified we will add this cut to the downstream parts by using the “Propagate feature to parts”. New in SOLIDWORKS 2023, the feature scope automatically removes Toolbox components. This makes sure you don’t add unwanted features to off-the-shelf fasteners.

Optimized Resolved Mode

I’ve always suggested using lightweight mode as part of achieving maximum performance for your daily use of SOLIDWORKS. But in many cases, this requires switching between lightweight and resolved modes via context toolbars or right-mouse clicks.

In SOLIDWORKS 2023, you now have the new system option for “optimize resolved mode automatically”. This improves performance by selectively using lightweight technology when you load components in resolved mode. SOLIDWORKS hides the options for lightweight and resolved modes as the components load as resolved. Lightweight states also don’t appear in the feature tree. This allows you to focus on design and maximize your performance, while leveraging this amazing feature in 2023.

STEP Files – Save as Multiple Files

Sending very large STEP files to customers and vendors can sometimes lead to project delays due to download issues with sizable files. Based on your enhancement requests, new in SOLIDWORKS 2023, a step file export option has been added to saved assemblies as multiple files. With this enabled, SOLIDWORKS saves STEP files for the top level, sub-assembly, and individual parts. This reduces the number of file download timeouts and project delays.

With more flexible and powerful assembly features, automatic mate repair, and optimized resolved mode, SOLIDWORKS 2023 is looking up to be an amazing release for assembly designers when it comes to performance, functionality, and workflow.

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions of SOLIDWORKS 2023. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

Bob McGaughey
Sr. Application Engineer, Strategic Solutions
Computer Aided Technology

What is Design Innovation Month?

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology. This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes! Best of all, it’s free of charge! Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event.

This year, SOLIDWORKS added the ability to use sensors with sheet metal properties, a new symmetric thickness option for base flanges, and gauge values in the Cut-List Properties.

If you’d prefer to learn what’s new in video format, we have that too:

Sensors

Looking at the Hydraulic Hose Guard in the image above, we see the new Sensor Type “Sheet Metal Bounding Box Properties” in the feature tree. The sensor sends a warning if the flat pattern of the sheet metal part exceeds the limits specified for the bounding box.

We can set a limit on the length, width, overall area, or blank area (i.e., the overall area minus any cutouts). In this case, we have our width limit set to send a warning for any value greater than 9”.

Changing the width of the sheet metal part to 10” produces a warning from the sensor. Reducing the dimension to 8”, which is below our threshold of 9”, the warning goes away. This new Sensor Type is a great way for us to stay within design constraints before anything makes its way to manufacturing.

An important point to note: These sensors rely on the cut list. Therefore, we really need to ensure the values are current. To do this, right-click the Cut List in the FeatureManager and activate the “Create Cut Lists Automatically” and “Update Automatically” settings.

Symmetric Thickness

Let’s look at our next enhancement. Previously, SOLIDWORKS Sheet Metal only let us put the thickness of a base flange on the inside or outside of the sketch entities.

In this example, we have the same value for the inside and outside radii of the sketch. When the actual thickness of the part is accounted for, the radii for the inside and outside corners are different. In this instance, we measure 1.29” and 1.5”.

This is a problem for manufacturing since it requires additional machine setup. With our new “Symmetric” option in 2023, we can eliminate this issue. In this case, we’re adding half the thickness inside the sketch, and adding half outside the sketch. Both the inside and outside corners now have the same bend radius of 1.4”. This is a great way to reduce setup time.

Gauge Values

Last on our list! SOLIDWORKS now includes the gauge value in Cut List Properties. Gone are the days of creating global variables or equations in order to include the gauge value in your drawing.

This value can be linked in an annotation like other properties, and it will display alongside the other Cut List Properties in the drawing. To generate this callout, simply right-click your Flat Pattern view and select “Cut List Properties” from the Annotations flyout. We see the gauge printed at the bottom of the list. Our friends in manufacturing are going to love this new enhancement.

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With these updates, you’re sure to have an easier time designing, documenting, and managing your sheet metal designs in SOLIDWORKS 2023. Enjoy!

I hope this part of the What’s New series gives you a better understanding of the new features and functions of SOLIDWORKS 2023. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the CATI Application Engineers will continue to break down many of the new items in SOLIDWORKS 2023. All these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

James Reeher
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

What is Design Innovation Month?

DESIGN INNOVATION MONTH 2022 – Live Events, Webinars, Virtual Showroom, Contests

Design Innovation Month is CATI’s “What’s New in 2023” event for SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE, and 3D Printing & 3D Scanning technology. This year we’re going back to the future to bring you in-person events, live and on-demand webinars, demonstrations, in-depth blog posts, and prizes! Best of all, it’s free of charge! Check the DI Month Hub for all the details and to sign up for your nearest live event.