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What can Toolbox do for you?

Question asked by Jody Stiles

on Apr 27, 2012
Latest reply on Nov 24, 2014 by Simon Ross

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Hi all,

I've recently joined the Product Definition team here at SolidWorks and one of my areas of responsibility is Toolbox. Let me start by saying that I am an avid fan and user of Toolbox, I've run into many of the same issues over the years as some of you have, and have done my own hacking to get the old architecture to work for my company's needs. Now I'm on the other side of the street and can't promote that kind of ingenuity so what I want to do is make it so none of you feel like you need to hack the database, use it as a jumping off point for making your own Toolbox, or just skip using it at all. The re-architecture in 2012 made Toolbox much faster in response times on both local & server installs and made the administration & customization easier. But there's always something more that you want and I have several ideas from my user days but I clearly don't have all the answers nor did I see all of the problems. How do you think we should improve, enhance, or innovate with Toolbox in order to make it so your jobs are that much easier?

Thanks for your input!

Jody

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Scott McFadden Apr 27, 2012 12:15 PM
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Jody,
Because I have gotten burned by toolbox in the past I have come to the point where I like it as a launching point to create my own
libraries of hardware parts on the local network drive.
How I got burned is one place I was using it we had developed customized TB parts specific to the company and had done this on the network TB location. When we upgraded to 2009 we could not get the network location to connect to each local machine. I spent 2 hours on the phone with my VAR and long story short, they walked me through the process of upgrading the TB. Thus by doing that it wiped out our entire 5 year lineage of custom TB parts. So that is where my perspective comes from.
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Glenn Schroeder Apr 27, 2012 12:17 PM
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Does the "Make this folder the default search location for Toolbox components" box still check itself with new service pack installs?
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Jody Stiles @ Scott McFadden on Apr 27, 2012 1:16 PM
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Scott,

Was the cusomtization you did by hacking the Access database or by modifying the actual parts?
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John Ehrhardt Apr 27, 2012 1:29 PM
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Good topic. As a new user/administrator, I am struggling with this and will watch here.
I need a good reference to understand this thing. There have been bad stories about toolbox for revisioning, individual use, workgroup use, integrating with existing company components, and EPDM (for my future).
My first bug has been occasional wrong scale screws showing up in an assembly.
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Jody Stiles @ Glenn Schroeder on Apr 27, 2012 1:32 PM
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Glenn,

I'm testing this now by upgrading from 2012 sp02 to sp03. I'll let you know what I see.
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Jerry Brian @ John Ehrhardt on Apr 27, 2012 1:47 PM
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OK I for one think any assembly or subassembly that has toolbox parts in it needs to save, with those parts, IN the assembly, even if as virtual parts.

That way when you send it to someone else it can't have wrong or missing hardware.

I am sure there are arguments why this is not good. I just don't know them.
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Jody Stiles @ Jerry Brian on Apr 27, 2012 2:29 PM
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Hi Jerry,

You can do a Pack and Go on the assembly and this will save the Toolbox components with the asembly in the destination folder or zip file (which ever you choose).
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Jody Stiles @ Glenn Schroeder on Apr 27, 2012 2:56 PM
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Glenn,

I upgraded from 2012 sp02 to sp03. I had the box unchecked in sp02 and it remained unchecked in sp03.
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Glenn Schroeder @ Jody Stiles on Apr 27, 2012 3:03 PM
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That's good to know. I know it checked itself when I updated from sp 0.0 to 2.0, haven't had time to move to 3.0 yet. Anyway, that's the only Toolbox-related issue I can think of right now, but that almost caused a minor catastrophe (and did cause more gray hair for me) when I first updated to SW2012 from SW2010 and didn't know about it.
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Aviv Liberman Apr 28, 2012 7:39 AM
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Hello Jody,
I wish you a joyful mission here:)

As for the Toolbox use:
I could make better use of it if I could add my standard designs to the DB, for example:
Aluminum formed plates for wall cover, window glasses, Doors, knobs etc,...

Aviv
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Alin Vargatu @ Scott McFadden on Apr 28, 2012 9:13 AM
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Wow! Did not have a back-up Scott?
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Jody Stiles @ Aviv Liberman on Apr 30, 2012 9:26 AM
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Hi Aviv,

Thank you for responding. You can add your own components to Toolbox with 2012. You can right-click a folder and choose the Add File option. This will allow you to pull your own file into the database. If you have tried that already and would like more functionality with it I'd be very happy to hear it.
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Aric Tibbitts Apr 30, 2012 3:58 PM
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Hi Jody,

Glad to have you working with toolbox. I have used may other CAD packages I like SW toolbox for creating parts that are used over and over again. Such as screws, nuts, washers, o-rings, etc.

The only two issues I have discovered is:
I run my toolbox out of PDM Enterprise. This seems to work as long as you check it out for revisions.
1. I received a pack and go solidworks assembly with toolbox components that are not in my toolbox (weldments screws that are different)
I tried running the settoexec.exe program. But can not get them converted to regular parts so they will open correctly.
I have to clear my cache and then open the assembly everytime.
2. I'm interested in the McMaster-Carr database I saw on another thread. My work around currently is to do modify the toolbox component so I can get the correct McMaster-Carr P/N, description display on BOMs. Then I do a save as component and leave it outside my toolbox.

Aric.
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John Burrill Apr 30, 2012 4:43 PM
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Hi Jodie. Good conversation. One of the things that has kept me from using the create-part setting to ensure small file sizes and portability is the fact that it dumps these files into a single folder which can rapidly become a chore to look through. I'd like there to be some ability to direct components into an existing file structure
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Tony Hayes Apr 30, 2012 4:52 PM
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Hi Jody,

It's good to see that someone is willing to work on this. I first like to say that my company does not use the Toolbox for the components, we did use it to first create all the standard components that our company uses. Every now and then we have to go get a new part from the toolbox and put it in our own library.

Now where I have hacked the toolbox is for the hole wizard holes. I have made numerous custom holes from dowel pins that are already slip fit to mold/die components that are not in there standard. This is very time consuming when I need to create a new one as I have to copy the right tables and change the right fields sometimes it is trail and error. Now I have to say that 2012 was the best when updated in some past releases I had to recreate what I did because it would not update, 2012 updated it just fine this time.

I would like to have a user interface like the toolbox configure screen where you can create the type of hole you need and it is added to the database. For instance one hole that I have not been able to get to work is in our dies we will tap a counterbore hole so that we can have a jack out screw, now I have to do a counterbore hole and then a tap through hole. I really like to be able to do this in one operation. Of course I would like it to also where you can tell it what the callout format should be.
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Jody Stiles @ Aric Tibbitts on Apr 30, 2012 4:57 PM
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Hi Aric,

Thanks for replying. What is the reason you are performing a save-as on the Toolbox parts? I'm not familiar with the settoexec.exe program. Is that from EPDM? The program I am familiar with for removing the Toolbox flag is sldsetdocprop.exe. Have you tried that?
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Jody Stiles @ John Burrill on Apr 30, 2012 4:58 PM
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Hi John,

Thanks for posting. Would this file structure be user defined or would you expect it to be similar in structure to the way Toolbox is currently structured?
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Jody Stiles @ Tony Hayes on Apr 30, 2012 5:06 PM
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Hi Tony,

Thanks for responding. If I'm reading your request correctly, you basically want to be able to combine the various Hole Wizard hole types together to create your own hole type. Your tapped c'bored hole, for example. Would you expect to see an interface where you could pick and choose the sub-features of the hole and have the wizard build it? Maybe a set of check boxes to add in the various near/middle/far side features, threading, etc and each selection would spawn the requisite fields for entering data?
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Paul Hess Apr 30, 2012 6:02 PM
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Hi Jody,

For the hole wizard, in the thread depth controls adding in 1*dia and 1.5* dia option. There is already a pull down for the option, but just a straight default to 2*dia. This would be a real time saver as there are numerous times where a 2*dia tapped hole is too deep and then you have to manually edit the depth to get what is needed.

Thanks,

Paul
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John Burrill @ Jody Stiles on Apr 30, 2012 9:36 PM
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Oh, I'd be pretty happy to have the folder structure from the Toolbox browser folder. But making it dovetail with my existing library structure would be useful too.

What might be pretty effective and not much of a stretch for the UI is to have a bin folder spec for each part type node in the standards tree.
You could even default them to the copied-file directory or the corresponding folder in broswer and then let the user override the location on an as-needed basis.
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Scott McFadden @ Jody Stiles on May 1, 2012 7:22 AM
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Jody,
It was dome by modifying the actual parts. Not so much physically as it was through part number and description
custom properties.
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Scott McFadden @ Alin Vargatu on May 1, 2012 7:24 AM
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Alin,
Yes they were backed up. Our toolbox was on a network. But that wouldn't have done us any good because the whole purpose of
our VAR spending the two hours on the phone with me was because we could not get our network toolbox to communicate with each work station. So by updating the toolbox wiped all of the data that we put into the toolbox over the course of the five years was all gone. Yeah, we could have brought it back, but then we would have had the non communication issue back again as well.
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Tony Hayes @ Jody Stiles on May 1, 2012 9:25 AM
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Hi Jody,

That would be a great starting point but keep in mind to keep it open as much as possable for the user to create custom holes. We have a bunch of other types that we use often that I would love to add to the toolbox. You mentioned near/middle/far side features but some holes may have more then 3 profiles so I would leave it open to how many the user wants to add. I know some people will say that I can add these to my library but I do like the funstion of the hole wizard.
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Andy Sanders May 1, 2012 9:53 AM
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We don't use it simply because it's so different from the way "normal" SW parts work.

I feel much safer/more peace of mind knowing that our library we built ourselves pretty much is bulletproof, as long as the paths are correct to their locations (no server name changes, etc) they work great. We back up our entire system daily, so I'm not in fear of losing anything.

We've done it this way from the beginning (SW97plus) and have had great luck with it.

I've heard enough horror stories here to know that I'm not going to mess with something that works!
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Jody Stiles @ Paul Hess on May 1, 2012 10:03 AM
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Paul,

Thanks for posting. Would you want these values hard coded or would you want them to be driven by a file, table, or some other user defined method?
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