Comprehensive SolidWorks Composer Course / Zero to Hero

In this lesson I'm going to show you how to create a new project and how to load your model into your projects

So after opening the program go to file menu and press on new project button

Here we're going to need to enter a name for our project in our case I'm going to give it a name SolidWorks composer course project 01

Then I need to brows for a folder to save this project in it, I recommend you to create a new folder and assign it for the projects that we will handle in this course, then I will press OK.

Then the program will ask me to load the model of the product. I will go on and press cancel for now.

Then the program will open the new created project with an empty model, now to load the model of the product or the products we will go to file menu, press open and after you locate the product 3d model you want to load into this project activate the (merge into the current project) option and once done press on open

Here we need to wait until the program finishes loading the model into the project, once finished you might think that noting is loaded but actually solidworks composer tends to hide the loaded model until it gets activated , to do so go to assembly tab on the left and from the model tree activate the loaded model, we can see it is loaded but not in a normal position so it will be better to adjust its position directly, to do so we need to set the vertical axis of the project to be Y axis instead of the default one which is set to Z axis, once done we can see our model stands in its position and ready to transfer us to our next lesson.

Hello everyone in this lesson we are going to learn how to load another 3d model into our created project.

As we have loaded our first product into the project, I’m going to load another 3d model and I will choose the same loaded model as an example.

So again just go to open and choose merge into the current document.

Choose the model then press Ok.

The program will start conversation so we wait until the conversion of the product. It mustn't take long, because the same geometry already has been loaded to the same project, and I was right. The model will be loaded hidden as before, so after activating it, let’s adjust the camera position and look for it.

The reason that we are not seeing anything here now is that it's identical to the first model, so it's exactly in the same position now. So if you want to see it we are going to need to move it, we can do this by translate order from the transform tab which we are going to cover intensively in the next lessons. But for now I'm just going to select it and slide this scooter to this side a little.

Notice that once it moves the other scooter shows bellow it, now these are our two models. We only need one for now in the next lessons so we are going to deactivate the other one from the assembly tree by unchecking the box next to it than we are going to save our project for now.

Hello everyone

In this lesson we will talk about adjusting some of the background options

It is important to adjust the colors of the project theme for each project so the colors of the project will remain harmonious,

One of the most important colors that define this themes is the background and the foot color of the project. Choosing these colors can be done randomly by selecting any color of the screen using the eyedropper tool, notice that you can select any color of any object on the screen and that include the tabs of the program too. Or you can make the selecting of the color professionally from this tab where you can set the specified values of Red, green, blue colors in RGB system for your color, using it you can select the exact color you have in mind for this project. After setting the color you need to set the opacity for your project foot color. I am going to set it for 200, it is totally up to you to set these options but I find it enough for me this way.

Normally we leave the coordinated system as it is and we don’t change it during the work on the same project

We have talked about the vertical axis before and already we have set it to be Y axis. In most cases the vertical axis should be Y but off course there must be an exceptions for this rule sometimes even we are not going to have an example for it in this course.

The FOV stands for field of view and it define how much is the camera will be far from the product, so it define the distance between the camera and the product, we can change it by scrolling the mouse middle button and also we can use this option here to set a specific value for this distance when needed.

As for the events in the options tab we are going to have a full lessons about them later.

And this goes on the light mode as well but for now it is enough to know that you can choose a lightning mode from one of the predefined modes or we can set some lights and define a new light mode

The ground itself can be removed or activated. Over the ground you can set the grid to be on or off, the shadow, and the mirror mode which does have some options that we will go through later

Activating the high quality means that the computer will apply on-demand rendering (the profile can be standard or high-quality or high speed or safe)

Hello everyone

In this lesson we will go through document properties. You have two options. You can change the active document properties, or you can change default properties for your projects which means the documents that will be created in the future. Will have the properties that you adjusted as default.

The first tab of the properties is security. Here you can choose whether you want to have any kind of security or if you want to use a password for

The second tab is for adding a signature which you can add as a photo or as a written statement or even both at the same time according to your wish, then you have to set its display which I recommend you to select view only always.

The next tab is the viewport where you can set the view port for you project, such as the ground if you want it to be a photo for example, I don’t want to apply a photo on the background for this project so I will undo this change, but whether it is a photo or a color you can set a ghost opacity for your ground.

Then you can adjust the setting of the outline for actors which you can set on the project.

After that comes the setting of the vertical axis which we have talked about before and can be set from the properties tab in the project itself, and is like to be Y axis most of the times, most, most of the projects.

These are the setting for custom camera views for a standard angel of the camera to set.

The next tab is the viewport background where you can set the color of the background and the foot ground for your project, off course you have the ability to set an image as your background with some options to set the filling mode for this image as we can see.

Lastly we have the option to display a logo on our project, but the logo type must be BMP file only and I will save this detail to section 5 from this course where we are going to use BMP file’s during the whole project.

Just remember most of these setting can be set for your active project from the properties tab on the left while changing them from here will affect your future projects as well.

The next tab is the selection set which controls the color of highlighting and selection of the project actors and I prefer to leave as it is.

The next tab is to control some of the options that define your image quality such as lightning mode of the project which you can choose from variety of the prepared lighting modes to apply one of. I advise you to try all of the options at the beginning of your project so you can compare them and choose the best fit to what you have in mind about this project, even I find the default one which specifies 2 lights with specularity and no ambient light is the best for like 90% projects. Also you can set the ground shadow, finally you can set the text options for PMI which stands for product manufacturing information and making it depending on the camera orientation, to make PMI always visible (if your project is fitted with any) you have to clear this option, now our project is not fitted with manufacturing information’s so it won’t effect whether it is on or off.

Lastly on this tab we get to set the size mode of callouts for spare parts balloons, whether you want them to be at different or uniformed size.

The next tab is the input page which lets you configure the importing of cad files, here you need to change these setting according to the 3d model you are importing whether you are importing directly from solidworks or from CATIA or you are importing an IGES file that you need to set it accordingly. So really there is nothing that I can tell you to set as a default here guys but we will adjust these setting at the importing of each project according to its type in this course.

Or the feature Filtering allows you to specify an XML file that determines which knowledge parameters are imported into composer.

Next is the Update tab which us gives you the ability to update the modified designs of the models used in our project.

Starting by views, it allows us to specify how actor visibility stored in view definitions. This setting affects file size and load time, and also determines the visibility of new actors determines the visibility of new actors resulting from document updates.

While the Geometry section lets you configure geometry update, which you need to set according to the changes that have been ne in your CAD model, whether to add, or delete or modify specific geometry in the whole assembly or to check issued files which updates only actors from a CAD file with the same name as the update file or if you want to check all occurrences in the same actor in the composer files and updates all of them, to update selected actors only you need to clear this option.

The next tab is the output tab which lets us configure the composer compression level and export options.

The geometry compression sets the amount of compression in composer files which affects model tessellation quality, for low compression you will get the best quality with 32 byte/ point. Here you must note that when you save a project with medium or high compression rate you cannot return to original quality, you must re-import the can files if you want to do so.

For the output language you can set it to be different than English if you want

And for the export of files you can choose to save only visible actors or to include the hidden parts also in the exported file.

Then comes the animation properties tab which you can set the animation speed from it, according to standard cameras nowadays it is either 24 or 25 there is even some newly improved camera can capture up to 30 frame per second, but we will stick to the standards and keep this one at 25 frame per second.

The frames min specifies the minimum number of frames between two images. Depending on the graphics card and computer performance, animations might jump due to animation speed. Defining a minimum frame number between two images can eliminate jumping

The animated transition specifies the transition speed between two views when you drag views into the viewport.

The Max. Objects setting Specifies the maximum number of nodes allowed for animated transitions between views. A node is any atomic unit of a document (property, actor, assembly group, etc.) Larger values can result in choppy transitions. For large models or for computers with limited RAM, reduce this value to improve performance.

The next tab is History page which lists all modifications made to a Composer file and lets you edit version numbers and comments. The history is stored in the Composer file itself.

You can set these properties for the active document only, not as document defaults.

Then comes the Right Manager tab which lets you enable Composer capabilities for Composer (SMG) files opened in Composer Player and Composer Player ActiveX Plug-in (Microsoft Office documents, 3D PDF, and so on), for example Letting users add annotation and markup actors, or apply cutting planes

You can set these properties both for the active document and as document defaults.

It also gives you the option to define expiration properties, whether to places a time limit for accessing Composer files. When expired, users cannot open the Composer file.

Then the Project page which lets you configure the default preferences when loading a project, for example the lunching mode, and you can set these properties both for the active document and as document defaults`

In the paper space tab we can define the format to be a standard or custom paper space format with the orientation and its size.

The units tab lets you specify 3d measurements units, here we can define units for all display parameter: length, angle, area, volume and distance type (dimensions), you can also modify the interpretations of units of cad models.

At the end comes the Advanced Properties page which lets us customize all the document settings available in the registry, we can define some of these settings in the Application Preferences or Document Properties pages.

So in this lesson, we're going to talk about creating new views

View mean that you want to capture a photo of that product in this situation at this exact angle of the screen at this point. So here, by pressing on this button create new views or by pressing ctrl+E, we can create as many as views we want for this product, so by holding the mouse scroll we can rotate the camera to change its angel of the project.

Now let's say we want to change the properties of some of these parts such as color. So start by choosing the parts which we want to change the properties of then, do so by pressing on each part you want while holding ctrl or shift on your keyboard then let’s go to assembly tab an create a new selection set and name ıt by change color.

The selection sets is a selected group of parts that we create just like we have seen after choosing some parts together from different groups of the assembly, this makes it easier for us to reselect these parts whenever needed in the future.

Now let’s change the color of these parts by selecting them from the selection set and from the general properties tab let’s set the first color to blue, by the way if you want to change the color of only one part you can do so by selecting the part then changing its color from the properties tab like this.

Let’s now set a new back ground color that goes with the new color for the scooter, I will choose this light blue and then from the view tab I will create a new view for the project in this situation.

Now guys, changing the color of the project background in one view doesn’t change it in all view.

You can see that our old views with this ugly red background are still intact, by moving between views you can now see your scooter with different color options as you can see.

Let’s create a new color option, to do so go to assembly tan and select the change color selection set then from the properties tab set them color to green this time and set the back ground color to this light green as well.

Then we can give names for the created view. This will make them easier to handle in the future.

Notice how easy it was to change the color for all of these parts together, to know how much easy it was just try changing the color for these parts by selecting them individually and tell us the difference yourself.

Hello everybody in this lesson we are going to talk about the render modes.

Render modes define the displaying mode of the product in the project.

There is a variety in options for rendering mode and there is no right or wrong choice here, it depend on the way that you want your model to be displayed in each view of your project.

You can also set it to be with the bounding boxes or without, besides setting it to be a flat or smooth to be shaded illustration, to be technical. Etc…

Depending on the look that you are trying to achieve and give your product you must choose the suitable rendering mode.

For example, I am going to choose the smooth mode for this scooter here in this view, let’s check out its details, it looks like a manufactured product. This render mode set the view of the product to be so realistic, this will be really like a realistic photo with neither camera nor a scooter.

Render views can be set for each view individually, for example lets set the render mode for this view to be smooth without outline then I will update this view and change to the next view, this view I will set to be smooth with outline, then let’s update this view as well, and go back to the first view to compare, notice that it is still set to smooth without outline, while the second one is set to smooth with outline.

That mean we can set a special render mode for each view.

Anyway, for now let’s reset the render mode for this view to smooth without line as well because I want these views to have similar properties for the next lessons.

Hello everyone

In this Lessen we are going to talk about perspective view.

The perspective view in solidworks composer can be activated from this bottom bellow, turning it on will activate the camera perspective mode which will allow you to see the model as you are looking at it from a certain angel,

Also solidworks composer allows you to use this feature for new views with the ability to create a new photos. This means that doing so with the same model at the same angle, with the same features, when you create a new photo for the, uh, model with the perspective view, it will be different from the model from the photo that without perspective as you can see here the difference between.

Now to adjust the perspective angle, we can change the default perspective angel from the preferences tab of the project, to do so open the file menu and press on the preferences icon at the bottom of this menu, in the camera tab you can find the default perspective option where we can change its value, by default it is set to be 45 so let’s change it to 60 to compare the difference, press apply then OK,

As an example I will create a new view for the scooter with this perspective angel then I will be able to compare the perspective view with 45 degree angle and the perspective view with 60 degree angel along with normal view with no perspective at all.

I hope the point is clear now, what I am going to do is I am going to restore the default value for my perspective to be 45 degree, not because there is a code for it but only because I prefer it this way.

See you next lesson.

Hello, everyone. In this lesson we are going to talk about the digger

The digger can be activated from this button on the main tool bar or by pressing space bar on your keyboard. It does have some special tools that helps to add additional details of the product and we will discuss them in this lesson.

Let’s start from the change center of interest tool, after pressing on its button here dragging it with keeping the left mouse button pressed, will change the center of the digger shown view.

Using it, you can focus on some point of the model to show its preferences or properties.

After setting the center of interest, you can use the upper tools,

The upper tools starts from cutting plan. The cutting plane does create a cutting surface that's going to be perpendicular on the screen while the model is set in this angle, so rotating the model itself will rotate the cutting plan until you set the final angle of the model.

The x ray tool does ghost the parts of the model in backorder to its degree in the assembly using the left and right handle, you can set the degree of the ghosting process.

The only skin option does have the same effect, but instead of ghosting the model parts it hides the parts completely.

Let's adjust the photo for the rear wheel of this scooter.

After sitting the digger tool to zoom option. We can use the right handle to zoom in and out.

So after setting the angel of the view, pressing on capture picture in 2d image will create a snap photo for the digger in this position, with the set properties.

Now notice that after creating this snap photo, rotating the model won't affect this photo neither will changing the model properties such as color or positions. Now that the Digger has created this photo separately and it won't be related to the model anymore unless if we want to update it which we're going to discuss in a future lesson. But for now, this is going to be a fixed photo.

Now if we activate the digger tool again we can create another photo in the same view. For example, let’s create a detail view for the front wheel so let’s set the center of the view of the digger to the front wheel center.

Then let's set its size, make it bigger a little. And adjust its position.

Now let's talk about the depth direction, in the digger. There is a button to lock and unlock the depth direction which control the depth of the cut for onion skin, x-ray, and cutting plane tools, so if you wish to apply the same cutting depth the view but from a different angel you can apply the cut to your desired depth then lock it using this button.

As an example let’s talk about the cutting plane. After activating the cutting the plan rotating the model will affect the cutting plan position on this direction. But what if I want to keep it steady on some parts while I rotate the model, well we can do this by activating the look of depth direction button which will keep the cutting plan locked on the positions that you have set previously, just like we did in this example here.

So notice that even I rotate the model, the cutting plan will remain fixed in its position, to compare the difference we can unlock it and the view of it will change immediately.

Now, let's adjust this view to be for the front wheel so set it to be on this position and about the center of the view

Then activate the cutting plan so the wheel will be cut at its middle to show the motor inside

Again, by moving the right handle forward or backward, you can set the cutting plan depth. I want to lock the depth here. Once locked rotating the model won't affect the created view anymore but once you exceed this side of the model the cut will be flipped to be on the other side.

Now after setting the digger into the needed view position and capturing a 2 d image, let's talk about the properties of the created photo itself. From the properties tab we can set It's attaching type for example, also we can set its shape type.

And that is all about the digger tool, remains only the light button which by clicking and dragging it inside the digger window you can add additional lightning to you digger image.

Hello, everyone. In this lesson we are going to talk about views, camera views and intelligent views.

About the views at first, we have already talked how to create or update a view in the previous lesson

So now we will compare it with Camera views. One of the most common confusions in composer is the difference between views and camera views.

Normally when we create a view, the position and properties of all actors, whether geometric and collaborative in the viewport will be recorded or saved, As well as the camera position and its angle. By the way when we say properties, it's essentially the color, opacity, lightning position, render mode, and such properties.

Now to create a consistency across a group of views SolıdWorks composer has given us creatıng camera views ability which we can do by its button on the views tab, it allows us to save costume camera positions from any existing views or what is active in the viewport.

The application of camera views are numerous, but not limited to the following:

- If we need to zoom in and or to rotate our project to select some components we won’t have to worry about zooming back to the exact previous position. All we have to do is click create camera view before at first and once finished just click on that camera view to get back to exact original view.

- If we already created views where we like to apply a previously saved camera position, we can easily adopt them into needed views by activating the desired view or clicking of view, activating the views you want to change, Clicking view then update view.

Both views and camera views can be renamed.

To recognize the camera view from the views in their tab we can see that camera views will have a camera icon at the right button corner with a line that divides the camera icon in half.

Now let’s apply what we have learnt to create a three views with identical camera views for the scooter three colors that we have adjusted before in the previous lessons.

Hello everyone

In this lesson we are going to talk about high resolution images

Solidworks composer gives us the ability to create realistic images with high quality of product without the need to wait for the production of it to finish to take a real pictures.

To do so we have to go to home tab or to workshop tab and from here let’s activate the high resolution image tab. Let’s take this view as it is for example, and by pressing on Preview button we can see a sample about how this image will be rendered before creating it.

Deactivating Alpha channel will keep the background of the view while activating it will give us a transparent background for our product even though it won’t be shown in the preview.

Activating the white background option will replace the background of project whether it is a picture or a color by a white color.

Activating the remove ground option will do as it says, it will remove the ground below the model, but it will keep the shadow as it has been set before.

The exported photo setting can be adjusted either by setting its quality whether it will be high or low quality, or by size, which we can defined after setting its pixel or dot per inch or size by mm.

The next tab in the image setting is the anti-aliasing which you need to activate the anti-aliasing option in order to adjust its setting, normally the anti-aliasing is a method that eliminate the jaggies that appear in objects sides, we normally need it if we have a photo set for background but now we have the background set as color so we will deactivate it for this example.

Finally comes the multiple tab, in which we can ably the setting that we have adjusted to multiple views as once, this comes in handy when we have a big project and want to render all of its views so we can do it from here immediately without the need reset the setting for each photo, here we just need to activate the views option then set its name. And by pressing save as the program asks us to set the directory for the photos, once set press save and the program will start rendering the photos.

Depending on the quality of the photos you have set and on your display adapters the rendering process will take some time then all the photos will be saved in the selected folder.

Let’s now check the rendered photo’s, as you can see all the views have been rendered, some of them needs some adjustments but we are not going to use them now so no need, I will create a folder with the name (need them) and isolate the photos I need for now, the blue, the green, and the red one.

Let’s go back to the program and redefine the setting of the exported views. I want the new set to keep its ground and its background, I will make a slight change in the new name and press save.

The program will render the new set of the views, we can compare it with the previously rendered photos. And we can see the difference between colored or white background with or without a ground.

Finally I want to render a photo for one view so let’s turn of the multiple view option, open this view and activate the alpha channel option then save as, here lets add alpha channel after the view name to distinguish it from the other views then save it.

Once the render process finishes we can open the created image, it will be with png extension and without any background at all.

I guess this conclude all the ideas I wanted to explain to you in this lesson about the high quality images, lets now delete the views which we don’t want anymore, make sure that we have the views we want saved in a safe folder. And say goodbye for this lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to insert 2d images into our project

Let's start by creating a new view. I want to adjust its background to be white for this one, Then I am going to activate the ground but turn off the shadow of the scooter on the ground, then adjust the camera to look at the scooter from this angel and adjust the scooter position on the screen.

Now from the author tab select image 2d button then by clicking the mouse left button and dragging the mouse itself we can create a 2d image as we can see.

Once the image created it will be an object in this project, this means it will have its own properties tab from which we can set its position and size for a start, do so by setting its position from left and top then adjust its width and height, just as we are doing now for these three images.

Now that we have adjusted our images and their positions in the view lets create a new view.

To set the image texture or to update it we have to link this image to the needed image path from map path button BUT solidworks composer cannot recognize images saved as PNG, it can only loads images with these extensions such as bmp or jpeg.

So before lading the images that we have prepared in our last lesson we need to change its extension from png to jpeg for example, to do so there are a lot of free programs or internet sites that can do this but we are going to use one of the most common programs on windows, the paint, just open the photo then choose save as jpeg to change its type. Do this for all the 3 images which we have set in the last lesson and we are going to use now.

Now let’s return to composer, and from the map path let’s set the red, green and blue images just like this.

Finally, I don’t want to set any shadow for these images so from the properties tab deactivate the show option box for the shadow for all of these three images.

At last once all done don’t forget to update this view.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to Add 2d Texts.

To create a 2d text we can use its button from the author tab, after activating it press the mouse left button on the viewport where you want to place the text, don’t worry you can adjust its place later, then start typing by your keyboard.

Let’s type (blue color) inside this first box.

Once the text box created it become an object in this project, so from its properties tab let’s set a name for it and it will be blue color code.

From the properties tab we can set the opacity for this text.

We also can set its depth, which mean its order between the created objects in this project, setting it to be before overlapped objects will hide it behind this object.

The freeze option is to lock this object in its place with no ability to select it by pressing on it from the viewport, it is always better to set our objects to freeze only in player.

Then comes the text format setting, for this text lets set to blue color, I will not change its font but I will change the size to be 35, the text string shows and edit the text shown in the textbox itself, which I will actually change to be BLUE.

Each created object in solidworks composer have the ability to be linked to any other object in the project, the link type itself can be set from the attach options, for this text I will need no attach so keep it set to none.

The placement options is where we control the size and position of this text, deactivating the auto fit option will grant us the ability to set the width and height for the text box, let’s keep it active for now and adjust only the position of this text to be from left by 125 and from top by 125.

Next we can set the background of this text box to have a stable color or to activate the gradient option, then let’s set the border color to be white instead of black, deselect it to see its shape at the moment, looks fine but I don’t want the shadow for it so we select it and from the properties section go to shadow and deactivate the enable button for it now.

This is exactly what I want for now, let’s copy the created object then past it by using ctrl+c and ctrl+v on your keyboard, this will create a copy of the first text, start by renaming it to be green color code and in the text string lets change it to be green, change the color of the text as well to be green too then adjust its position to be 125 from top and 250 from the left.

Repeat the same process of copying the text to create the red view text, start by changing its name then set its color to be red, the string will be Red for this one, then adjust its placement to be 125 from the left and 250 from the top.

Finally update the view, check the texts that we have created for now, everything looks fine and we are ready to move for the next lesson.

Hello, everyone. In this lesson we could talk about how to link views with created objects.

We have seen in the last two lessons, how to create 2D images and 2D texts. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the link previously created views to these objects so they would act like buttons for these views.

The link setting option can be accessed from the properties menu for each object.

After selecting the object in the project, which in our case will be this blue scooter 2d image, press on the link button in its properties menu, this will open the link tab, here we need to choose the type of the link for this button, we are going to use all of these types through the course but now we will choose view type because we want to link this button to the blue colored scooter view.

After choosing the link type and path press ok and the link for this object to the selected view will be done, press ok then update the view.

Beside the link we can set a blinking option for any object in composer also from its properties tab, for an example lets select the 2d text of blue, from the pulse option we have the ability to set the speed of pulsing and the color as well, I will set a blinking for this blue 2d text, I will set the pulse to be 400 ms and the color to be blue as well, let’s link it also to the same view and update

Now to check the changes we made we can turn off design mode, this will allow us to test our project as an exported one, notice that once the design mode turned off, the blinking of the 2d text will start and by pressing on the image we can test the link we created that it opens the needed view, use the views tab to return to the needed view for now, again lets test the link of the 2d text and it works as well.

Another and easier way to link any view to any object in solidworks composer is to hold the view from view tabs then drag and drop it over the object while pressing control button on your keyboard

To check the created link scroll down on the properties tab and you can see here that the green image have been assigned a link to green-0 view, don’t forget to update the view, but if you did the program will ask you if you want to update the current view before change to another view update the view and our new link is working, let’s turn on the design mode and repeate the process for the red view then update the view.

Finally lets set a pulse for the texts just as we did for the blue text, start by the red one and set the pulse to 400 ms, then set its color to red, the dark one is better.

Then repet the process for the green text and check the result by turning off the design mode.

All the links are working well the the blinking looks good, now every thing is ready for our next lesson.

Hello everyone, this lesson is going to be about format styles.

SolidWorks composer allows the users to create some format styles for each group of objects whether 2d texts of labels then apply this format style to any object in this group.

I will take this chance to tell you about the labels in solidworks composer, you can create new labels from its button on the author tab here and we will start by the simple type of it which is the standard label, once we press on its button we can create label for any object in our project, we can create a blank label by pressing on an empty place in our view port or we can create a label for this 2d text for example by choosing it and automatically the label will have its name as we can see, hovering over any object without pressing any button will show you this object name in the label box, and this apply also on the parts of the model itself, when we hover over any part of this scooter we will see this part code or name in the label box.

Normally labels are used for defining parts codes easily but solidworks composer gives you the ability to use it as you want with no limitation for this purpose, for example, let’s see if we can apply it as an advertising note in this view.

Start by creating a label without linking it to any object in the screen, from the properties tab give it a name by green color ads, then scroll down in the properties tab, for the attach type set it to none, for the text string let’s type anything regarding the beauty of green color, safe for example, then let’s adjust the size of its text to be 60 and adjust its position to be here notice here that we can set the size of the font up to 72, from here we can’t set it more than this value, even if we set it to be bigger it will be restored to 72 automatically, although there is a special way that we can set the font to be bigger in solidworks composer but we will not discuss it in this lesson, for now that we have adjusted our label let’s move on to the styles tab, here we can see the available styles for the selected object, deselecting it will show us all the styles saved in the program until now.

To adjust and set a style we need to open the styles workshop from the workshops tap.

Start by selecting the object that we want to create a copy of its style, in our case it is this label that we have created just now, press on create new style button here to start by giving it a name, this style will be used for notes in this project.

Here we can have the properties of this style filtered whether to show style and selection properties only or to show style properties only or to show all properties.

Let’s have a look at all the properties that we can control for each style, the deactivated ones won’t effect this style but the activated ones are the ones defined by us, for example we have activated the family for this style and if we set it for one of these groups, let’s say annotations we won’t be able to apply it on other groups objects.

Let’s scroll down to text options, activate the font option and lets set it to Microsoft tai le bold and its size will be 72 as we have adjusted, we have agreed to set the size to 72 so let’s activate this one as well.

Scroll down more now, let’s set the shape of the label to none, keep scrolling down and notice the verity of the options that we can set for each style, we are only going to cover what we are going to use for now, remember if we don’t want to use it keep it deactivated, for example we don’t need to set a specific fill for this template so keep it deactivated, and keep going on to check the other needed to be set properties.

From the style control bar we can create a quick style by copying the style of any selected object and saving it as a format style for other objects from the same group, we can create a new style as we just did in this example, we can copy a created format style or rename it, and of course we can delete it as well.

After we set the format style that we want to use in our project, we can check it up in the styles tab, it will be added first to the right, to apply it now on the labels we have created select the label then press on the style button, and it is done.

Now can we apply the created style for labels on 2d texts, unfortunately NO, as I have told you before we can apply the created style only on objects from the same group and if you try to do so you won’t even find the style you want once you select the text because it is from a different group of the labels.

Lets create a new label now for the blue scooter, give it a name by blue ad, and type anything regarding the color blue, then go to styles and apply the created style on it, because we forgot to remove the attach from the style options we now need to remove it manually every time we apply this style or we can adjust the style again of course.

Update now this view then move on to the red scooter view, again let’s create a new label for the red color scooter, fast for example, from the properties tab remove the attach, then go to styles and apply the note’s style on it, then update the view.

I guess this conclude our lesson about format styles for now, see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to Apply Button to many page's

So let's go to the author tab and create a new 2d image, set its name to return one page and then adjust its placement, from the left let it be 25 from the top 230 and set the width to be 45 and the height to be 45 as well.

Then let’s define the texture for this image, I have prepared some icons that I will be sharing with you in the project files, of course you can use other icons if you don’t like these ones.

Notice that this icon shape is rounded so I need to set the shape of the image to be rounded as well we can do so from the shape option in the properties tab, you can check the other properties as well if you want to make some adjustment, what I will do now is to re adjust the placement for this icon, lower down its opacity to 200 hundred, and turn its shadow off completely, you can take your time here to check the other properties that you can set also, for example let’s enable the border and set its color to red, we can select it using the eyedropper tool so it will match our icon color. We can select different type for it, and of course we can set the width of the line stroke. Finally we need to link this created return button to the view that we want to return to, and in our case it will be the color options view, while holding ctrl button drag and drop the view from the view tab to the created button, turn off the design mode to test the created button and we can see it is working just fine.

Comparing between the view of the red scooter that doesn’t have the return button yet where we need to use the views tab to move between the views and the green scooter view which we have fitted with this return button you can tell the difference between them two and regarding its importance how neat it is to add such button to your projects views.

Let’s enter the Blue scooter view, we have the button prepared now so all we have to do is to go to the collaboration tab and activate it from here, if we can’t know which one is the button we need from these objects we can go back to the view where we have adjusted the button and select it, then go to the view where we want to apply it and activate it here, then don’t forget to update the view.

Lastly let’s move on the red scooter view, and here again let’s activate the return button from the collaboration tab, then update the view, you can check the properties for this button again and adjust any of them if needed.

Hello everyone, this lesson is going to be about Creating Home button and apply it on all pages

In the last lesson we have talked about creating a button and apply it on some pages manually, here we will see how to apply a created button (or object) to all pages automatically.

Start by creating a button just as we did in the last lesson, create a 2d image from the author tab, set its properties starting by its placement and size, then select the texture for this button, choose the home icon for this one, select the ellipse type for its shape and set a stroke for its border with the red color, and finally link it to the view you want to set as a home page for your project, after setting its name to be home page off course.

Now that we have adjusted the setting of this home button lets update the current view for a start, and turn off the design mode to test the button if the link is functional and working fine, everything looks ok for now, let’s just adjust the position of the scoter a little bit and update the home view then move back to the color options view.

In the last lesson we have talked how to apply this created button (or any object) manually, select the object to find it easily in the collaborations list then go the view you want to apply it into, and activate it from the checkbox next to it, and this method works fine for one view, however when we want to apply this object to a lot of views automatically it is easier and better to select the object then use (update views with selected actors) button, this will activate the selected actor in the selected views with its current properties, off course we can use this method for one view or a set of views as well, just make sure that the needed actor is selected then use this magic button.

I hope everything goes well with you guys, we are still in the very easy part of this program but you have to understand these concepts before moving on, so keep up the hard work and I will see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to talk about text buttons.

In the last few lessons we have gone through 2d images button and its details, in this lesson we will start our journey in the text buttons.

First of all let’s start by creating a new format style, from the workshop tab open styles, create new and set its name to be addresses, I want to use it for panels so choose its family accordingly, you remember how to turn on all of the setting, just turn off the filters you don’t need and the options will be laid down for you here, I will start by setting the color and the font for this style, for color let it be this greenish one, for font I will look for a specific font which starts by m, o, that one here: monotype corsiva, then we will set the size for it to be 72, and that is it for the style defining, I don’t want to set any other options for this style for now so go ahead and close the style tab, and lets create some 2d texts buttons.

From the author tab create a 2d text and type color options for this one, then create another one and name it by technical specification, then create a third one and name it spare part list, then let’s apply the style that we have created for these addresses.

We can see the style need some modification but before we do any, let’s give these texts some names so it would be easier for us to find them in the collaboration tab when needed, to keep the work as easy as it can we will copy and paste the text string itself then add button at the end of these buttons names, we can use ctrl + c and ctrl +v for speed, once done I will go back to the work shop and activate the style tab again so we adjust this style.

Make sure that you selected the correct style, then scroll down in the properties for this style to set it as you wish, notice that there might be some confusion between some options, for example the border option can’t be set from here if you want to turn it off or to keep it active in your style, for this you need to scroll down until you find

So turn the text box border off, then scroll back to head of the properties, check all the other options and change any of them if you feel to, I will keep everything as it is, but only I will turn change the background of this style, turn its option on then lower its opacity to zero.

Now save the project, easily do so by ctrl &S on your keyboard, because we have made some unsaved changes in the view the program will prompt to update the view or cancel the made changes, lets update the view, once saved reload the home page view form the view tab and check the style of these addresses which have been updated now, frankly I don’t like this color for the text and it doesn’t goes well with the style of the project also so I will update the style again with a new color for this text, I will make it red for now, notice it doesn’t gets updated immediately, to update it you need to update the view the contain the updated style, then reload the view and the format style will gets updated to its new settings.

Let’s turn off the format style tab and adjust the home page a little bit, start by setting the position of these new buttons, and see if you would like to change the camera angel for this one, I like it as it is actually so I will go ahead and update the view to save these changes.

Now when I look at it I find little bit disturbing thing about the colors, so I will adjust the foot color of this view, from general properties tab we can choose one of the most common colors or create a custom color if we want, for me I will choose a light red color to keep the harmony between colors in our project, then don’t forget to update the view and it looks way much better already.

One last thing, some time you might create a text and apply a style to it but the style won’t get applied, for example let’s create a new 2d text and type (HOME PAGE) in it, I want this text to act such an address for this page so I will place it in the middle of the screen header, then go to format style tab and try to apply this style on it but it just doesn’t works, and not just this created style, if you try to apply any of the other styles (which I don’t have many here) well, nothing works.

The reason for this problem is the screen card on your computer and how fast can it goes, but its solving is really an easy process that we can solve it in just 2 easy steps. Move to another view, or create a new one if your project doesn’t have any yet then move back to the first view and you will find the style have been applied successfully.

Let’s adjust the position of this address, and set its freezing options so freeze so it won’t disturb us in the lessons to come, finally lets link our views to these created buttons, start by the color options one and link it to the colorless view, just hold the view with ctrl button pressed then drag and drop the view over the button, for the technical specification button I will link it to this view, and for the spare parts list button I will link it with this view, just a little reminder here I would like to mention, this course is about teaching you using this program so it is really up to you to choose the color’s, font’s, or which views to link any button to but what is really important here is how to do the things that I am showing you in each lesson, I hope that you are all aware of this and also I hope that at this point your project must have a three active buttons in its home page, the first of them linked to the color option view, which already have three different options of colors, if everything is ok then we can move on to our next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson I will introduce you to some events control in solidworks composer.

First of all this is an intruder lesson, I had to add it on demand one of our friends to explain an important point about the privacy of your 3d model in solidworks composer but we will go these options further more in the fourth section of this course.

As you have seen until now, solidworks composer takes your 3d model designed by solidworks or any other compatible 3d designing program and put it in a showing environment where you might need to share with your customer at some points, or even upload it to the internet and share it completely, but what if there are some sides of your projects or some features that you want to hide and you can’t change the original model.

Solidworks composer allows you to put some limits and restricts on showing your model, like rotating to forbid rotating it in a specific angel, or zooming or even highlighting, but these limitation are to be applied on each view separately because applying any of these locks on any view won’t activate it on the other view as we can see here for example.

Activating the locks on the other view haven’t activated these locks on this view as you can see.

And one last thing, solidworks composer also have some security measures to apply on measuring or dimensioning the model of the project and we will go through this one as well in the near future, but until then, keep up the good work and I will see you next lesson.

Hello. In this list, we are going to compare labels with text.

Remember a few lessons ago we have created some labels and talked about the labels options and how to create them or set its style, we even created a format style for them and applied this style on each of the created labels back then.

One of the most important difference between labels and text is that labels will be placed in the space of the project while the text will be placed on a fixed plane parallel to the screen, this means rotating the model camera will rotate the label inside while the text will stay in its position. And this can be considered the main important difference actually between them and 2d texts.

To explain the idea further more let’s create a new text and type down the same text of the label, we can copy the text from the label and paste it on the text by the string box from the option tab, then we will apply the style that we have prepared previously to save time for now, as we have seen before, it won’t get applied until we update the view then reload it, and it is here now.

By holding the mouse scroll and moving the mouse left or right we can rotate the model and notice that the label will gets rotated and moved in the space of the project while the 2d text will stay fixed on its position which we can set from its option tab by setting a value for right and top space as we have seen before.

After setting the position for the text ads that we have created now i will delete the label from this page because it serves the purpose of this ads better than the label in my opinion, then I will update the view.

Moving on to the green scooter view, I will do the same thing now to keep the harmonic between all the views, so create a text box and type the same text then apply the style we have agreed on and update the view, move on to the blue scooter and do the same, please notice that it is my personal opinion to make these text instead of labels but you can keep them as label if you want, what’s really matter is that you now know how to create and adjust both.

Hello, everyone. In this lesson, we will start talking about movements of the model

And in order to do so I will open the technical specification page.

Now we can see that this view is left behind, so just before we start our lesson, lets adjust it a little, I will create an address for the view, it will be (technical specification page), then apply the addresses style, lets rename the view itself from the views tab and update the view, reload it to apply the changes, then adjust the position of it.

The next view is not needed so I will delete it completely.

Then I will set the next view to be break, because we have created it to show the break specification as I remember.

This will be enough for us to start our lesson, just test the link between your views if it is working and everything looks fine for now.

For a start I will create a selection set for each handle of the scooter, the left and right ones, this will make it easier for us to select these parts later when needed, to do so select the needed parts, I don’t need this one for example so I will exclude it by holding ctrl on keyboard and pressing on it again, then from the assembly tab press create selection set button and give it a name, this will be the right handle set, then we will repeat the process for the left one.

After that we will create a new set for the rod or the handle itself, to do so we can select only the needed parts as we have done now or we can hide all the other parts to select only the shown ones, as we are doing now, to fast selection we can press the mouse left button and drag it to create a selection box as you might have figured out by yourself by now, dragging this box to the left from the right will select all the parts that touches or conclude in, while dragging it to the right from the left will select only the parts that will be inside it completely, and we hide the not needed parts by pressing the mouse right button then select hide, once you have only the needed parts visible select all and create a new selection set.

Finally go to assembly tab and from the checkboxes beside the model show it all again then update the view and now we are ready to start doing some movements.

From the assembly tab select the created left handle selection set and from the transform tab activate the rotation button.

Once the order activated solidworks composer will show you a 3 axis symbol that define the rotation on which axis and around which point will be done, to choose a rotation axis from a specific point hold alt key on your keyboard and select the rotation axis you want, now this might be a tricky process a little especially if you do have a lot of parts all above them and as we are trying to do now we want to rotate this set of selected parts around the hinge of the handle, but if you select a wrong point it will be clear immediately like this and you can stop and go back, tricky as I told you but all you can do is to look for the right axis then rotate the selected set as you want.

Let’s do the same for the right handle group, notice that the axis selection process is all about the right camera angel, so rotate the camera to an angel where you will be able to catch the needed axis then rotate the right handle as we did to the left handle manually, we will talk about rotating by specific degree in lessons to come.

Once done adjust the view a little bit then create a new view, and name it by foldable handle, then it might be better if you move the view to be below the technical specification view in the view tab for no good reason.

Now in this view we need to activate the return page button so we would be able to link it to its section main view, and we all know how to do it by now, hint, from the collaboration tab, once done update the link of this button to be linked to technical specification tab then update the view.

Turn off the design mode to try the created link and everything looks fine I think.

Now what we need to do is to create some buttons on this view that demonstrate the features of this scooter which we are trying to put in spot here, for example the break system and the foldable handle things, we really should be able to do this easily and fast by now so I will skip these button creating process and leave its setting up to your own test.

Now I have adjusted the technical features view in this way, as I told you it is up to you how to adjust it, the important thing is to create these three buttons you see here and link each of them to its view, notice that we have also split the break view to two views one about the breaks and added a new one about the motor.

Now to test the created buttons and their links to the views turn off the design mode, pressing on each of them buttons will open the linked view as we can see, everything looks fine here, but we only need to add a return button in this view and link it to the technical feature view, the same goes for this view.

This actually conclude our lesson for now, but there is an assignment for you to do now, a homework if you would like to call it this way, and it will make it easy for you, I want you to create a new view and link this new view to this button that I added right now, remember the handle selection set that we have created at the beginning of our lesson, I want you to use this selection set to rotate the handle around its rotation center to create this scooter body folded view, after all you have learnt until now this must be easy to do for you guys, so I hope you all luck and see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, this lesson will be to show you the best way to solve our first assignment.

What I have asked you to do is to create a new view for the scooter after rotating its handle to be folded around its rotation center like this, and link this view to its button in the technical specification view.

Start by creating a new view for the scooter in any position with any panels in it then name it by foldable body which we are going to adjust in this lecture.

Lets start by hiding the panels and keep only the scooter at the meddle of the screen, we have already prepared a selection set for the handle parts in the last lesson so go to assembly tab and select the handle selection set.

Then from the transform tab, activate the rotate button then select the rotation axis while holding alt key, here we can rotate it manually or by entering an angel value from the properties tab which shows after selecting the rotation axis, where the direction of the rotation is set according to the last position and the value of the angel can be positive or negative to rotate left or right, as you can see here if I entered the angel manually by -60 degree for example.

Let’s undo this rotation in this direction then make sure that the rotate button is still active, then reselect the rotation axis by holding alt key and I will rotate the handle manually this time, notice the rotation direction is positive this time, we can rotate it manually to around 80 degree, but this won’t be the correct solution I hope for.

So undo this rotation and reselect the rotation axis again and from the degree tab type down the degree we want to set for this rotation, in our case it will be 80 degree,

once finished we need to adjust the view a little bit, update the view and adjust its button as needed, there are no rules here so just do it as you wish, but make sure to link the created view to its button in the technical featurs, and if every thing is ok, you can move on to our next lesson.

Hey, everyone. IN THIS LESSON we are going to talk about how to create a spare part list, which as we all know consists of an exploded view of the assembly parts, or sub assembly parts as well.

Before we gets going let’s review our project and the what we have learned until know, in the last few lessons we have created a project and we have adjusted some buttons in it, each button has been linked to a view, the color options button has been linked to the color changing page where we have adjusted three color options, the red where we set some parts of this scooter assembly to be red, We also adjusted the blue with changing the color for the background and some parts of this scooter as well to be blue water and the same for green color. We have also adjusted technical specifications button in the home page and inside the technical specifications page, we have adjusted some buttons to see some specification of this scooter, such as a foldable handle or the high efficiency motor or effective brake and the foldable body, which has been our first assignment and we have seen how to do it perfectly in the last lesson.

Now go back to home page. Check the spare parts list button that we have created before, in this lesson and a few to come we are going to talk about how to professionally create a spare parts lists starting with the easiest set of parts available all the way as hard as it can gets for this scooter.

Start by creating an address for this view as we have done before. Let's make it “spare parts list” after typing it down select the address style from the styles tab, Okay. Set the background gradient or opacity to zero and adjusted the position of the address to be in the middle of the screen.

I must declare here that before we created the addresses style we set it to be red but then I had to use it for a project I had in hand and I needed it to be green so I changed it accordingly, you can notice that whenever I open a previously prepared view the color of the addresses in this view gets changed, you can keep yours red if you want or you can change it to any color you prefer, it totally up to you.

Now in the view we have created for the spare parts just give a name for the address that we created for the page, update the view then we can start working on creating some spare lists.

Whether you are handling an assembly that you have designed or if you are working on an assembly that have been packed for you, the very first correct step normally will be to create some selection sets to ease the selecting of the needed parts for you, this allows you to include parts from different assemblies if the parts you are going to create a list for are not collected all in the same subassembly, I will create a selection set for the front wheel group to start with.

Now with the selection set created lets select it then from the visibility tab in the home tool bar I will select show selection and ghost other, then create a new view, don’t worry about the other options because we are going to cover them later.

Now go to Transform Tab. In the transform tab here. You can control the movements of the parts that you want to move, and we have already looked at the rotate button before and in this lesson we are going to talk about translate and liner explosion's. After selecting the front wheel group, let me show you how to eliminate some parts if you needed to so let’s deselect the part that holds it to the scooter body by pressing control, then pressing on it while keep pressing controls on keyboard, This will deselect this part. Now let’s activate the translate button. If we want to translate this group according to a specific axis. We need to activate detect curves button or by holding the Alt key pressed from your keyboard while choosing the axis. Let's select this side of this part and slide the wheel GROUP down.

After sliding the wheel group down let's slide this fender back up. Looks good now, let’s select the front wheel parts without the dismantled fender then we're going to try the linear explosions on this group, so just with the parts selected slide them directly to the left like this.

Notice that this explosion will not be applied equally on all parts. That's because solidworks composer does not recognize when is this part turn to be installed or removed. For example, for these screws. So if you have a specific order of the explosion, you might need to do it by manually or at least adjust this one after creating automatically, as we are doing right now, I will just do some little modification here to give this explosion a little sense, then let’s update our view. Remember if you want to keep the old camera angel we can use the camera view that we have created before and let's just update our view according to it.

Now this view looks fine, but what if there are some parts that are in here now but I don’t want to show it in the list, well let’s take these screws for an example, after selecting them just right click on them, then select hide selected parts, This will hide them. And the same goes for any part you want to hide as you know.

Finally lets adjust the name of the view which we created, it's going to be the front wheel exploded.

And that'll be all for this lesson. See you next lesson.

Hello Again, this lesson is going to be an introduction for creating bill of materials of the exploded parts, so let’s get started.

From the workshop bar lets activate the BOM window, this will pop it our at the right of our screen, from the bom ID’s we can set the range of the parts that we want to create this list for, in this example i will select only the visable geyometry then press on generate bom ID’s and we can see the Bill of materials generated automatically on the left, but before we go there lets see some of the options that we do have here bellow.

The first option we can activate is to compare property, and we can set the property here for example to the name of the parts of the assembly, in its options we can set how many charechters to skip from right, so if we set it to 3 this means that solidworks will compare the names of the parts without the last 3 charechters of its names, then show all of these parts that have the similer name (or new name without the last 3 letters) as a one part, let’t see an example for this one, if i set it to 3 then becuase all of the parts in this project dose have unicode excluding the last three charechters then it will be shown as one part but pay attention to its qty here, lets decrease the comparing charecters to 2, reset the bill of materials and create a new one, the result is the same, decrease it again to 1 and update the bill of materials, here we can notice there is a slight different but the total qty will stay the same as you can see, this option can become in handy when we are dealing with an assembly that got a lot of different screws that we don’t want to identify its size for example, other than that i really haven’t used it in the real life yet but it is good to know that there is such an option in solidworks composer, lets now turn off this option compleatly and reset the bom then create a new one again.

What we will do now is we are going to change the predefined option for BOM ID’s to apply it to Selection, then we will select the previosly created front wheel selection set, make sure that all its parts are shown and its opacity is set to default, then reset the BOM and create a new

Now the list is created again in the left BOM tab, but the list of parts normally means nothing if it is not fitted with callouts, the callouts are the ballons that are linked to each part with its specific number in it, we get these balons created automatically by pressing on create callout button here, also we can control its settings from the callout tab in the options menu,

if not selected you need to select create one callout per bom id’s, and i will leave the attach point up to you, once finished activate the show/hide callout button at the bottom left then press on show/hide BOM table,

Let’s go through the created list now, notice that the numbers of the parts are not in order and we will clerify the reason for this in the next lesson, beside we can notice that there are some parts that we have excluded from our selection set before like the scraws, if you want to add them now all you need to do is to select one of them then press on create callout, this will create a call out for this excluded part and add it to the list of parts or to the bill of materials automatically, let’s do this again for this bearing and it will be added to the list automatically with its qty as well.

Now lets check the options for the created list, as any object in the project we will have the ability to freeze it of keep it free, we can change its opacity, which i will leave it to be 255, we can activate this option here which highlites the parts that we mark over the list, this will be handy if you plane to export this project as an exe or htm but if you plane to have it printed out then no need for this one,

The update button can helps if we added some new parts to the BOM as we did now

The placement options allows us to fix the position of this list in one of screen sides or to leave it free which I prefer to set it where it suits us best.

The text option is to set the font style with its size.

Now that we have adjusted the list let’s look at the callouts, first things first, nobody like a random positioning so it is better to create a magnet line from the author window and use this line to align the callout in a neat alignment just like this.

Now with all these changes done to the view, it will be a good idea to update our view, an important note here is that the view will be updated according to the viewport of the program, so if you keep this workshop window open the view won’t be as wide as it is when it is closed and you can see the difference.

Let’s adjust the camera angel a little, notice that we do have a blank callout here, just remove it for now, adjust the other callouts for all parts, and it is preferable to have the balloon as close as it can be for its part, after setting them lets activate the return button that we have created previously from the collaboration tab, adjust its position a little, then link it to the spare parts main view and finally update the view with all these changes again.

Check all the buttons of the project related to this view, if everything is ok then you are ready to move on to the next lesson.

Hello everyone thıs lesson will be about creating another liner explosion view with shown and hidden parts from the assembly

Let’s start by creating some buttons for the groups that we are going to create exploded views in this course, we have already created the first one which was the front wheel group, we will also do the same for the back wheel group, also we will create an exploded view for the battery group as well, and finally we will create another one for the handle bar group which as you can guess will be an assignment for you to do in its time.

Now that we have created the four buttons with the name of their views, select them all then apply the address style on them before we start adjusting each of them on its own, name the first button by exploding front wheel button, adjust its place as you see fits, we will set the left to 25 and the top to 75, finally we will turn off the border and set the background to zero.

Following the same method adjust the other three buttons, once finished don’t forget to link the previously created front wheel view to the created front wheel group button, test the button if it is functional and if everything is ok let’s start adjusting the back wheel group.

With the camera adjusted in this angel, create a new view, then let’s turn off the buttons we don’t need in this view, mainly we will only keep the return and the home button even thier links needs to be updated, then lets create a new camera view, and lets update our view as well.

Then go back to the spare parts main page and link the created view to its button, and while you are on to it, don’t forget to rename the view by back wheel exploded view.

Test the created link, it must be Ok now, and also link the spare parts main view with the return button from the backwheel view, and update the view.

Now we have already created a selection set for the back wheel group before, use it to select all its parts, then from the home window,

Select show selection and hide others, this will hide all the other actors which are not selected, I will adjust the render options a little

Then create a new camera position view, actually we have already created one for this group so let’s just update the old one and delete this one, also delete this view as well, then open the transform window.

Previously we have used the linear explosion button which automatically slides all parts of the selected group on one axis, we will turn it off for this example and instead we will activate the translate button and start doing this process manually.

Select this screw and notice the three axis sign that shows on it, slide it along Z axis then rotate the model to do the same for the other screw on the other side, from the assembly tab activate the assembly selection option, this will help you select the wheel assembly which include the parts inside the wheel itself which can be tricky to select manually, once done slide the wheel group down a little on Y axis then all the way far from the assembly along X axis, adjust the camera angel a little bit in order to be able to see all the parts included, then deactivate the assembly selection mode, and select all the parts of the wheel, now we can use linear explosion which we have learnt how to use before, just select the parts and slide along one axis, we can see the bearing exploded out the wheel, but its rod seems like it needs a little help so select it alone and slide it along the same Z axis, meanwhile you can adjust the other parts if you find them in need of some adjustments.

Finally lets adjust the camera position for this view so all the parts will be shown and clear, I think this angle is OK, so we will go to views tab and update this view.

And that'll be all for this lesson. See next lesson.

Hello everyone, this lesson is going to be about creating bill of materials for the exploded back wheel group which we have adjusted in last lesson, so let’s get started.

As we did before, we need to activate the Bill of Materials window from the workshops bar, and I will choose to apply the BOM ID’s to visible parts, because all the other parts are hidden remember, don’t forget to create a camera position view to ease setting its angel whenever needed, there is no need now to select the parts because we have already set the BOM id’s to visible parts, just press on generate BOM id’s button and because the Show/hide BOM table button is active the list have been created and Popped up immediately as you can see.

Now for callouts lets select these parts, then press on create callouts button, the show/hide callout buttons have been already activated but if not you know how to, just press it once and the callouts will turn visible, I find them messy as always in this situation so we need to trim them a little bit, go to author bar and grab a magnet line, let’s drop a straight one above the parts and another one bellow the parts, I want the second one to be aligned with the parts themselves not the screen so hold one of its ends and rotate it this way, then let’s adjust the balloons that we want to align according to this line, I will keep the automatic magnet off for now because I want to be selective for these balloons, there are no fixed rules to do so as you know, but it is always preferable if you keep the balloon as much close to its part as possible, and never to cover any other parts. Once you finish sorting these balloons, we can update the view, notice that because the workshops window is active the viewport dimensions is changed, so it will be better to close it and then readjust the size of the view objects accordingly, you can see it is better this way now, we only need to activate the return button and link it to the spare parts main page before updating the view again.

And that concludes our lesson for today, i will see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to talk about the free drag movement.

Let’s start by creating a new view for the battery group, turn off all of the collaboration in it, this is embarrassing, why haven’t we gave a name for this home button yet until now, I will rename it by return home button, or icon, then let’s adjust the camera so it will show the battery position of the scooter, as you might know the battery is located inside the chasses itself, normally inside the part where the user of the scooter stands.

Let’s just find a proper angel to look at this part, ok this angel fits I think, we will update the view for a start then go to transform bar.

Before doing any work on exploding the view don’t forget to snap a camera view to save the camera position, then let’s start dismantling the assembly

Here we do have four screws that need to be removed to free the inside parts but notice that each two of these screws will slide in different direction so we can’t slide the four of them all in one action, in such situation you must select the parts that will move in the same direction only and slide them together.

Now to see the parts inside we might need to hide some of the parts and assemblies, we can off course remove the battery from the front after bending the front wheel as it is done in the real life, but this course is about the program capabilities not the scooter itself, so in order not to forget this I will remove the battery from the back of the scooter, just because this fine program allows me to.

Start by selecting the parts that will get in the way for the removing process, we can select them by hand or from the assembly tree, then from the home bar select hide selection button, let’s hide these parts as well, and we can see the battery back cover now.

Using the translate order which is still active slide the cover along X axis, then we will be able to see the battery box itself, we can slide it along x axis as well but what I am going to do is I will activate the free drag button, this will allow me to drag this batter freely without limitation to any axis as you can see, so I will just pick it up and drop it here for now.

The view in this position look OK, update it now, I don’t remember creating this view but we don’t need it so I will delete it anyway, the only thing missing now is the return button so as always I will add it from the collaboration tab and link it to the spare parts main page then update the view again, turn off the design mode to test the created buttons, and everything looks OK I think.

On last thing, I think it will be better if we ghost the scooter chasses so the battery place will gets visible, in order to do so you only need to select the part then from the home bar select the visibility button then select ghost selection, we have seen how the free drag works which was the core of our lesson but the truth is I don’t like this tool and never uses it, so I will select the battery again and from the transform bar I will select restore neutral position then update the view again, it is up to you if you want to keep the battery thrown where we have placed it but for me I will call it off today and see you next lesson.

BOM for exploded Spare Parts -3

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to create another bill of materials but this time it will be for this small set of parts, so let’s get started

Start by going to the workshop bar and activate the bill of material window, we need to reset the BOM ID’s before start and I will explain the reason why in the third section of this course, but for now just reset it before applying the BOM ID’s to the selection the select the battery with its small sets of parts then use generate BOM id’s button to create the Bill of material list which we can see in its tab at the left of the screen

After creating the BOM list, create the callouts for the parts, the show/hide callouts button has already been activated so the balloons will pop out immediately, while the show/hide BOM table needs to get activated, once pressed the BOM list shows on the screen, lets adjust its position and size little bit, and adjust the order of the callouts as well, I will go the transform bar and turn off the translate button which is on from our last lesson, this will allow me to see the parts better, then of course we will create the magnet line, we can stick the balloons to the line manually, or we can just activate the magnet and drag the line over the balloons that we want it to be sticking to it.

Finally let’s turn off the workshop window, then adjust the position of the bill of materials list accordingly, adjust the callouts as well along with the camera position as needed, then from the views tab we need to update our view, and this will conclude our lesson for this time, in our next lesson we will start creating some explosion paths, and I will see you then.

Hello everybody, in this lesson we are going to talk about Explosion path.

Solidworks composer allows you to create an explosion path that defines the way the exploded part or the transformed part have transformed through.

To create such a path all you need to do is to activate its button from the author bar, but after selecting the needed parts off course.

Notice that this path to be created does have two options to be, either associative or a non-associative path from neutral, for this example in hand it won’t make any difference because we have parts that have been slide straight from its neutral position but in other example we will see the difference in a better way.

For now select these screws and activate create an associative path from neutral then select the lower screws as well and activate the non-associative path from neutral this time, notice that there is no difference at all but only because of our example in hand.

Once the path gets created it becomes an object in the project and each path does have its special properties, to define them let’s select all four of these paths, do so while holding ctrl to select them together, start by its width which shouldn’t be more than 0.5 in my opinion then let’s define the color for a start, I don’t like black paths because it becomes very dark in the view, instead I prefer to choose a lighter color for them, the turn down its opacity to around 200, the type is ok but we also can choose another type from this variety of lines, we will talk about the construct mode in our next lessons with another example, but for now these are the options that we want to set.

Notice how neat it has become now comparing to its last situation, I hope you will find this helpful for you guys and I will see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, this will be your second assignment.

today’s assignment will be to create an exploded view for the handle bar group, and link it to its button which we have created before in our lessons, the outcome should be something like this in the very least, you can align the callouts with a magnet line or place them in order around the rounded parts of this group as this, and off course you need to activate the return button and link it to the spare part list.

Have fun guys.

Hello again in this lesson we will adjust the information that we can show in the BOM table

Previously we have talked about this BOM bar, but what we haven’t say that we can adjust its columns from this option here, we can see a list of available properties in which we can choose the source of these properties, whether from the meta, or evaluated or normal properties, even if we don’t have evaluated properties for this model.

To add any properties to the BOM List, we select it from the table left side and add it to the displayed properties list to the right, we can do this by this double arrow button by the way.

For example let’s add some random properties to see how, once added press on apply button to see it in the list immediately, and by the opposite arrows button we can remove this added properties just like this, let’s do it again for another option, choose the path for example this time and apply it, I don’t really need it in my BOM list so I will remove it again.

In the options of these properties there is so much variety that cover every option for each object in the project but normally we add only the necessary information in bill of materials list, so no need to add the configuration type for example even if we can do it, but it might become in handy if the designer of these parts have added some notes regarding these parts for example.

Hello everyone, this lesson will be about changing the render mode to fit the spare parts views.

If you’ve done your homework you’d remember that we have talked about the render mods already. but what we have not talked before yet is how to benefit from these modes to get some creative results, lets select the silhouette mode for example to this view.

We will create a new view for the model with this mode selected, for this view we need to remove the foot color so is will set it to white, also let’s turn off the ground below the model, and then update the view.

Let’s go to workshop bar and activate the high resolution image window, pressing on preview will show us a demonstration of how this image will be, clearly needs some adjustments, so before saving it lets define its setting as we learned before, the size of the image is already set, the quality also, I will activate the remove background option even we have a white background already, and what really matters is to have the bill of material list included in the view so drag it a little to the viewport, looks fine here. Also we need to adjust the callouts positions, now preview it again, needs only to hide the return button otherwise it won’t be an image, then it will be perfect for me. So just update the view and it will be enough about this view.

Now that you know how to apply these modes on any view you want i encourage you to ignite your creativity on some other views and trying some other render modes don’t stick to the silohete one.

And this will be all for this lesson, see you next one.

Hello, everyone.

If you are in graphic design sector then you probably know the difference between two of the most important programs in this sector, Photoshop and Illustrator, Photoshop can handle dealing with images that is created by pixels while illustrator on the other hand can handle Vectoral Graphics files which is created as vectors not dot’s, if you are not very familiar with the concepts I urge you to do a little search over the internet to understand the difference, but what does this have to do with solid works composer, this is what we are going to learn in this while we are talking about technical illustration.

Remember the view that we have adjusted in black and white for the spare parts last lesson, well that was an image as know and what we call image consists of pixels and dot’s, today we are going to create a smellier result for another exploded view, and let’s select the back wheel group for this purpose, then from the workshop bar activate the technical illustration window.

Adjust the view a little first, once you find the view and the objects in it ready, just press on vectorization preview, and here is a sample of what we will have for this view.

Notice that the file gets created as a .SVG file, which stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, and as a start, we can distinguish the parts here because they are not just dots in the picture like in the images but here they are vectoral objects as you can see, this view needs a lot of adjustments actually so let’s dig into it.

First of all we need to adjust the callouts for these part’s, have them aligned along a magnet line and it will be enough, let’s preview it again, yes it is getting better, now we can start adjusting the setting for the technical illustration itself.

The hot spot options are to define the ability to highlight the marked parts from the BOM list or links if there is any.

The options tab next is to define some special definitions like the page setup, size and orientation, and other options that we never use actually except maybe the dash scale which will scale the output svg file accordingly.

Finally the multiple tab which we have gone through it before when we exported all the views of the project with one order, the same goes for technical illustration.

Now return to the first tab which we skipped, the lines tab gives us the ability to define the colors and thickness and how the outlines of the vectoral objects will looks in our technical illustration, for example change the output outline style to construction edges, and here is how it looks like, change it again to sharp edges and you can tell the difference between them two, in the end you can define the setting about bill of material and the callouts, beside you can see tips about viewing vector graphic.

Now after adjusting the setting that we have went through as we want, we can preview the illustration again, check its details, zoom in and out if needed, once ready close the preview and press on save as button, and save it as .svg file, then close the workshop window, and that is enough for this lesson.

Hello. Everyone

Now that we are getting close to the end of our first section of the course. Let's talk about some of window features that we have left undiscussed until now.

See solidworks composer by default keeps some of its windows and taps inactive to avoid filling the screen, but also allows the user to activate each of these taps whenever needed from the window bar, notice that by default we always had assembly tab active for example but if we want to deactivate it we only have to tick on this box next to it and it will get hidden from our windows, the same goes for collaboration tree tab, or the BOM id’s tab which we have gone through over it before.

Next we have the view tab, which we always had from the beginning, and we are very familiar with these orders in it, but what we haven’t checked before is this small bar of it which can be used to play the views forward automatically, or move backward as well.

The layers tab is to show the active layers in the project and the objects on each layer, we have kept all the objects of this project in one layer, but we are able to keep the addresses in one separate layer for example.

The markers tab I intend to leave for the third section of this course so we will skip it for now.

The properties tab is where we have done all the magic regarding all objects in our project until now so we are pretty familiar with it I think.

The information tab is where you can check the project model or parts file name or configuration.

The time line tab also will stay for the third section of this course.

The workshop tab options gives you the ability to keep it activated in the right side of the screen, while as we have seen before it can be changed according to the active workshop, whether it is the styles, the textures, or the image library which we are going to check extensively in the fourth section of this course, or the views, BOM, Technical illustrations, high resolution image which we have checked before during this section.

The time line is going to have its own lessons in the sections to come, but as an introduction to it we need to know that it is the tool we use for creating animations in solidworks composer, we can activate its window from the window tab as other windows but once we press on it the project mode will be changed automatically to animation mode, as you can see here, this is the time line of our animation, and on it we can control the keys of our project parts properties at each second of the animation, pressing on this icon at the upper left corner of the viewport will switch us back to the view mode.

Also the same button can switch us back to animation mode if needed, and from any view in the project, you can just press on this button and it will transfer you to where you left at the animation mode, even though the switching back to view mode will take you back to the first view of your project regardless the view you left this mode at.

Now let’s take a look at the other buttons on this tab, the switch window button will show you a list of open projects so you can switch between, here we only have this one open, the full screen is to widen your view port over your screen, the layout allows you to choose between some options of layout for your screen if you want to check your project from more than one point of view in the same time, also you can apply the full screen mode here as well if you want to widen the viewport a little bit more, and from here let’s return to one pane view and turn off the time line window as well, then call it off for our lesson this time.

Hello everyone in this listen, Lets just adjust the whole documentation.

Start from entering the document properties. First Let's adjust our project paper space, enter its tab from this left menu, and under the paper space format we can choose the size we want for our project, I think A3 is ideal for such project, press on apply after choosing it then press on OK to close the properties panel.

We could have done this at the very beginning of the project, but I wanted to show how to change the size of your project viewport if you ever needed to besides doing the necessary adjustments for the project itself which we will show you in this project.

Start by the Home Page Panel, I want it to be centered in the viewport of the project, because we have locked it before we need to open it from the collaboration tab, select it then set the text alignment properties to center, this will center the typing inside its box, so what I am going to do is to make its box itself as wide as our screen, we can do so by turning the auto fit of the placement off then set the box position to be at zero space from the left and its width to be 420 as A3 pages width, set the height to 40 as well, and now our address panel of the pages have been set.

As we are on the home page lets set an important button that every nowadays customer will ask you to add, an internet site link, so create a normal button just as we have learned before, set its position as you like, I will set mine in this left lower corner for this project, then choose the icon that fits the button, adjust its shape to be circular, set a red border for it to fit the other buttons in the project, and turn off its shadow, then let’s set its link, first we need to set the link type which we have seen before, whether a file or a marker or any other type, this one will be an http link, I have already copied the link I want so I will paste it here, notice that the link option already starts with http so there is no need for www or http in the written address, once prepared press ok then let’s turn off the design mode to test our button link, pressing on it will open our Facebook page which we invite you to follow if you are not a member yet,

Now move on with the needed adjustment, open the color option page, the camera angel of the scoter needs some adjustment but because the design mode is still off, we can’t rotate the camera, we have turned off the rotation for this view before remember. Turn if off a little and adjust the camera angel as needed, i think this is ok, then turn it on again.

Now the page needs an adress, so create a 2d text box and type down the adress you want for this one, i will stick to color option, then go to styles and apply the adresses style on this text, the created text has been set to be locked in the view mode and now i can’t select it beck because of it but no worries, we can select it from the collaboration tab, and while we are here i see that there are some objects that we forgote to give a name when we created, like this one here, it is the photo of the green scoter so i will name it after it, this one is for the red one, this one is from another view so leave it for now, this is the adress which we have created now so i will adjust its placement just as i did for the home page before, once done lets update the view.

Notice that the home returning button is out of the view port, so we need to adjust its new position, do so then update the view again, then check the view by reopening it,

The green is safe label needs a position adjustment, it will be better if positioned on the left top corner, set by 30 from top and left then update the view again and move on to the next view.

To keep the same angel of the camera for these views we can return to the adjusted one, the green in our case, and create a new camera view, then go back again to the blue view and activate the created camera view for it, adjust the blue ad position by 30 from left and 30 from top as well, the same for home button to its new defined position and update the view at last, and finally adjust the red scooter view to be the same, use the camera view to adjust the camera position and the rest is easy work, then delete the camera view which we won’t be using it any more.

Now an ımportant thıng to add for your project is some instruction about how to benefit from it especially for the people who are not familiar with this type of catalogues or internet webpages, for example I will add a 2d text here that explains how to rotate the camera around the scooter, zoom in and out to check its details, now need some adjustments off course, give it a name as a start, adjust its properties as you see fits, then update the view, and apply this note on the other colors views as well.

Now remember we can have the same note with changed properties in different views, to demonstrate again we will make the typing text color in this one blue, actually only the border color will be enough, then update the view, do the same to the green view then change between these views to check the results.

Delete these views and camera views which are not needed any more.

Once OK let’s go back to the home page and move on to its next view.

Here we have the technical specification page, start by adjusting the address as we have done before, then adjust the return home button, now looks OK update the view then move on to the next one.

Here we have the foldable handle view, the technical features address need adjustment again, so I can just update it from the other view where I have already adjusted it right now, or I can re adjust it again which I will do to show you guys again in case if you are missing anything out yet, once done update the view then move on to the next one.

Here we have the motor view now, I will adjust the position of the home button again, but instead of adjusting the address I will leave it for now and only adjust the camera and update the view then move on to the next view, I will adjust the home button in this one as well, and adjust the camera as well then update the view, then I will go back to one of the views where I have already adjusted the technical specification address and after selecting the new views use the update views with selected actor button to apply it on the selected views, after that open these views to check if the applied actor is not affecting the view and adjust the camera position if needed, then update these views, this one (foldable body) only needs to adjust the home returning button so do it quickly then update it as well.

Now to the final set of views in this project, move on to the front wheel exploded view, now the view itself looks Ok, but only for the sake of adjusting something in it for now, I will change the render mode to be silhouette and set the foot color to white, then update the view.

Move on to the next one, this one looks like it needs a little magic here, so drag the magnet lines, then adjust the position of the misplaced balloons, set the foot color to white then update the view.

The battery view looks the worse, adjust the position of the list, this happened because we changed the size of our project to A3 remember, do the needed adjustments quickly then update the view.

The view 71 which you can see here is a prototype I have been working on for our next lesson, so we are not going to go through it right now, but we will see it in our next lesson.

Hello guys, after last lesson where we have finished adjusting our project I closed it to reopen it now in order to show you something, when we open a project it is set to be opened by animation mode by default not by view mode, and that is the main reason for us having this scooter in this weird situation after all the adjustments we have done, because mainly we haven’t adjusted the animation mode and it will be our core for the next section lessons.

Needless to say now that if we go on and exported the project in this situation the exported exe or html page will have the same weird position and we may not benefit from all the work we have done as I am about to show you now, it will takes some time to publish the project as a package or exe depending on your processer speed.

Now that it is finished, if we open the created exe you will see the same wideness I told you about, and again the main reason is that the project is set to lunch in animation mode not in view mode, although you can reach for the view created in animation mode from the view tab in the left and you can use the links created between these views as well, but this is not the right way to use this program.

In order to fix this we can either adjust the animation mode entrance and this we have to do if our project contains some animation so we use the animation and the view mode together in the same project and this is the most common way that I prefer you get used to it, otherwise for this exceptional case where we only have used view mode in our project we can set the project to lunch on view mode from the properties but I am not going to do so because I want you to learn the general method for this time then it is up to your judgment what method to choose according to the project in hand.

Now the key to adjust a mutual front page for your project that works for view or animation mode starts from the time line, activate it form the window tab, we will check it in details in the future but for now let me tell you this, we can grab any of the view that we have created before in the view mode and drop it in the time line at any minute or second of it, and this will apply the properties of the camera and the model of this view on this second, even though it won’t add the actors that are active in this view and we’re gonna need to add them manually.

To find out which panels do we need to add, there is no need to create them again, just open the view you dropped on the time line and from the collaboration tab check the active panels here, for example we select the home page address, then change again to the animation mode and after moving to the second where we dropped the view, from the same list activate this panel.

Repeat the same process for the other three panels in this view and as you can see now the front of our project animation mode looks like the front of the view mode, except the color changes which I have made.

So now if we save the changes that we have done for the project, then from save as option lets export it as a package again, this mean an exe file by the way, then wait until the package is ready, and open it, see how it opens now with this prepared frontal of the animation mode, and the buttons links are working also which links us to any view we have created in the view mode before.

I will leave you checking this masterpiece that we have created together, I hope that you have used your imagination during the lessons and added up your special tune to this project, and now we still have one last thing I need to teach you while we are in this section, so hope on to the next lesson.

Hello, everyone. In this lesson, we're going to talk about how to create a professional image for your product, Even if it is not produced yet.

Before talking about the image let’s talk about the models in this project, remember this other scooter that I have loaded into the project at the very first beginning of our course. And I've hidden it back then, let’s turn it back on and before adjusting its opacity lets create a new view and in this view, turn off all the panels from collaboration tab.

Now using the translate order slide the other scooter a little to the right, here we have the two scooters active in the project but even though all of its parts are active still it is not showing, this is because its opacity is set to zero, so select the scoter main assembly then lift up its opacity to max limit. ad it with this and love it. And then says its opacity. Now, we do have two scooters next to them, next to each other.

Now the reason why I activated this one now is to show you this, solidworks composer allows you to copy and paste any actor in its project and this includes geometry actors as well, to do so select the actor you want to copy, in our case I will select the scooter assembly model itself and press ctrl + c or copy actors then select the root folder and choose paste actors, notice that it will be pasted over the copied model assembly in the same position, slide it to the right to isolate it from the original one.

Now in the same view we have three scooter side to side, I will take this opportunity to create some color carnival here, so selecting the first one I will rename it by red, the second will be blue, and the last will be green.

And I will leave it to you to change the colors of these scooter as needed accordingly, a hint, you will need to create a selection set for each one.

Now let’s turn off two of these models, and set the view port to only show the page space by this button bellow, then let’s create a background for the whole view.

From the properties tab set the position of this 2d image as shown, and its size must be identical to A3 sizes, set its freezing option then enable the background option, this will make it behind the model in the project as we can see.

I will set its name to be red scooter background.

SolidWorks Composer gives you the ability to create some photos of the model in your project as if it has been taken by your professional camera. Not like one, but a real camera photo, with a focal point and everything.

From the texture option for the created background photo, I will choose one of the images I have already prepared, this beach road looks fine I think, and now all we need to do is to fit this scooter in.

Start by setting the depth of field for your photo you want to create, there is no rule for this options but it changes according to the model and the background so it is up to you here, adjust the position of the scooter regarding the photo in the back, we will turn off the mirror optoion in the ground because it won’t make any sense, and either from the properties tab or from the document properties tab we will set the ground texture to be similar with this sand road, apply it then press OK.

Now the photo is getting its main features but we still need to set some lights, the best way to control the light in your project is to define the light source position from all sides around your model, to do so we can divide our screen to check our scooter from all sides at the same time, the main viewport must be our view as we adjusted it regarding the background photo while the other panes are to see only the model regardless the background, we need to see the model from front, side and top mainly and an isometric view will be nice to understand the changes effects that the light does.

From the render mode we have already applied a default 2 lights mode, and from create drop menu we will add some spot light for a start.

Set the position for the spot light by pressing the mouse left button and keep holding it while dragging it to set its spreading area.

Once we leave the mouse left button the light will be set, or in this case we must say the darkness. LOL

There are two reasons for this to happen, the first one is the light color itself which is set to black by default, don’t get surprised but sometime you will need to add some black light to add some mystery shadows over your model, but for now we will change the color to daylight color according to our background, and set another spot light as well.

The other reason is the position of the created light itself, to understand this check the other panes of views of the model to see the real direction of light.

To adjust the direction we need to use the all panes of view simutaiensely, notice how changing the light position will immediately change the shadows of the model.

You can keep adjusting the light sources position until you reach a satisfying result, add some more if you would like to, but for me this is enough I think so return to window tab and set the layout to 1 pane again, notice the difference before and after adding these lights and see how life this scooter became, only need to adjust the camera position a little bit, then go to workshop and activate the high resolution image window.

Without changing any of the image setting which we have checked in a previous lesson, press on preview to see how this image will become, we can adjust the setting of this photo as we need, but activating the white background option here won’t work because this is actually a photo in the background not a real background for the project.

One lase thing is the ability to set a focal point. Focal point means the focus point of the camera. If you are familiar with photographing then you know when you focus on something by your camera, the other things become a little dizi in the back, this we can set from here and also we have to position it from the 4 panes just as lights but I will make it quickly here for the sake of time and set it on the front wheel.

Press on preview to check the effect of this option, notice how the back of the scooter is a little dashy now while the front wheel is all nice and clear.

And this will be all for now, see you next lesson.

Hello all, this will be our last lecture in our first section of this course, which calls for an assignment,

I want you to create another two photos, as we have done before, for this scooter sitting on the streets, Just search for some photos of streets or take a photo of your street then add it as a background for this scooter view, guys, I want you to create something nice here, and you can.

Finally I kindly ask you give me your feedback regarding this course and what we have learnt until now. As I stated this is going to be the end for this section and hopefully you had fun during learning it so far, and we will continue learning in the next section, where we're going to take it to the next level.

Hello again. In this first lesson of our second section of this course we will talk about actors and its definition, so let’s get started.

Let’s start by create a new project just as we created the first one in our first section, I really hope you remember how, Just define the path first and give it a name, then press OK, and the program will ask you to load the model into this project, you can load it directly but again if you want to load more than one model into your project I advise you to close the panel at first then go to file menu and select open, from here you need to activate merge into the current document option then hit open.

Wait a little bit until the conversion is over.

Once over activate the model check box from assembly tree then set the vertical axis to Y.

Turn off the isometric view then from the home tab select zoom to fit to check the model.

As you can see we have this classic but fancy sunglasses here and it will be our model for this section of this course to demonstrate what we can do to present products directly to customers.

I will start by setting the foot color to a dark color, this degree of black is fine by me, then from the render tab turn off the ground grid, then let’s create some selection sets.

If you noticed I have prepared this model to be completely colorless so we will need to define some colors for each part.

The first selection set will be these earpieces

The next one these nose pieces

The third will be the chamber of the glasses.

Finally we have the lenses for number four

Let’s start now by creating our first view, and create a camera view as well because we know it will be needed soon.

Now let’s check the geometry tab, and from here I will select one of these tools, I want to create a ball shape so I will select the sphere one, press the mouse left button and drag the mouse until it reaches the needed diameter the release it.

Now this is a geometry actor, we can’t define its position by left or right because it is located in the project 3d space now as you can see if you checked the top or side views of the model, but what we can do is to use the translate tool to move it as we want just like any other part in the project.

This position here is OK so I can activate the camera view I created before to reset my camera as adjusted before, but what I am going to do is I will exit this view without updating it, the reason is I want to show you how to reload the created object whenever needed, so from the assembly tab you can find it bellow the root tree, and here we are going to activate it, just as easy as this.

Now I want to create more than one ball and I want them all to have identical size, so the easiest way is to select the part then copy and paste it, give each of them balls a name by random color while you are creating them, this will ease our work forward.

Needless to say that it is up to you guys the color and the names to choose for these balls, I am here just to show you the geometry actors and how to use them so I had the first one brown, the second black, blue, red and green, then gave each of these balls the color that it holds its name.

Now create a new view and name it by default, to distinguish it from the colored version this will be the colorless one.

What I will do now is just a reminder for our last section information, select the parts you want them to change colors and give a new color, let it be brown, then create a new view, then repeat the process for all other four colors, and this will gets us ready for our next lesson.

Hello. In this lesson we are going to use the created geometry actors as buttons and link them to the created views, so let’s gets started.

Actually what goes on normal actors regarding the link goes for the geometry, so just select the actor itself, then go to the event link in the properties tab. Here for the URL options you have to define view then select the view you want to link this button to.

Repeat the same process for all the other views and actors to link all the five colors with each of the created actors, once done update the view that we are in and check this.

If you noticed we have these five buttons in our five views, so now we have adjusted their links in the view we need to select them all then select the other views and using update views with selected actor’s button we will apply these changes on these views.

Update the view then test out the links created for these actors, everything works OK and fine.

Until now from the lesson 1 in this section we are trying to keep things clear and close to what we have learnt in the first section of this course, this is important for new users who are learning this program without any background on such programs before, but this amount of going through old information is enough I think, so from the next lesson on we will start checking some new things in this program.

So see you next lesson

Okay. Hello everyone, this lesson is going to be about natural properties

Each object we create or load into a project in solidworks composer will be loaded with its default properties, these properties are the one that define the situation that this product will be loaded into any new view or when being added into the time line.

To fully understand the concept of the natural properties we have taken this brown sunglasses and created a new view for it, then close its earpieces by rotating them around their axis, and then let’s update the created view with these changes.

Here we do have this small button that says restore neutral properties, pressing it without any thing selected won’t do anything actually but once we select some parts, then press on it, the selected parts will immediately restore its original properties or the properties that it had when we loaded it as you can see, or what we call its neutral properties.

Notice that this button remove any changes we have made to the model including the color as well, but if we want to remove the changes only for the position and keep the color changes for example we could have used this restore neutral position button in the transform tab and it will remove the changes only regarded to the selected parts position, just like this.

Now I hope the concept is clear, but how can we reset this neutral situation, before digging into that let’s adjust this closed sunglasses view and update it, delete the other view also, then we will adjust the background color for this view.

Just one more time to make the idea clear furthermore, if we will take this nose piece here and slide it up then we can put it back to its neutral position by restore neutral position button here but if we slide it again then use the restore neutral properties then all of the changes made to this part including color will be restored.

If we use the same button while nothing is selected then the program will reset the project properties to its neutral this time.

Ok I think this is enough about restoring the neutral properties, but what about setting it, if we want to change the default neutral properties for some or all parts in your project then using this button here, while the part is selected, we can set the changed properties as neutral properties.

For example let’s create a new view here then move back to the previous one where we had the model colored and the background set to black.

If without selecting any part of the project we used this button then this will be applied to the project properties such as background and foot color as stated before, let’s also select the model and set its current properties to be neutral.

Now if we move back to the view we created where the parts and the background where colorless, pressing on restore neutral properties will restore the project properties to its new default ones with the black background and even the camera position and field depth as we can see.

This will be enough for our lesson but before we end it this time I need to adjust this view a little, this angel is OK and the background with this color looks nice, now we can move on to our next lesson.

Hello again, everyone. In the lesson, we're going to talk about smart views.

Before digging into the smart views I need to adjust a home view to use during the lesson, so I will drag the sunglasses to the right, there, then create a new view and name it, Home, then make sure the design mode is active and lets start.

So what exactly are the smart views, it is basically a rapid button which is created from a view and automatically generate the link to the view that is created from, to create one all we have to do is to hold any view, take this one for example, then drag and drop it into the viewport, as any object we can adjust its size and position, beside, if we check its texture we will find it is automatically set to the view image in the project cash folder in windows, and the link is already set to its view.

To test out this button lets first update our Home view, then turn off the design mode and press on it, it will takes us automatically to the original view.

Even if it is linked to the this view, doing any changes in this view won’t update the button icon in our home page, for example lets adjust the camera here then go back to home page, notice that the icon is still the old one without being updated and to update it you need to create it from scratch.

For another example let’s take this blue view, drag and drop just as explained before, the design mode is already turned off so we can use this button immediately, update this view yes, and the link is working as you can see,

While adjusting this view a little I will explain something to you, notice how the views that we have created before for the sunglasses have been changed, and the change I am talking about here is that they are closed now, that is because when we created these views we have created them with their neutral properties, but then we have changed their neutral properties and that caused all the views with these properties to gets updated according to the new one.

Hello again, this lesson is to talk about detailed technical illustration.

Remember in the last section we have created some technical illustrations. Now we are to create detail illustrations for some part of the model, which we can do form activating the detail view option in the technical illustration tab.

For example lets activate it in this view, then zoom into this side of the glasses, once I press create a small view with link to the center of this tool will show up in the screen.

Turn the detail view option off, then try rotating the model you will see that its center stays in its place, we can relocate it actually but that won’t update the created detail view as shown.

What I will do now is I will adjust the view again, reposition the glasses in front and this view back here, this is OK I think then we can update the view then create a technical illustration.

The show hidden line option is active I think, we are not going to adjust these option because we have already explained how to set them as needed before, you can check the lesson related to technical illustration in the last section, but for me I would prefer if we turn this hidden line option off, adjust the page setup and other options regarding this illustration then update create a new view with these changes and don’t forget to save your work.

Hello again everyone, in this lesson we are going to cover one missed point regarding page size setting.

As we all know by now, we can access the page size setting from document properties menu, here in the left tab select paper space to open this tab If it is not already opened, in the paper space format we are able to select one of the standard sizes that are fitted into the program, or we can define a special size according to what we want, define the orientation of the page as well whether vertical or horizontal then apply it on the project and press OK to close this panel.

Now this is our view port and here we have this tricky button, this show/hide paper button allows you to benefit from all the screen you have regardless your paper size, now in some cases it might become in handy but normally I find it a little disturbing because I won’t be able to know if this object is going to be visible in my project when I export it according to its page size or not.

Because of keeping this button active one time I had to do rearrangement for some objects in one project that took more than two hours to finish so I thought it would be helpful if I tell you guys about it from now to be aware of its tricks.

That will be all for this lesson, I hope you find it helpful and learn from my mistake, and let’s move on to our next lesson.

Hello again. This lesson will be about intelligent views.

In our previous lessons we have already checked some types of views, we had the normal view, the camera view, which we can find here in the view tab and we can sort them in collection as we need just by selecting them and pressing the mouse right button then choose add collection.

We can change the collection of any view by dragging it from one and dropping it into another,

Other than these types we also had the smart view a few lessons before and explained how we can create or modify one.

Let’s now adjust this view like this because we are going to need it in this lesson.

I will set these balls in this position according to the sunglasses then define their new position as their default or neutral properties, then let’s start our lesson.

To create an intelligent view we need to activate the view window from the workshop bar, this is views workshop not the created views window and we can tell the difference once we see it in the right of the screen.

Basically intelligent views are what we can call custom views which contain a user defined selection of properties. This means that we define what happens when the end user activates a custom view.

For our example here we have this sunglasses and it does have two position, it can be either open or close with one of these five colors so simply we are going to give the customer the ability to browse the colors and whenever a specific color is chosen the customer can press on the glasses to gets it open or close.

So we need to define a custom properties by color and location.

From the views workshop window let’s activate the custom properties that we want to control in the intelligent views we are going to create, according to what we explained before we will start by activating the location property.

Now we need to define the positions for this model parts that we want to move, we want to rotate these right and left earpiece around its axis so the glasses will be opened or closed, you know how to do so, just select the part to rotate then define the axis and rotate as you want, if it is hard to select the axis just rotate the camera as needed to make it easier,

We can set a specific degree off course but this is not what our lesson is about today.

Once we set the new position for the parts press on create view from the views workshop, then we can check the created view from the views tab on the left and notice that it looks similar to camera view type, we can use the update button to update the changes on this type of views just like the other types, for example adjust the camera then press update.

Now let’s create another intelligent view for this glasses with its other position, while it closed, the easiest way to do so is to select these parts and use restore neutral position button, and because the neutral position for these parts is while the glasses is closed so this fits us, once done press on create and we will have another intelligent view in the views tab.

Now the intelligent views for the location is finished we can move on to create the views for the color, this is included in material so we activate the material option for the custom properties then let’s select the color changing parts.

We did created some selection sets before for all assembly parts, just select the parts needs to change color and keep these parts selected and after adjusting the camera angel change their color then press create.

Repeat this process for all of five colors of them then check the created views in the views tab to the left.

Now we can start linking each view to its button, but actully it will be better if we name the views before, give each view the name of its properties.

With all of the views named, start by linking each color to its button first, then update the view.

Notice that we don’t need to apply this link on each view because these are intelligent views remember.

Then let’s go to the open view, here I will select the sunglasses earpieces to make them as a button to open this view and from the link in its properties I will link them to view, closed, but again if I do so then this link will be for all intelligent views so we actually can’t do this, notice it is linked to closed view, and if I changed it to open then then new link will be active in the open view as well, so in these cases it is better to have a button just like the colors balls instead of using the model parts themselves.

Anyway, with the link set now let’s turn off the design mode and test our work until now, if we press on the earpiece it will open and if we press on any of the color balls then the glasses color will change.

I still need to fix this open/close issue so I will make the left earpiece button to close and the other to open it, not my very best option but I will do it anyway, once done, update the view, then let’s test them again.

Now as you can see, we have made a model that changes its color and its position according to our will, or actually to the end user will and we can change its color without changing other properties like camera angel and position or we can change its position without changing its other properties like colors and camera angel or whatsoever.

I hope this lesson was clear and understandable for you, this is one important thing you need to master in solidworks composer because most client will ask you to do such things especially for the products shown on their internet sites, normally it is what matter actually, so I hope you try it more by yourself and if you want you can apply this method on the scooter we had in our first project.

This will be the end of this section, but I will see you again next listen in our next section

Hello, everyone, let's start this new section and take it to the next level in action.

As an example for this section we're going to take a 3d printer model and during this section we will learn how to create some animation videos whether for the printer movements or for the installation or dismantling its parts, so let's get started.

We have now created the project just as we have learnt before, let’s close the unwanted panels then move again to file menu and locate the needed model, don’t forget to activate merge into current project option, then press OK, make it visible from the assembly tab then set the vertical axis to Y and adjust the view.

After these adjustment that we have gotten used to by now, considering that this project will be about creating and controlling animations mostly then we will switch to animation mode.

Start by adjusting the camera angel a little, rotate the model, then from the properties tab, use set as neutral properties button to set this position and properties of the model as it is default one.

Now we need to be clear on one point, us working on animation mode in this section doesn’t mean that we are working in a seperate program that has no relation to the view mode, in fact it is quite the opposite, the animation mode in solidworks composer is based on its view mode, and as you are going to see most of our animation will start from views to turn into animated movements, so we can see that all of the view mode buttons and tabs are active

This being clarified we need to create some views of the model, these ones are fine and we will start off with in our next lesson.

As we have explained before, pressing on this button will change the working mode between view mode and animation mode, when in animation mode we need to activate the timeline to start creating animations.

This is the time line of our animation, and on it we can control the keys of our project parts properties at each second of the animation, pressing on this icon at the upper left corner of the viewport will switch us back to the view mode.

The timeline lets us create, edit, and play 3D animations. The timeline uses a key frame-based interface.

Simply the concept is we create keys to capture actor properties and positions at given points in time, and then Composer smoothly animates the transitions between keys.

1- Toolbar: Provides access to many animation commands which we will cover in our next lesson

2- Marker bar Displays animation markers, which flag significant points in your animations. Also displays milestones to identify key moments in the timeline

3- Animation Blocks Displays the pre-defined animations used in the timeline which we will go through in this section lessons.

4- Timeline shows some or all of the animation time.

5- Key tracks Displays animation keys. A track is the set of keys for a given actor property. For example, when an actor's position and material properties are both animated, that actor has a Location track and a Materials track.

• Location key

• Properties key

• Viewport key

• Camera key

• Digger key

• Animation block key (see dedicated row below)

Notes: You can expand and collapse the Properties track. When expanded, it displays three additional tracks: Opacity, Materials and Events. When collapsed, it displays all keys for these three tracks combined.

The Materials track records keys for the following properties: Color, Shininess, Emission, Environment Effect, and all Texture properties.

The Events track records keys for the following properties: Pulse, Pulse Color, and Link.

6- Time bar Indicates the current animation time

7- Animation block keys Correspond to the property changes of the various motions of pre-defined animations.

Animation block keys are special kinds of keys that you cannot manage individually.

8- Multiple-key manipulator Appears when the time selection contains multiple keys. Let’s you reposition the selected keys and rescale the selection according to the timeline

Now that we know about the time line components let’s check the concept of keys in our next lesson.

Hello everyone, this lesson is going to be about keys and how to create or control them automatically or manually, so let’s get started.

As mentioned before, this is our time line and in it we can see all the keys we have created for location, properties, camera, digger, or any of these here, 00.49

Solid works composer have been fitted with auto-keys optional button that makes the other buttons useless, when we activate it Creates keys automatically at the current time when you change any actor property (position, color, and so on), but we need to be careful here, activating Auto-Keys Mode can result in more keys than we intended.

For example, when you move an actor to see what is behind it, Auto-Keys Mode creates a key to record the actor's new position even though you did not intend to include the move in the animation. It is recommended that you do not use this mode until you become proficient, which is why we will turn it off now and start by using the manual method for lesson. 01.03

Starting by Set Camera Keys, this button records the current camera and target positions at the current time. Camera keys record the orientation and zoom scale of the model, so for example if we rotate this model by a full round and set some camera keys as you can see each 20 second, notice to move the time indicator before changing the actor, otherwise if you change the actor then move the time indicator, the changes you made will be neglected and the model will restore its last saved position, and this goes for all actors keys not only the cameras. 02.31

Now to play this created small animation, we can use the animation control buttons here, which allows us to rewind, or play and move between created frames, pressing on play/pause button will start this animation, and the time indicator will start moving frame by frame automatically after it turns red, and when we stop it, it will turn back to blue. 02.58

This is enough for now, let’s move on to viewport keys, which used to control the changes of our viewport within the time during the animation, start by this second here and set the color of the foot color, actually I will leave it as it is for this start, and press on set keys button which records property values for all properties or only selected ones of the selected actors at the current time, this will set a key on the viewport line, then move the time indicator forward by 20 second again and lets define a new foot color, set the color that suits your taste then press on set keys button again and a new key will get created in this position.

Notice if we slide the time indicator manually we can see the changes that is happening for our model during the time change, now the camera is getting rotated and the foot color is getting changed gradually along the time.

Let’s move another 20 second forward and define a new color again for the foot, but now I will activate the auto-keys mode before doing so to show you the difference. Once we define a new color the its key will gets created automatically on the time line without the need to press on set keys button again, but as we explained before this can be used for any properties we change in the project, the keys will be created automatically, like this part color changing for example, notice if we changed this part color to white, a new key for it will get created on the materials line and if we slide the time indicator from the animation beginning the color of this part will change gradually until it become white at this second.

Now for other type of keys let’s talk about opacity, here more than other keys it is very important to set a start and end key for this one, otherwise we will face some trouble getting the needed results, for example set the time indicator to this second, then select this filament roller, actually select its full assembly either by finding it in the assembly tree like this or by activating assembly selection mode, once selected, press on set keys button to set all keys at its current position, then move the time indicator for another 20 second and here set the opacity for this selected part to 10, once changed an automatic key will get created regarding the opacity in its line, if we slide the time indicator manually we can see the changes that is happening to this part and the project in general gradually. 07.10

For the camera to return to its first angel let’s create a new camera key again after 20 second, rotate the camera to this angel so the model will be like it has been rotated by 360 degree, off course if we want to return to the same position we can copy the key from that second and apply it again here, but for now it is not our purpose, but we need to start discussing the movement so let’s go.

Select this drawer parts and from the transform bar activate the translate button then use it to slide the drawer on Z axis, notice I haven’t set a first position for this drawer and this is for a reason, once we slide it a new key will be generated automatically in the location line, never the less I will set all keys for this part just to define all of its actors at this moment.

If we want to change the camera angel, we can do so but don’t forget on create camera key just to be sure that your changes have been saved.

Now if we return to the animation start, the moved drawer will be in its original position, not open, and once the time starts changing the drawer will start moving, this is because we haven’t defined a position for this drawer where it starts moving so automatically it will start moving from the start of the animation until it reaches its last position at the end of the animation. 08.42

To avoid such problems we advise you to get used to define a start and end key for any properties when you try to change it, this mean if we want to make this drawer open we need to define the moment where the drawer will start opening then define the moment where it will end its movement, 08.53

For our example here I will select the moved parts again and at this moment I will activate restore neutral position, then press on set keys button to save all of its properties at this moment, doing so will keep this drawer closed in its neutral position until this second then it will start moving until it is fully opened at the end. 09.23

Now I want to talk about markers, which is something like views in the view mode, but these are for animation mode.

When we press on the marker tab by the left mouse button a new marker will be created at the define second of the time line, and this created marker will be listed immediately in the marker tab.

If we double pressed on the marker we can rename it and again the changing in the name will be reflected immediately to the marker list.

We can use the marker list control bar to move to the next or previous marker, play a marker forward or in reverse and delete or create new ones off course.

A very important button we always need during creating animation is the filter button, the reason for that is when we have a lot of actors and keys in one project we can’t find the key for the actor we are looking for easily, but in order to do so we can select the actor and activate the filter mode which will show keys for selected actors only, for example we have this drawer, and we can check all of its keys we have set until this moment.

And the same filtering method can be applied on the properties as well. 11.55

Now let’s talk about using the digger key in our animation, to activate the digger we can use space button on our keyboard just as before, but then we need to set a digger key from here, notice the key that will be created on the digger line at the bottom. 12.07

Now using the digger tools we need to set a center point for it as a start, we do this as we learnt before, there is actually nothing to focus on here but for the sake of this example I will put it here now, then I will update the digger key, then let’s slide the time indicator forward to when we want to turn off the digger, set a new digger key and press space bar.

Clearly we did that with a wrong order, we had to turn it off by pressing space bar then create a digger key, but let’s move on now.

If we wanted to use any of the digger tools between these start and end points we have set the easiest way is to activate digger auto key mode, and as you can see it will create the neccery keys automatically on each change we make 13.46

Anotherthing about the animation, is it’s time setting, which we can acss if we pressed the mouse right button anywhere in the time line, here we can define the length of our animation by seconds, though we can straight it as much as we want without calculation by zooming in and out on the time line, but it is always more professional to define the time of your animation before working on it. 15.53

If we pressed on this zoom button here it will zoom on the active area of our time line.

This for now conclude our lesson for today, we have within this less than 20 min lecture seen how to create a small animation for showing a product, do some color changing effects and focusing on some options as well, but we will learn more in our next lesson.

Hello. In this lesson, we're going to create some geometry actor then move it to create a shape out of its movement.

Let's start by creating the actor, here we have this film roller. We are going to create a filament piece that slides form this roll into the 3D printer.

Find the start point of the part to draw, it must be a part from the filaments roller itself but I will go ahead and select the end point of filament, this way, it will looks like it is sliding out of it continuously. 00.31

Move to geometry tab, and select the type of part you want to create, we are going to create a small cylinder just at the end of this filament, but instead of having it extruded out of it I prefer to hide it inside because it is not really the cylinder what we need but the path it will form during its movement as we are about to see in a few moments. 01.25

Now for a moment we have to stop our core lesson and talk about something important here, remember in the last lesson we have created an animation for rotating the model by 360 degree and how we created it, well there is another way to create animation which is quite easy compared to the other one and it is simplified in dragging any created view in the view mode then dropping it at any second in the time line, doing so will create an animation that is based on the views and the changes that we have made to the model in these views accordingly, as we are going to see in the next lessons. 02.32

For now let’s activate the created actor first, we have already set the time indicator at the sixth second, and from transform tab select the align tool to align this part at this second to this filament entrance here. 03.42

We can see that the parts are not perfectly aligned, but we can adjust them later so let’s skip to the point to not lose much time.

If we drag the time indicator to start point we can see the movement of this actor along the animation, and from the properties tab we can see this new options here regarding the animation, for example the path is set to liner by default, we can change it to custom and define the path that this part will move along it. 04.39

By the way you can turn off the camera movement during setting of your animation by this button here, doing so will allow us to check the side we want from the model even if it is not covered by this moment camera. 05.03

Sliding the time indicator shows us the movement of this part during the animation. 05.09

Move to author tab and after selecting the needed part, activate create associative path from animation button, notice that now the path is like an object that changes along time, we can select as well and have its own properties menu to the left, we can set its type, its width as well which I will set to be 1.75, or its color which I will select the filament original color by eyedropper tool. 05.59

If we slide the time indicator forward, or just played the animation, we can see that the filament is getting created while this part moves from its start to end point, even though it needs some location and size adjustment obviously.

As for adjusting the end point it is quite easy, just select the point and drag it as you wish, while the start point can’t be selected like this, because it is connected to the part initial position and apparently we have misplaced the created part.

Not a big deal for now, we will go through this concept further more in our next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will continue what we started in our previous lesson, so let’s get started.

Just like we have done in our last lesson, create another cylindrical geometry actor where we want the path to start, we will continue the movement of the filament up to the printer heater so here we are, then adjust its diameter to equal the main parts, 2 mm it is.

Another thing we need to do is to adjust its color, using the eyedropper tool, select the color from the original filament roller, of course we can set any color we want but this is our product color so try keeping it the same. 00.56

Now just as we explained before, move the time indicator forward to the desired time where we want the movement to finish, then adjust the camera to an angel that allows it to check the movement path, then from the transform tab we need to select the free drag movement type to start moving this part to the movement end point as we want. 1.50

We can use the free drag movement to drag this part from start to end point in the path we wish, but what will be easier is to define the start and end point and let the program calculate the path for us, to do so select align line /axis to line / axis order, then let’s select this face of our part, and with this align order active move to the end point, and select any of the parts faces where you want this part to finish its movement.

Now by dragging the time indicator we can check the movement path created for this part, and obviously it needs a little adjustments.

Select the part from assembly tree to the left, then from the author tab define the path by create associative path from animation, after that select the path itself and go to its properties menu. 3.17

If we keep stay on top active the path will be shown over all other parts or actors, for the construct mode we need to select real path and never use any axis if you want it to be realistic, for the line itself we need to define its type, and color also, about the width we need to make it 1.75 which is the real filament diameter. 4.05

Now sliding the time indicator in the time line will show us the created path with its new option, we can select its start and end point as we did for the first created path in our last lesson, but here we will adjust it by another way, by the way don’t need to worry about the real movement of the part, because we will hide it soon, what really matters for us here is its path and we will adjust it here. 4.45

From the assembly tree, select the created actor, then go to animation section in the properties tab, define a custom shape for the path, then by the control points that will be created, we will start shaping the path as we desire, notice that we need to define it in a 3 dimension space, if we approved it at one point then the control point will hide again, to activate them we need to select the part from the assembly tab not the path itself, this now looks a fine path for this filament.

I just want to show you this guys, we can use this created path to create a filled object by selecting it and activate the fill option for it, but this is not what our lesson is about now, so deactivate this one. 6.37

From the general properties for the path itself, we can define some helpful options, like enabling smooth, and draw full path options which will show us the full path for this part regardless time in animation.

Another thing we need to notice here, that any movement or dragging of the part will eventually change the adjusted path for this movement, so we need to be careful here. 07.05

But on the other hand turning off the part itself from the assembly tree, or by degreasing its opacity won’t affect the created path as I told you before regarding the part and its movement, we have already created the path we need and have it in the shape we want, notice that dragging the time indicator or playing the animation the path still as any other object in the project now but without the part that we created it with.

Even more, it can be used as an object to help defining other objects, such as color for example, let’s set the color of the first created filament by copying it with eyedropper tool from this one like this.

Finally while checking this results here I can tell you that using this method in your projects can help you adding water pipes, pneumatic hoses, electric cables, or any other objects that does have this shape of a wire and can be hard to create in solid works or not always necessary but can be helpful in maintenance manual or user manual to explain a certain point.

Hope this was helpful, and see you next lesson

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will create bill of materials with a fixed number for our project in it.

Last time we have created the bill of materials four our project and maybe you have noticed how the numbers of some parts changes from one view to another, each time you create a new bill of materials, or when you create a bill of materials for some parts of the assembly, a new numbers is being assigned randomly, but what if we want the number of each part to be the same in any of our tables, well that is exactly what I am about to show you in this lesson. 00.15

Let’s take a small group to practice over it, this filament holder here is suitable in my opinion, and select the roller with it as well to create a selection set, name it by BOM_01, then with it selected activate show selection and hide other.

We will start by creating a bill of material for this group, activate BOM tab from workshop bar, select the parts then with applying BOM id’s to selection active generate BOM ID’s

Create callouts as well and adjust their size, show the BOM table then create a new view after adjusting it a little bit. 01.11

Now to explain our point for this lesson we will select this part randomly, you can take any other part if you want, and in this bill of materials it has the number 1, let’s create a hotspot for it now and name it no-01 so we don’t forget it.

Then I will go back to the previous view where we had the full model active, if we press on create callout for this part now it won’t have any number because we haven’t generated a bill of materials for this view yet, and if I select this part only then press on generate BOM id’s it will have the number 1 again but this is because it is the only part selected for this bill, while if we select the whole model the result will differ, lets change the view again and here we are not going to select only this part but instead we will select the whole model and generate BOM Id’s. 2.44

Notice that when we select our part its BOM id’s which we can see in its properties section is now set to 3, instead of 1, and if we regenerate BOM id’s it will have a new number instead of 3, and this actually can cause some confusion in your Bill of material list for the customer, if you have some repeated parts in your model the same part will be assigned to more than different number in each view, even if its code stay the same off course but why not the callout number as well. 04.40

Well there is a way to do so. 4.45

Go to any view in your project, it doesn’t have to be the first one, so I will go to this one to avoid misunderstanding here, and after select the whole model generate Bill of matieral either for selection or for all parts, adjust the setting of the list if needed off course, now what we have to do is to select all the parts and with this magic button we all know, let’s set current properties including BOM Id’s as neutral properties. 05.30

To check on our part now we can see that it has a number of 18, let’s go back to our other view where we created our first list, and notice here that it still have the number of 1, this is because we have defined it as a properties for these parts in this view when we selected them and generated a bill of material back then, but we can select them again and activate restore neutral properties to see now it has the same number in other view, and if you check it you will find that this goes on all parts as well. 06.28

Also if we checked these parts on any previously created view in our project we will find our it will have the number of 18 unless if we generated another bill of material in this view which can be corrected by restoring neutral properties as we have seen

And off course this goes on for all other parts in the project.

So it is my professional advice is to get used to create a bill a material for all parts at the very start of your project and set it as neutral properties, this way you won’t need to restore or set any properties again for the whole project and each part will keep its unique number till the end.

I hope this was helpful guys, see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will see how to apply texture on a part of our model, so let’s get started.

In order to demonstrate, we are going to use the printing table of this printer, let’s create a new view and let's select this tables. Now here in the properties tab we have the environment effect option which can be used to apply one of the standard effects in the program, for example the gold appearance, or any of the other appearances available, I personally encourage you to try each of them in the projects you will make in the future because they really add some live appearance to you model parts. 01.35

Now to apply some special appearance on a part we can use the texture option for it, start by activating it, and then press on the map path to select the needed photo.

Once we select the needed photo it will cover the part appearance, from the properties of the texture we can adjust its scale, aspect ratio, and that is how it will looks like.

Let’s update our view for now.

One last thing we need to mention regarding this texture thing, that it is as any of the other features in properties tab can be set as neutral property then apply it on other views by activating restore neutral properties option.

This will be all for this lesson for now, see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lecture we are going to add some dimension to a part in our project to show its size, so let’s get started.

For our example we will take the table of our 3d printer after applying the gold appearance as we have seen in our last lesson, create a new view for it after showing it and hiding all other components, then let’s go to author tab where we can find the measurements tools. 00.15

By using the length tool we can add a measurement for the length of any straight side we want, the trick here is we only can add the length of the straight edge of the selected part, but if it has radius or what we call fillet at any of its side like this situation here then it won’t be included in this dimension. 00.37

On the other hand we do have the ability to add distance dimension, this mean the space between tow selected objects, whether points or lines or planes, axis, plan and a point or any other possibility that this list here covers, we can add dimension between this line and random point for example, it is important to select the right tool here, because not any tool would serve for any dimension, for example we can’t use the points to select lines, the best way here to define the length of this table is to select the distance between 2 lines, select them lines and here we have the real length of this table including its fillets, the same goes for the width as well. 01.35

Just like in solidworks we do have some modes to add the dimension like chain mode for serial dimensions and fan mode, we can add angel dimension or project the measurements we have done on an axis

Now that we have finished adding the needed dimensions to our view we can style them from the properties tab if needed, if not leave them like this and update the view with the added dimensions, then let’s move to the previous view in our project 2.46

Here let’s link this view to the one we created with the dimensions, and as a link button I will use the table itself, we already learnt how to do so before, go to link in the event section and from here we select the URL to view, then we select the needed view which is view 28 in our project, it’s my mistake that I haven’t gave names for these views yet, then update the view. 3.16

Now it would be better if we add some explanation about what we have here, after all we are creating a catalogue for this product remember, so let’s add a 2d text and type down anything about the table size, this for example will do the trick.

Now we can apply one of the styles we already have from here, or

Or we can create a new style for it, or even define its style without saving it as a new style, not a very big deal actually, let’s add some pulse of the part as well, and finally update the view with all these changes. 4.32

Now if we turn off the design mode, we can test the link and the changes in these two views, and that is how we add some dimension whenever needed in solidworks composer.

Hello everyone, in this lesson, we are going to start making some animation for this model and some of its groups movements, so if you are ready, let’s get started.

We can start working based on what we have done so far, but we are going to delete this animation for the camera around the model, start by adjusting the camera position at this second to be in front of the model like this, then update all keys including the camera key off course, 00.35

Now move the time indicator a little forward then select all the model parts and set its current situation at this moment as its neutral properties. 00.49

Then select all old keys and delete them. 01.00

Now when we slide the time indicator until 8th second where we set the camera we can notice that the camera changes its zooming a little bit because the isometric view has been turned off at this second, we can turn it on again and if we use set camera key button a new keys will be generated at first second and the key at the 8th second will be updated. 01.21

Now quick reminder, if we want to make any changes on our model we have to slide the time indicator to a new place first either forward or backward, but if we left it in its place then all the changes we will make will go away once we slide the time indicator from its place, unless if we want to update its current keys. 02.00

Now let’s start making some movements for some of this printer groups, we will start by the main head holder, and here we need to select all of its parts before moving them otherwise the unselected parts will stay in its original place. 02.30

Remember, selecting all parts of a specific group might be tricky if it is not consisted of one assembly, to overcome this problem we need to benefit from different selecting methods, for example holding the mouse left button and slide it to the right will select all the parts that touches the selection box, while holding the same button while sliding it to the left will select only the parts that is completely included in the selection box, which is actually what we need for now. 2.50

By using translate, we can slide the selected parts of this head holder group downward along Y axis, and even the auto-key button is active we can use the create keys button to create a new keys for all of these selected parts at their new position with their new properties if there is any. 03.03

Now slide the time indicator forward again then move the selected group up and use set keys button again to save its current situation. 3.15

Adjust the camera position a little and set a camera key as well. 3.25

Now by play button we can test the created animation, and check the smooth movement of created until now. 03.42

Now let’s move the time indicator again for another 3 seconds after selecting the head group, and by set keys button we need to set its keys at this current position, adjust the camera position for it as well and set a camera key. 04.33

An important thing we always skip is what happens if we made a mistake and did the changes on our model before moving the time indicator to a new point, well if we have the auto keys button active then what will happens is that the new changes will be saved as an update for the current keys at this point, except camera key which need to be set alone, all of the other keys including position keys will be stored at this point, so if we slide the time indicator forward another 3 second and create new keys at this point we can see that there is no difference between the new keys and the mistaken updated keys, and no movement or any changes will occur during the animation for these 3 seconds, 05.13

This have been explained we need to fix the done damage now, and I mean by that we need to readjust the keys at this point again, and all we have to do is to slide the group while it is still selected and use set keys button to save its current situation. 05.25

Now we need to adjust the time for this animation a little, as we can see it is starting way too late from the first second, so all we have to do is select all actors and slide them back to where we want this animation to start, then play the animation to check the movement again. 05.50

Now let’s save the project, and we can congrate ourselves, our first animation is considerably finished, a little lousy one actually but still well done, we only need to adjust some of the background options, so let’s get into it. 06.15.

From the author tab, start by turning off the grid on the ground, and we need to choose a new foot color that can goes with the model colors, as we all know, we can choose a standard color from the ones available here, or we can define a color according to our taste by the eyedropper tool, 07.01

Now to adjust the ground options, we can turn it off completely, or keep it with activating the mirror option, set is as you prefer, and save its new setting as its neutral properties. 07.20

By sliding the time indicator we can check the last changes we have done on our animation, if everything looks OK then we are ready to move on to our next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we are going to adjust the lightning and make light changes during our animation, so if you are ready let’s get started.

First we need to announce that this lecture will be based on the animation we have created last lesson, so if you haven’t prepared a similar animation yet, we propose that you pause this lesson and come bake when you have any animation to apply what we are going to show you on it. 00.25

Controlling lights during animation done from the author tab, and just as we have seen in the view mode before, we can add spot or directional lights. 00.30

so we will start by sliding the time indicator to when we want the light to be added, then create a positional light on this side of the machine. 00.45

the added light needs some adjustment, start by setting its colors as desired and from the properties tab we do have an on/off switch that define its actors at this time, after turning it on slide the time indicator forward for 2 seconds, here let’s add another light. 01.11

for this time let’s add a directional light, and adjust its direction toward the printer, then adjust its colors 01.41

using the time indicator we can check the light changes, slide it forward another second and let’s add a spot light here, now for the spot light we need to define the center of it, so rotate the model camera to an angel where you can select it and focus it on the printer, we can focus it on a specific point of the model if needed, now we need to notice here that like all other created objects the spot light gets created in its neutral position then when we change it at a specific second during our animation it create an automatic keys at this second with this new properties so when we play the animation we will notice that it will changes from its neutral situation to this new adjusted one. 02.40

the same goes on for other lights, for example let’s take this positional light and change its specular color at this second to green, so if we slide it back to its first situation we can see it changes its color back to red at its neutral position. 02.52

now let’s apply this method of light changing to other lights as well, notice that we need to have the auto key option active for this to works, start by setting the light color for this spot light, we don’t really have a specific color to choose, so we will just improvise, and let’s turn off this spot light at this second here. 03.22

By sliding the time indicator forward, we can see it will be turned on automatically according to its previously set keys. 03.24

We can also relocate the created light keys on the time line as any other keys, for example have apply the same effect on the directional light, turn it off at this second, 03.38

Then slide the created key to be at this second here where the spot light will be turned on.

By selecting any of the lights at any second we can check its current situation whether on or off. 04.08

Now by sliding the time indicator forward, check the light changes during the animation, turn on the spot light at this second for example, and keep sliding the indicator forward, at this second let’s turn off the spot light again, and back at this second turn off the positional light as well, so we get a smooth color gradation from light green to red like this. 05.04

Now at this second let’s create another light, make it positional and set its ambient color to white while its specular color to red, then check its light reflection over the printer. 05.40

Now at this second here let’s turn off this old directional light, and move another second forward, to turn it on again, but reduce its intensity to 0.1, this will dim the light a little, notice that we can’t set the intensity for turned off lights, it must be on to set any of its properties. 06.25

Reducing the intensity can have a nice effect on lights reflection over the model during the animation especially if we have color changing like in our situation, so it can have a nice effect over the lights if we dim the green color before turning it off completely and changes the light to red, instead of the instant change of light which might have bad effect on our final render for the animation, and you can see the difference for yourself with this simple example we have adjusted within seconds here, and notice how the intensity of the selected light is getting increased along the animation. 07.42

Finally let’s talk about moving the light along with the animation, with the time indicator at this second we will add another positional light on this side of the printer, and set its color to be somehow red, but turn its intensity down to give the end some mysteries look, then we can slide the time indicator or keep it at its position, let’s hold the created light and change its position to this point above the machine, now what will happen is during the animation this light will transform from its original place which will be at the very first of the animation unless any other position key is set, until it reaches the new position at this defined second on the time line. 08.38

I think this conclude all what we need to know about adjusting the light during an animation for the model, by the way the created parts won’t be shown in the final animation off course, so when we play the animation we created we can see the beauty of light changes during the time.

Hello everyone, this lecture will be our first regarding animation library and we will start with install animation, so let’s get started.

To create an animation using animation library it is enough to select the part that we need to move then make sure that we are in the right position on the time line, after that press on create, and an animation with already set parameters will be created down in our time line. 00.34

To check the created animation we can slide the time indicator forward and backward, even if it is not we might had in mind for installing this part, mostly because this part is already installed, but let’s talk a little about some rules regarding this animation library. 01.08

First we can’t create any key over the created animation, even camera keys, so if we want to adjust the camera position we have to do it before the animation start. 01.19

Secondly we can create markers during the animation library motion, and name it off course as we want. 01.39

And finally we can adjust the created motion keys and properties as we desire, but this will be explained more in our next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will continue explaining the animation library motions and it is remove motion that we are going to talk about.

Start by sliding the time indicator forward to define the start point of this animation, once defined create a new marker at it to ease defining it, one marker is enough no need for two, and name this created marker by animation library-remove. 00.44

Now from the animation library workshop, choose remove from the animation list, and lets check its properties here, for the camera centering we will select manual mode, now we can see that this motion consists of three steps, flash, translate and setting transparency, and each of these steps does have it’s start and end time along with other properties that define it like color or movement axis. 01.30

Bellow at the bottom we have the overview bar where we can check how our motion will be generated, and also each of these steps durations, notice how if we make any changes on any of these steps we can see it directly in this bar bellow.

Now if we are ok with these settings as they are we can press create, and the defined animation will be created on our time line, check it out by pressing on play button, and see how this part is getting removed and hidden automatically just as simple as this is.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will continue explaining the animation library motions and it is roll motion that we are going to talk about.

With the time indicator set in its place, choose the roll animation from animation list, then start by adjusting the camera position, for the camera centering let’s select none for this one to compare with the last one, and for our example I will select this filament roller to be the part for our animation. 00.43

This motion does have only two steps, translate and rotate, and they both set to play together at the same time, for our example we want to roll this roller in its position so we will set the distance of translate to zero, and for the rotate I will increases the time to ten seconds beside setting the rotating angel to 360 degree.

Because we have set the camera centering to be manual then we need to define a camera key in our time line with the camera in a suitable position for the rolling of this part, just like this. 01.33

Now if we press create we can play the generated motion by pressing the play button, notice that because we haven’t set the rotation axis it is definitely needs some adjustments now. 1.50

Notice if we tried to change any parameters of the movment it won’t help because now the movement have been created and we are now definginn the setting for another movement to create, but in order to adjust a created movement we need to select it first from the rime line, then change the parameters we have to, in our case the rotation axis, and press on update motion, or updated selection.

Again this is not the right axis of rotation, so we will have to select it again and define the axis of rotation between x,y,and z by typing 1 on the axis we want to activate the rotation about and zero between the axis we don’t want any movement about, after that update the motion again and play it to check it on the time line.

One other thing regarding this motion, if we had another model that we need to define a translate movement along with its rotation as well, we need to define the distance first and we need to define the movement direction, here we can define it either by axis just like the rotation, or by selecting a point from the model itself if we need to make the movement toward a specific point, here an axis selection will do, let’s update motion and check out its new animation.

This is it for rolling movement, with or without translating, for our example we don’t actually need translate so I will turn it off, set these values to zeros, and this will be all about this motion, see you next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will continue explaining the animation library motions and for the sake of our lessons we will skip the screw movement to the next lesson and make this lesson about the unscrew motion.

Start by sliding the time indicator to a new point, and with the motion group selected select the unscrew animation, we will talk about screw in the next lesson, and for the camera centuring let’s select auto for this time, now let’s select some screws or bolts to apply this animation on. 01.02

Here we have the over view bar as all other animation, we can see that the whole time for this movement is set to 4 seconds, we have flashing for 3 times during 1 second with a red color, let’s make it for 5 times instead of 3, we have a rotation to remove the thread of the bolt that will start at second 1 and finish after 1 second, and it is set to be rotated around Z axis by default, we need to change it to be around y axis, and finally we have the translate which will start with the rotation at the same time but will continue until the 4th second when the animation ends, also it is set to be according to Z axis, we need to adjust to according to Y, the distance is set to 100 which is fine, now all the properties have been set and adjusted we can create the animation, then play the animation to check the movement of the screw, looks Ok and nice, we can save our project and move on to our next lesson.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will cover creating a screw animation from animation library, so let’s get started.

In our last lesson, we have removed this part from its place by unscrew animation, now in this lesson we will use screw animation to set it back to its original position, and by saying part I mean to ishara that this animation movement can be applied on any part of the project but it is mainly used to remove screws.

Start by selecting screw animation from the animation list, with the needed part selected we can see that this animation does have a similar properties for unscrew one, flash, translate and rotate. 00.41

As explained for other animation before, we need to define the settings for each step of this movement, start by flashing, we can use the default setting there if there nothing wrong or unfit among them, and always check the overview of the animation at each step. 01.10

Now we need to clarify an important thing regarding movements or rotations, here we explained before the movement occurs on the axis that is active and we activate it by typing number 1 on its cell, but what we didn’t told you that this cell uses bolyani jebra concept, so if we type – minas beside 1 the movement will occur on the opposite direction of this axis, and we can also use fraction beside 1 if we want to apply a percentage from the defined distance, here we have the movement direction set right so we are not going to change it, and the distance is set to 100 which is fine for this movement. 01.37

As for rotating animation, we will leave the start and end time as it is, but regarding the axis we want the rotation to be around y axis so change it from z to y, and here I want the rotation to happen for 3 times not only one time so I can either set the rotation angel bellow to 1080 degree which is 360 degree multiplied by 3 or we can simply keep it set to 360 as normal and set the rotation times around y axis to 3. 02.01

Now I will leave the camera centering set to automatic and create the motion with these defined settings, then check the created movement by playing the animation.

Hello everyone, this lecture is going to be about last movement in the animation library which is untighten, so if you are ready let’s get started.

With the motion group selected choose the untighten animation mode, we can notice the similarity with other motions properties though we do have a new set color properties here, 00.22

We also have other properties that we are familiar with like translate, rotate, or set transparency.

Let’s start by setting the camera angel, have it focused on this group here which we are going to apply this animation for its bolts, this angel is ok so we need to define the camera centering for this animation to be manual. 01.01

We had to move the time indicator before actually because now when we slide the time indicator, the camera will retake its last known position so we will have to set it again. 01.12

Now after adjusting it again, set a new camera key, then with untighten animation selected start selecting the bolts we want to apply this animation to, all four of them, then we will start adjusting our animation. 01.31

We will start by changing the flashing color to yellow, only to try it out for once, the start and end time is perfectly set for it so no need to change any of them even though we can, and the repetition is set to 3 which is ok as well, 01.50

Set color option is basically to change the color of the selected parts during a defined time in the animation, for our example we will keep it set to red so the color of these selected bolts during the animation in this time will be red along with the flashing as we will see 01.59

For no good reason I want it to start the translate earlier, so set its start time to 3, and the same goes for the rotation, keep the end time as it is, then press create 02.32

Play the animation to check the created movement, and it looks just fine for an untighten bolts movement that have been created within less than 1 minute.

One thing we might need to re adjust in this animation is the color changing properties, if you checked the created animation had the bolts set to be red for too long, according to the project in hand this might looks awful then we need to set it for less than 5 seconds long, say 2 for example and with all other setting as it is let’s create a new animation for this bolt then play it to check the difference. 03.45

So this will be all guys about motion library and animation movements that we can use automatically in our projects, I hope we covered everything up for you and we will continue with creating animation in our next lessons.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will check the easiest method to create an animation for dismantling any model, so if you are ready we can get started.

Start by sliding the time indicator to a new place on the time line, then switch to view mode and open the view tab because we are going to create a movement animation based on some views from view mode, turn the perspective mode off, then let’s adjust the camera angel a little bit, and while into it, select all the model parts and restore its neutral properties. 00.40

Then with a suitable angel of the camera that shows the whole model like this one, create a new view, I will activate assembly selection mode from assembly tab then select the extruder head. 00.59

Along with it lets select its holder beam group, then create a new view, for this view we need to show only selection and hide other, then adjust the camera and update it. 01.23

As our lesson is about animating dismantling of this extruder head group from the printer lets create a new view for it 03.36

start by releasing these locking rollers by rotating its eccentric nut, select the roller and its holding parts, then with alt key pressed on keyboard select the rotation axis, careful not to choose wrong axis otherwise the eccentric rotation won’t happen, and ease checking the movement align the camera to be normal to this face, normally rotating this roller will press it inside the sigma beam and locks the whole group on this holder beam, so rotating it will release its lock to the point where we can remove its screw, like this here. 06.17

according to what we have learnt before we can apply an untighten movement from the animation library immediately to remove this screw here, but as we already know that we are going to do this by classical way by sliding it with translate order from transfer tab, after that hide the bolt and create a new view at this point. 07.24

Repeat the same process for the roller and its eccentric nut with creating new view for each step 07.52

Then rotate the camera to face the other side of the assembly and create two view that showing the screwing nut before and after hiding. 08.04

Now with the head group set free to remove, activate assembly selecting mode and select the head group or what is remained from it, notice that it will be selected with its hidden parts as well, but instead of sliding it we can just hide the other parts now. 08.31

Adjust the camera position to focus on the remained parts and create a new view,

Now to dismantle the extruder head parts we can start by removing the cooling fans, I will select them with their screws together and slide them away from the extruder then set their opacity to zero to hide them completely, remember to create a new view for each step through this process. 09.42

Adjust the camera to focus on the heat isolator which we will remove now, and select its two screws that holds it, then slide them away, and set their opacity to zero, with creating new view for each step off course, 10.18

Now slide the whole set of this heater away from its holder, and dismantle the group parts up and down as you see fit at this point. 11.14

That is enough preparing for the needed animation, lets go back to animation mode by pressing on the time line, we are going to use the views that we have created for the model with its parts at different situation in each view to create the needed animation in no time now. 11.33

Start by selecting the first created view, drag and drop it on the time line, preferply at a specified second, and you can zoom in on to it to ease defining time, this animation will start at second 70 on the time line, and our job is real easy now, all we need to do is drag and drop these created views with keeping sometime between them 2 second is enough from my opinion for these movements, but offcourse there is no rule here, we need to set this duration according to the movement itself and how much time normally it gets done within, we only need to keep track of the selected views otherwise the movement won’t be done as we adjusted it to. 14.52

Now all the views have been added in order to the time line, we have a little note here, when we add a view from views to time line it will create a new marker automatically, normally we use markers as checkpoint in our animation so it is not a good idea to keep all these markers in your project, the bad news is we have to remove them all before going on with our work, the good news is removing them won’t take a minute and also we have a delete all markers button that we can use to remove all of them at once if we are planning to set our markers manually later. 15.40

Because this is not what we are planning to do and we have already set some markers before we have to undo removing all of them and keep removing the unwanted ones automatically, until the last one, which we need to rename it by dismantling subassembly 16.09

Now use the play button to check the created animation for this group dismantling steps.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will reinstall the assembly that we have dismantled in our last lesson be reversing the created animation, so if you are ready let’s get started.

Start by selecting the animation that we have created last lesson, with holding ctrl button pressed on your keyboard drag all the selected keys to a new point on the time line. 00.36

After that, without deselecting these cpied keys, press on the mouse right button and select invert time selection, this will invert the time for the selected actors with keeping the relations between them, so simply the first actor will be the last one now and the next one will be the one before it, and so on, after that play the created animation to check the installing steps for this group. 00.59

This option can be really handy in any case where we need to explain the reinstalling after dismantling any group from any model, the best thing about it is that we can change any step or modify any key and even add new steps through this animation like addnig some grease at some point for example, and so on.

Hello everyone, in this lesson we will tell you some hidden secrets about animation play buttons in solidworks composer, so if you are ready let’s get started.

Most of these button are commonly used in any media program nowadays, but this lesson is mainly requested because of specific one button that we don’t find easily in any media program and I will get into it in a minute. 00.16

These buttons are to control and ease the viewing of the created animation and we have already used them during our course, starting from the play / pause button which we all familiar with, 00.52

Now this button does have a little trick, if we keep pressing on it we a list of two button options will pop up, here we have the option to play forward or to play backward, by default it is set to play forward but we can select the play backward button from this list to play the animation we have created in reverse 01.20

And if we let it keep playing then if the loop play mode button is active like we have it active here then the animation will continue playing in reverse till its start point then it will start again from its end point to start playing again but as we said, in reverse again and again. 01.40

To restore the play button to its default mode long press on it until the list pops up again and choose play forward mode 01.55

The loop play button which we have mentioned before makes the animation plays continuously without stopping when it reaches its end, while it must stop when it reaches its end and this button is not active. 02.17

The rewind and forward buttons are to move the time indicator of the animation back it its start or its end immediately once pressed from any point during the animation. 02.57

Empty up to 03.13

The next and previews keys button are to transfer the time indicator to the nearest key forward or backward, and it works also with the animation library created movements considering each step changes inside it as a separate key 04.07

Next we have a frame by frame moving ability with frame control buttons, which can be used to move one frame at a step by next or previous frame button, this grants us the complete control of our animation at any fraction of any second 04.45

Lastly we do have a zoom fit all button here which helps us to check the whole created animation or all keys on our timeline, we also have the stop button which will put an end to the animation where it is, and frankly is pretty much the same with pause button. 05.22

This concludes our lesson about these buttons now, I hope you found this lecture helpful as well, and we will see you again next lecture.

Hello again everybody, in this lesson we will compare between the animations created by motion library and translating parts manually, so let’s get started.

Hopefully we all remember the animation library and how we can use a template from motion group to create some movement based on prepared and adjustable steps, to demonstrate a quick example let’s apply the untighten movement on this bolt here, we can adjust start and end time for each step which eventually defines this steps durations, after everything is set according to what we need pressing create will add this motion to our time line, and here we can notice that the bolt tries to moves back to its original place, this is because of the other defined keys of reinstalling subassembly, because this bolt is set to be in its neutral place at second 120 on the time line. 02.06

To clarify things up let’s delete this reinstalling process, then play the animation again, notice that it is not moving back anymore. 02.25

Now let’s say we want to do the installing process again just as we have done a couple of lessons before, start by selecting all the keys of dismantling process including the untighten movement as well, then copy them by sliding them with holding ctrl button, then press the mouse right button and select invert time selection to invert the selected keys. 03.00

Now we can notice that the motion created by the animation library have not been copied neither inverted, this is normally because these animations can’t be inverted in the first place, if we need to invert any of these movement we need to create a new animation that reverse the movement. 03.25

Let’s delete these markers that we don’t need to use for now, and notice that we are now back to where we started where the bolts was trying to move back to its neutral position, and now we are going to fix it by another way this time. 04.08

Start by selecting the bolt we want to keep it steady in its place, then activate the filter button, doing so will show us only the keys related to this selected bolt, and now we can select all the position keys that comes after the point we want to fix it in it, then delete all of these keys. 04.28

With this done, we can play the animation now to see how deleting all of these keys will keep it in its place until the end of the animation, while all other parts will be reinstalled back to its place.

But as for our lesson, now we know that the main difference between creating an animation manually step by step using translate orders or using automatic steps by animation library is the ability to invert the animation created manually while unfortunately we can’t do the same for the animations created by animation library.

Hello again everybody, this lecture will be about the Highlight group animations in animation library, so let’s get started.

Previously we have gone through all the animations in motion group, install, remove, roll, screw, unscrew, and tighten as well, and covered all of their properties with examples on our model parts, but now we will check the highlight group animations which consists of enhance, focus, validate, and warning. 00.17

As always, start by sliding the time indicator to a new position on the time line, then select the parts that you need to apply this animation on, we will select this group assembly here, then check the properties of the animation if it suits our expectations, before creating it we need to define a camera centering mode, and I will choose manual, adjust the camera at a suitable position and create a camera key, then create the animation 01.06

Now playing the created animation will show us its effect on the selected parts, let us turn off the loop mode, and go to the end of the animation to re play the created animation again, and this what is enhance animation about. 01.24

Slide the time indicator forward and select a new part to check the second animation in this group, this filament roller is ok for this animation which is focus, select it from the animation list and check its properties, keep the camera centering set to manual and set a new camera key on the time line with a suitable angel, also we will change the color to red for no good reason, then create the animation. 02.12

Play the animation to check its effect on this part, notice that this one keeps the color changes after the animation finishes 02.28

Slide the time indicator again forward to a new point where we are going to try the validated animation, for this one let’s select the filament feeder group, set a new camera key with a suitable angel then select the needed parts, check the properties available for this animation, here we have a set image option which will show us a small image at the specified position and size, choose the image by defining picture path, here we can show this head photo for example, then create the animation. 03.20

Play the animation to check the added validated animation on this group.

Slide the time indicator forward again to a new point, here we are going to apply the warning animation which is the last one in this group, let’s apply it on this motor group, and start by setting a new camera key, here we have a display text option and it is set to be careful statement, we will leave it as it is and create this animation as well, then play it to see how it went. 04.20

Some might ask why we had used the manual camera centering for all of these animation and if it always must be set to manual, not at all actually we can set it to auto, for example set a focus animation on this part here and create and the camera will be adjusted automatically to look at the part from the best angel 05.05
This will conclude our lesson about these animations and how to use them in our projects, surly we have managed to fit them all in one lecture while we needed a separate lecture for each animation in motion group and the main reason for that is now we are all familiar with these animation templates and how to use them, hopefully this was clear enough, and we will see you soon.