I do a bit of research on various Solidworks topics, and I wind up watching a few youtube videos. Sometimes I get a good video that explains things well, but usually, its some guy mumbling and his screen is at such high resolution you cant see what he’s doing, and he skips steps and makes mistakes. Maybe he’s more concerned with getting his face out on YouTube than helping people. These guys get tons of views with pretty mediocre content.
Anyway, I decided to fill out my YouTube channel a bit. I started with surfacing last week and this week its basics. Sketch, 3d sketch and simple features. I’m going to try to get through everything.
I’m going to do a different set in SE. I don’t feel very qualified in SE. I do research stuff pretty hard, but it’s not the same as years of actual pounding on the software. Glad you’re enjoying the vids.
Haha I’m 100% guilty of having too high a resolution in my videos. At least I did not have a talking head in the corner… I’ve viewed a few of the free video tutorials that are available via paid course sites and they use 3 sided lofts or boundary surfaces which is pretty poor form when they are charging people. Great that you have the energy to do this!
I’ve been paid to do some videos where they insisted that I use the high resolution even after I showed them the problems with it. It’s frustrating when you’re watching a how-to video and can’t read any of the text or make out the icons.
I would love to see a video (series?) discussing when, where and why to choose synchronous and / or history free over traditional history based modelling.
I would use no hystory models for sheetmetal design, custom made parts, with little standardization, but for their holes position I would prefere to keep at least their sketch associative.
For things like routing and piping with most standard components I would keep as parametric as possible.
For mold design an hybrid system is the best imho. I used NX with that approach back at ver. 7 and 8, but there are also tools like the wave geometry linker that helps you to manage references and avoid links between files falling apart.
I’ve never seen that shortcut bar, have always clicked in the feature manager. So I played with it and couldn’t get it that shortcut bar to appear. Turns out I needed to release the ctrl key after selecting the 2nd point instead of continuing to press it. Or if I continue to press the ctrl key and then right-click the relations shortcut bar will appear.
It’s really interesting to me that there are so many conditions under which certain things either will or won’t happen. The Help just glosses over these things. Sorry I forgot to mention that one. I just do it instinctively, I think. Since the “context menus” have appeared, I’ve really reduced how much I rely on the property manager, although I still look through it for tricks or additional functions I’ve forgotten,.
Yeah, that’s a good one. The first reason to pick synchronous is that you have prismatic parts - no lofts or swoops. NX can get past that, but SE can’t. Another reason would be if you have features like extruded text, also maybe shell features (but not always) and often fillets.
On the flip side, if you have any kind of imported part, that’s a reason to use Synch. Also in-context assemblies. Or changes that don’t match the original “design intent”.
But also remember that you can put ordered features on top of a synchronous model. And you can mix and match ordered and synchronous in an assembly.
Thanks for the input, I’m getting some good ideas for some SE videos. I’m a bit on a roll with SW right now, but I’ll put it aside when I finish “part” topics.
Parametric models in SW gets slow to a ridiculous point and they do not forgive random errors.
performance in component-assy-drawing relations is affected in cascade and drawings are the most impacted. Removing parameters would speed up the drawing views generation by an order of magnitute. let alone drawing response for dimensioning.
My dirty approach would be export a SW native file to parasolid reimport it and make a drawing, but at the current state of SW direct modelling it would be a pain to modify the 3d again, as it will possibly grow exponentially and become too heavy again.
using patterns (especially without geometric patter option on) will almost kill drawings in most cases with grill like parts.
I know what you mean. a 30 min video to find out how to do something that takes 30 seconds.
I had my lap top set up to screen record and even found a way to show the keyboard so you could see every key board short cut hit, to every mouse click with the color dot around the pointer that would change color when left click or right click.
Then do short less than 5 min video to show how to get past one problem show one great tip, and not have a hour long video that is titled with click bait to get you to watch how to possibly solve a problem.
when guys ask I will be sending them your way.
I have being following the videos especially to learn more about Edge. Could you possibly do one on the hole wizzard. I am finding the SE one infuriating to figure out. For example changing hole type and adding more of the same hole. Also in the screenshot below I can’t figure out how to delete the 23.5 dimension. Maybe this should be its oum seperate qusetion topic.
SE has just recently changed how they do patterns. Which version are you using? I think that dimension is held in a sketch. That’s part of the software I’ll have to research a bit before I can do a good video.
Thanks for following the videos. It helps to know there’s someone other than my mother watching these things.
I may have figured it out. Under the pattern there is a sketch. If you edit the profile, you’ll be able to delete that dimension. The sketch for patterning stuff in SE seems extremely hoky.
I have just installed SE 2025 CE. I was not actually using pattern. I would go into the hole wizzard and pick for example M8 c’bore. Then in the sketch placement I would put multiple copies of the hole like one can do in SW, add dimesions and symmetry constraints etc.
Hi Matt, I watched some of your videos this weekend and I was impressed by the quality. Do you mind if I ask which software do you use to record the screen? Which microphone? Also: are those videos scripted? Do you record the voice-over live, before or after the recordings?
I use Camtasia to record and edit them, and a Blue Yeti for the voice. There are some that were recorded on either the stock laptop mic or a gaming headset that I have, but the newer ones are on the Yeti.
The voice is recorded live, not scripted, although it sounds like it is scripted sometimes. I don’t always get it right the first time. There is a fair bit of editing. I’ve done it other ways, where I record the video first, write a script and then voice over it. It’s a lot easier to do the video and audio separately, but it takes more time.
I record the audio and video at the same time then edit the audio and video in Camtasia. I have to delete a lot of stumbles in big chunks and delete the obnoxious pauses in my normal speech in little bits by looking at the sound track. I find that that 99% of time the missing bits of video don’t show. Of course, my in-house videos don’t sound as good as yours.
