Can you Customize your CAD Tool?

Not all CAD tools allow you to customize your design environment. Most tools are developed one way, without any flexibility or personalization options. This forces the user to use the default location of all commands and interfaces within that tool. What if you wanted to make the User Interface your own? Don’t you want to improve your productivity?

Read more at the original source: http://www.cadmicro.com/customize-cad-tools/

Contact Us:

CAD MicroSolutions

65 International Blvd, Suite 103,

Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9

Email: info@cadmicro.com

4 Reasons Why The SolidWorks PCB Connector will Revolutionize your ECAD/MCAD Collaboration

With today’s booming IOT (Internet of Things) and consumer electronics industry, multidisciplinary teams of engineers often have to work together to develop products. Speaking purely from a hardware perspective, mechanical designers and electrical designers use MCAD and ECAD software to develop the physical constraints of the project, and they often rely on each other. As an example of this collaboration, mechanical designers will often ask the electrical designers of the board shape they desire, or perhaps the electrical designers will require the hole locations from their mechanical counterparts. In this article we discuss how the SolidWorks PCB Connector can revolutionize the collaboration between ECAD PCB tools (SolidWorks PCB and Altium) and SolidWorks.

Complete CAD Freedom

It’s quite apparent that PCB CAD software are usually programmed primarily with PCB and electrical design freedom in mind. CAD software such as Altium and SolidWorks PCB are excellent in their realm of PCB design, but when it comes to specifying mechanical constraints, using these software’s alone can be a daunting task. This is where the SolidWorks PCB Connector comes into play; it allows Altium or SolidWorks PCB users to collaborate with mechanical designers through SolidWorks, and allows for the passing of CAD data between these two environments.

Specifying board shapes for example, especially complex shapes with multiple curves or hard to measure entities, can take a lot of time and effort in PCB software, but with the collaboration tool, SolidWorks is able to easily achieve this task in no time. Furthermore, in cases where the PCB is housed such as the case with consumer electronics, it can be quite simple for the mechanical designer to specify the board shape based on the model of the enclosure.

Continue Reading at Original Source.

Contact Us:

CAD MicroSolutions

65 International Blvd, Suite 103,

Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9

Email: info@cadmicro.com

Can you Benefit from Using Classes?

In Altium Designer, we can assign specific class types to our nets or components in our project. Classes are a logical collection of a design object such as nets, components or polygons. This is typically done to allow easy creation of a targeted design rule.

View the original source: http://www.cadmicro.com/can-benefit-using-classes/

Contact Us:
CAD MicroSolutions 
65 International Blvd, Suite 103,
Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9
Email: info@cadmicro.com

SOLIDWORKS PCB – Shortcuts you NEED to know

Sometimes you come across tools that unfortunately skipped out on an intuitive User Interface or easy to use commands, which could have been easily implemented to exponentially increase productivity. SOLIDWORKS PCB is not one of those tools.

On top of it’s Unified Platform, easy to use UI and automated output generation, SOLIDWORKS PCB also includes a clean shortcut panel that includes great shortcuts available across the platform. While this list is extensive, there are a few you should be leveraging that are not listed.

Place Via while routing:

While routing, press the “+” or “-” key to drop a via. The via is now on your cursor, ready to be placed on the next layer to continue routing. If you do not have a numeric pad, use the “2” key, followed by the “L” key to toggle the next layer.

Continue Reading at Original Source: http://www.cadmicro.com/solidworks-pcb-shortcuts-need-to-know/

Contact Us:
CAD MicroSolutions
65 International Blvd, Suite 103,
Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9
Website: http://www.cadmicro.com/
Email: info@cadmicro.com

5 Steps to Activate your License of MySolidWorks Professional

Now that you have a serial key for MySolidWorks Professional, you may be asking yourself ‘how do I activate this’? Unlike other SOLIDWORKS serial keys, this doesn’t run on the installation manager and it is a webpage – not software. With that said, follow the five steps below so that you can quickly get access to the additional features that MySolidWorks Professional offers:

• Training
• Prep courses for SOLIDWORKS certification exams
• Reseller uploaded content
• Access to the SPR database

Step By Step Instructions

Visit the SOLIDWORKS Customer Portal and either login, or create an account using your company information (email, etc.). After you create your account and login, look for the ‘Register My Products’ link.

To read more, visit Original source.

Contact Us:
CAD MicroSolutions
65 International Blvd, Suite 103,
Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9
Email: info@cadmicro.com

Simplifying hardware requirements for the SOLIDWORKS suite of products

SolidWorks 3D CAD software

Processors – Processor speed is very important to performance. It is typically best to purchase one or two levels down from the fastest available processor. This is because there is typically a large premium to be paid for the fastest available processor(s). There is better value in choosing a high clock speed i7 processor than a lower clock speed Xeon processor. Multiple cores are used within SolidWorks CAD software only when reading and writing files and when working with multiple drawing views.

Hard Drives – Using an SSD drive as the primary drive will help significantly in reading and writing files, especially with large assemblies and parts. A secondary SATA drive is typically recommended for saving data that has been completed. The O/S, SolidWorks 3D cad software, and work-in-progress files should all be on the primary SSD drive. A 256GB drive will suffice, but as 500GB SSD drives come down in price they can also be considered.

Graphics Cards – The graphics cards speed up zooming, panning and rotating. A good starting point is the NVIDIA Quadro M2000 or the earlier NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (this is all that is available in the workstation configuration available for purchase). For mid-size to large assemblies, the NVIDIA Quadro M4000 or the earlier NVIDIA Quadro K4200 is recommended. For large to very large assemblies, the NVIDIA Quadro M5000 or the earlier NVIDIA Quadro K5200 is recommended.

System Memory – While 8GB will suffice for smaller assemblies, 16GB is recommended for most applications. For large and/or complex assemblies, 32 GB is recommended. Faster memory is better.

View original source to read more.

Contact Us:
CAD MicroSolutions
65 International Blvd, Suite 103,
Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9
Email: info@cadmicro.com

Are you an EAGLE user? We hope you like subscription fees

I’m sure most of you have heard the expression “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it”, right?

Well, what would you do if it was broken?…

Autodesk has announced that EAGLE is now only available for purchase as a subscription. Previous, users purchased EAGLE once and used the software indefinitely. This means that you will be obligated to run the latest version and you’ll be paying Autodesk on a monthly or yearly basis.  Let’s break down the costs. Before Autodesk purchased EAGLE from CadSoft, a Standard license would run you roughly $70, paid once. The next level up was Premium, was priced at roughly $800, paid once. The new pricing tiers from Autodesk are a bit different. 

Standard will $100/year, and gives similar functionality to the old Premium level, but with only 2 signal layers. If you need more layers, you’ll need the new Premium level, at $500/year.  If you could have made do with the old Standard option, you’re now paying $100/year instead of the one-time $70 payment. If you need more space or layers, you’ll likely be up to $500/year.

Curious to know more? View original source: https://cadmicrosolutions.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/are-you-an-eagle-user-we-hope-you-like-subscription-fees/

Contact Us:

CAD MicroSolutions

65 International Blvd, Suite 103,

Toronto, Ontario M9W 6L9

Web: http://www.cadmicro.com/

Email: info@cadmicro.com