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Over the past few months I have received numerous emails from folks using the original PDMWE Number Generator.  It is such a simple little app that I was pleasantly surprised at all of the nice feedback people gave me regarding it.  To show my appreciation, I have modified the Number Generator to allow it to work with multiple serial number sequences ”on the fly.” 

 You have always had the ability to set up muliple serial number generators in PDMWorks Enterprise but now the user can decide at File/Folder creation time which serial number to use.  An anticipated use case with this improved version of the tools is for users who have multiple categories of parts with numbers being assigned by category.  Note:  Even though the functionality has been expanded, the tool is still very easy to install and configure. 

So how does it work?

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One of the nice things about not being employed by Microsoft is that I need not live in fear of receiving an email like this from Bill Gates.  This email from Bill Gates to the people responsible for Windows is worth a read if you have time.  It is a nice little rant on Windows from the guy most responsible for making Windows the most ubiquitous operating system on the planet.  The next time you get ready to verbally abuse Bill Gates when Windows frustrates you, take a deep breath and relax with the knowledge that BIll is using the software too and giving ‘em hell when it needs to be improved.

Note:  The Microsoft Mullet and other funny mullet pictures can be found at http://www.mulletmadness.com/.

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A year or two ago I read a book that changed the game for me.  The book was called .NET Gotchas and it made me about  10x more effective as a developer.  The book details 75 common pitfalls with .NET development and explains how to avoid them.  I was knee-deep in a few of those pitfalls when I found the book at my local library.  In fact, I was at the library specifically to get help for a few problems I was having with a PDMWE Addin project that I was working on at the time.  The addin was written for continue

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Writing Add-ins in SolidWorks can be tricky stuff as it involves class libraries, COM, interfaces, etc…  It can be argued whether it is easier or harder in .NET (ease of use of .NET versus pain in the rear of COM Interop) but your good friends at SolidWorks set out to make it easy on all of us by creating Visual Studio templates for quickly creating SolidWorks Add-ins.  continue

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Disclaimer:  This post isn’t directly API-related but using logic statements in SolidWorks equations is so useful that I decided to post it.  Also, the syntax is in a kind of “techno-weenie-ese” so I thought I would help folks with the syntax. 

 The SolidWorks equation editor is a very useful, powerful and yet easy to use tool for building design intent into your SolidWorks model.  However, most people don’t take full advantage of its power.  In addition to support for constants, which are nice, the equation editor allows If…Then type logic statements.  The idea is that you can set a dimension’s value to one of two values depending on the veracity of a logic statement pertaining to another/other dimension(s).  Say what?….

 Time for an example…

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