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File vault backups should be part of the daily management of SOLIDWORKS PDM – for both Professional and Standard environments. Without regular and complete backups, you could be left with major data loss in the event of a failure or security breach. The entire purpose of PDM is to house your intellectual property, and for many of our customers, their IP is a foundational component of their entire business. Losing that could be disastrous, and we’re hoping to help you avoid that outcome by making sure your environment is set up properly before anything comes up.
Onshape vs. SOLIDWORKS is perhaps the most top-of-mind 3D CAD rivalry at the moment. Onshape is the nimble, cloud-based newcomer, and SOLIDWORKS is the world-leading champion of the last couple of decades. Onshape makes an undeniable splash – it’s easy to sign up and get started – but your needs on day 1 aren’t the same as on day 90 or day 365. They aren’t the same as every other designer, or the analysis department, or manufacturing, or any of the other contributors that work with your software ecosystem.
The nature of our current technological landscape is such that when it comes to server crashes, outages, and security breaches – it’s a matter of “when” it happens, and not “if” anymore. This makes it all the more important that you and your team understand how to recover your SOLIDWORKS PDM environment from backups if something goes wrong.
SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard is a great data management tool included with SOLIDWORKS Professional and SOLIDWORKS Premium. However, it is built on an SQL Express database, which unfortunately means there are no automated maintenance plans in SQL Server Management Studio. This makes automating the SQL backup procedure more difficult, but it’s absolutely still possible, and you even have a few different options to suit your needs.
If you’re reading this article, you are either thinking of buying SOLIDWORKS Electrical or you are an existing user and experiencing issues. This could either be SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematics, the standalone program, or the SOLIDWORKS Electrical 3D add-in for the SOLIDWORKS CAD software.
SQL Maintenance plans create a workflow of the tasks required to make sure that your database is optimized, regularly backed up, and free of inconsistencies. The Maintenance Plan Wizard comes with prebuilt core plans, but manually creating plans gives more flexibility in execution. They can only be used with SQL Standard or higher, and so are only compatible with SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional.
Often, engineers need to include their company’s logo or another image in part files. However, this can be difficult if you only have vector images of your logo. Currently, SOLIDWORKS is unable to directly import .svg, .eps, and other vector image files as sketches or use them as sketch pictures or decals. An easy workaround to this is to use a third-party vector editing software to convert the vector image to a .dxf file, which SOLIDWORKS can import as sketch entities.
One of the most useful features in SOLIDWORKS is the ability to use Microsoft Excel to build various tables. However, an update began producing an error in SOLIDWORKS that left many users unable to open their Excel design tables. Some users could open and edit the table inside SOLIDWORKS, but trying to launch Excel in a new window would produce the error that reads: Failed to connect. Link may be broken.
Have you ever wanted to create a custom material in SOLIDWORKS Simulation that has your own imported S-N curve data for a fatigue study? This tutorial explains how.