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What do your co-workers do with SOLIDWORKS that makes your blood boil?

Question asked by Jim Sculley on May 4, 2017
Latest reply on Oct 17, 2019 by Matt Peneguy

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So, we have this discussion about impressive SW tricks:

What are your most impressive tricks of solidworks, Please spread.

Let's make another thread to capture the little things your co-workers/clients/customers do with SOLIDWORKS that bring thoughts of violence. Extra points if there's nothing technically wrong (see item 2 below) with what they've done but if you were in charge of the universe it would earn them a one-way trip into another dimension. Here's a few to get the ball rolling:

Create a sketch of sketch points for hole locations and then make a hole wizard hole where the positions sketch is a bunch of points coincident with the sketch you just drew. See here for details.
View...Hide/Show...Hide All Types. I have a hot-key for displaying temporary axes. Hide All Types makes it useless.
Dimensions to hole centers on drawings. Call me old-school, but the dimensions go to the center marks not the hole center:

I have many,many more. Let's see if we have any in common.

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Ryan Dark May 4, 2017 4:38 PM
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Two words:

Save As.
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S. Casale May 4, 2017 4:40 PM
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One must be careful with not just what, but how they write what is posted on this thread as it is public.

A big pet peeve of mine is the lack of understanding for design intent anywhere, it is everywhere!
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S. Casale May 4, 2017 4:41 PM
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Duplicate file names.
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John Stoltzfus May 4, 2017 4:46 PM
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One of the Past Famous - that worked here, decided that once a project cleared prototype, he saved over the files or completely deleted a portion of the assembly.

Opening a file that has 5 or more configurations that are in context to a non-existent model...

BLUE LINES - make me shudder....
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Glenn Schroeder May 4, 2017 4:55 PM
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I do your #1 all the time, although I generally use construction lines instead of sketch points in the independent sketch.
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John Stoltzfus @ Glenn Schroeder on May 4, 2017 4:56 PM
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We must be the only guys on the planet that actually sees and knows the benefits of doing it our way, kind a funny
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John Stoltzfus May 4, 2017 4:58 PM
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My guess is your really hoping your co-workers take a peak here, right... you can share this topic..
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S. Casale @ John Stoltzfus on May 4, 2017 5:02 PM
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Construction lines are awesome!
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Jim Steinmeyer May 4, 2017 5:03 PM
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Jim, four first one is a method I learned form the impressive tricks thread, and one I happen to like so I guess one of us gets extra points. However I am in total agreement with #2
1. not centering the part or assembly on the origin. Especially if the part is symmetric. Think of a square tube or such.
2. taking an autoCAD drawing and mirroring it for an opposite handed version.
3. opening an assembly (or several) then not closing their W session before going on vacation. We do not use PDM yet.
4. Placing items in an assembly and locking them in position, no or few mates.
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David Dinius May 4, 2017 5:04 PM
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I try not to look at what they are doing. Unfortunately we are not using a vault (or fortunately depending on which way the parts are moving) so I don't have to use their parts.
Sketches that are NOT symmetric when it can be.
Editing their sketches that show every relation and sketch end point.
Creating planes or axes when there is a planar face or temporary axis to be had
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Roland Schwarz @ S. Casale on May 4, 2017 5:07 PM
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There's a magical thing that happens to an unconstrained line in a sketch that is closed--NOTHING! Nothing happens to it. It stays put.
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Jim Steinmeyer @ Roland Schwarz on May 4, 2017 5:19 PM
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now thems fightin words!
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Jim Sculley @ S. Casale on May 4, 2017 6:57 PM
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You should probably direct your hatred toward SOLIDWORKS on this one. Every file in the file system has a unique path. There are no duplicate file names. SW chooses to ignore the path and *that* is the source of your misery.
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Dave Laban May 5, 2017 3:07 AM
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I mean really, 8 separate annotation notes, manually having to type the numbers out (rather than numbered list), PITA to align everything. Raaaaage.
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Dave Laban @ Roland Schwarz on May 5, 2017 3:08 AM
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Unless the unconstrained line has snapped to another edge / feature without the user realising. Then it can move all over the place depending on what happens with the rest of the model.
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Bjorn Hulman @ Jim Sculley on May 5, 2017 3:47 AM
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Agree and disagree, every project has a unique identifier, it's not hard to work that into the filename conventions.
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Peter Brinkhuis May 5, 2017 3:49 AM
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I really hate it when people take the easy route instead of a proper route. I've seem complex models that ended with a cut-extrude to remove everything and then a few features to rebuild a model
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Duncan Gillis May 5, 2017 5:32 AM
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Set the sheet metal k-factor to 1!
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Peter De Vlieger May 5, 2017 6:05 AM
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Hiding each and every plane-origin-axis-sketch (2D and 3D) in every model on a feature tree level, no matter if it's parts or ASM's because "it makes for a too cluttered look".

With as result that Shift+S or Shift+P or Shift+A become utterly obsolete.
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Rob Edwards May 5, 2017 6:14 AM
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Unnecessary dimensions, especially duplicate dimensions, unlinked and buried
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John Stoltzfus May 5, 2017 6:34 AM
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Even though there is no one other than me here doing design work, it's just opening old files and trying to decipher what happens, so people to stay off of Jim Sculley $hit list -
- Name your Sketches and Features -
- organize the design using folders,
- try to do every design intent the same way, (it might take a little to learn your method, but if your consistent then eventually it's easy to modify designs.
- use Custom Properties at the part or assembly level (here it sucks that the little bit of custom properties used were in the drawing, so if and when I need to do a new drawing there's nothing connected to the part or assembly so I have to re-enter all the custom properties again),
- create and maintain notes in the part or assembly files that have dates and what was modified etc, even if you use a REV system,
- Don't create circular rebuilds.....
EDITED - and for Jim, don't use extra sketches for Hole Wizard - (oh, if he could only see how easy it is to do it that way though)
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Glenn Schroeder @ Dave Laban on May 5, 2017 8:01 AM
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Dave Laban's post about separate notes reminded me that when they first started with SW here whoever set up the sheet formats made many of the notes separate when they didn't need to be. For example, the text "Scale" was one note, and the actual linked sheet scale text was a separate note. And "Project" was one note, and the actual project number that's linked to the Drawing's custom property was another one. It made it much more difficult to get them aligned properly when editing the sheet format, and sometimes caused overlaps if a number or name was longer than usual. I'm ashamed to admit that it was only within the last month or two that the light bulb came on and it occurred to me to combine those into single notes, with the text center justified, and then center the notes in the title block box. I cringe when I think back how much time I've spent moving them around in the last 9 years.
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Jim Sculley @ Peter Brinkhuis on May 5, 2017 8:08 AM
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Or models where features are added, only to be completely removed by a later feature. I understand that during the design process models evolve and change, but there is a point at which you should just remake the model using a more sensible approach.
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Jim Sculley @ Rob Edwards on May 5, 2017 8:10 AM
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Even worse, redundant dimensions on drawings. I have seen drawings where a hole has four ordinate dimensions to it.
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J. Mather May 5, 2017 8:54 AM
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1. Blue lines.
2. No use of obvious symmetry.
3. Wack and hack modeling.
4. Don't know where they saved their design.
5. Angle dimensions out beyond 1 decimal places.
6. Reboot SolidWorks to get out of a selection filter (that they don't know how they got into in the first place).

Tapped holes modeled at major diameter size rather than use tap-drill size.
Trying to 3D print cosmetic threads. (my reaction - can't you see that they aren't real?)
Auto-dimensioning of sketch (Fully Define Sketch) (But you told me no blue lines....) (I also told you to use logical dimensions - we (you) can't make anything out to 8 decimal places.
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What do your co-workers do with SOLIDWORKS that makes your blood boil?

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