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of the most useful and yet most underused portions of the Help files. Often when a new user asks me a question, it can be impossible to discern what the user is talking about because he is not familiar with the SolidWorks terminology, is substituting AutoCAD or Inventor terminology, or is assuming all modeling terminology is universal. As dull as it may be, this Glossary should be required reading for all new users. Simply understanding the language being used by the training materials, Help files, and other users can give you a big head start when it comes to learning the software. Look through it. I promise you'll learn something useful.

Index

Starting in SolidWorks 2010, SolidWorks removed the Index from the regular Help, and of course, it does not exist in the Web Help either. An index is difficult to create, and this difficulty was the reason SolidWorks gave for not including it in the new version.

Search

The Search function is for when you are not exactly sure of what you are looking for. For example, you know there is a feature that has a funny name that uses stripes to analyze curvature across edges, but you cannot remember its name. Begin your search with the words stripes and curvature. If you use curvature, the Search function returns about 60 possibilities. The term you are looking for is Zebra Stripes, but you may not find it by scanning such a long list. If you search using the word stripe, Zebra Stripes appears at the top of the list. Therefore, a good search strategy might be to try multiple terms.

The biggest complaint you may have about the Search function in Help is that it will sometimes return too many options, and the connection between the word you searched on and the topic title shown in the list is not immediately clear. Still, too much information is better than not enough.

Many users overlook the three options at the bottom of the Search window: Search Previous Results, Match Similar Words, and Search Titles Only. All three are useful in narrowing your search. With the new Web Help, Search is improved, and includes a section that allows you to further narrow the search results that works like guided search. Guided search provides a list of results, but also provides an index-like set of topics (in the upper right-hand corner) that you can use to narrow the search further.

Additionally, most of the Help linked to from the search results has a link to search the Knowledge Base on a related phrase. This search of the Knowledge Base (KB) may or may not include any results. I have seen several links from the Help to the KB that were empty.

SolidWorks Website

Most of the valuable information on the SolidWorks website (www.solidworks.com) is behind the subscription login, but some free information is also available. It may be worthwhile to explore the SolidWorks site a bit, because it includes a large amount of information ranging from graphics cards evaluations to training files.

Graphics Cards Links

The link to this area of the SolidWorks website is www.solidworks.com/sw/videocardtesting.html, and appears on the SolidWorks website main page behind the Support⇒System Requirements link. SolidWorks has tested the range of most popular graphics cards and drivers for compatibility with various versions of SolidWorks and has rated them at various levels based on the following criteria:

Passed all tests

Passed with limitations

Card has significant stability or repaint problems

Uses the graphics card display settings for SolidWorks

Multi-head hardware accelerated

Supports RealView

Provides 64-bit native support

Supports 3D-Stereo effects

Customer Portal

The SolidWorks Customer Portal is full of useful information. It requires a login, and you can find it at https://customercenter.solidworks.com. Portions of the portal, such as the Forums, are available to anyone with or without subscription. Other areas, such as the service pack downloads, are only available to subscription customers.

SolidWorks Forums

The SolidWorks Forums have areas of wide interest for most