http://esoxrepublic.com/blog I suppose this means I'm famous Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:29:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Got this in one of my daily Arcamax word-of-the-day emails... concinnity \kuhn-SIN-uh-tee\ (noun) - 1 : Internal harmony or fitness in the adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other. 2 : Studied elegance of design or arrangement -- used chiefly of literary style. 3 : An instance of ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/11/06/word-of-the-day-concinnity/ One of the sticky things about working with SolidWorks API is the fragmented object structure. Often, it takes more than one object type to deal with a single object. The most common example is the ModelDoc/PartDoc/AssemblyDoc/DrawingDoc objects. All SW files are ModelDocs, but many API functions are ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/10/21/shapeshifting-through-sw-dimension-api/ I have been following the current economic crisis long before it became news. I average two to three hours per week reading in-depth about the conditions that have brought this crisis to bear. After the last big crash, I took stock of my news sources to see who ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/10/10/reliable-sources-of-news-re-economic-crisis/ To introduce using Windows API in macros, I picked the simplest example I have in my toolbox: opening a file in its default application. Using the ShellExecute command, one can call a file to simply open in its default application, much the same way that double-clicking a file icon ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/09/26/shellexecute-to-open-a-file-in-its-default-app/ ...not quite, but a fast way from here to there. I just released a macro I have been using for a few months. "Copy BOM to Clipboard" macro does exactly what it says: it copies a table-style BOM from a SW drawing to the clipboard in a format that can ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/09/11/sw-bom-to-excel-macro/ Long live AllAPI. Yesterday I reported that AllAPI.net was gone. The domain is gone, but the site lives on. It has moved to http://allapi.mentalis.org/. This is my go-to site for Windows API snippets. Also recommended: codetoad.com. My registry utilities VBA code module came from here. In upcoming weeks, I ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/08/29/allapi-lives/ I was gearing up for a set of articles on using Windows API in macros. I was going to lead off with a brief article about one of my favorite resources, AllAPI.net. Unfortunately, that article has turned into an obituary. For years, AllAPI.net was my first stop for Windows ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/08/28/rip-allapinet/ Sometimes I'm more entymologist than engineer. I'm always discovering new bugs. I'm working with a layout sketch (SW 2007 SP 4) that functions as a schematic for a lift mechanism. There are multiple configurations for different phases of the lift. There was one dimension for a line length that changed ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/08/20/ghosts-of-configurations-past/ EsoxRepublic.com has released a new where-used tool for SolidWorks. This new stand-alone application was created to fill in a gap caused by the undependability and inflexibility of the Windows Indexer-driven SW Explorer where-used search. Annotated screen shot of main interface of Esox Republic's newly-released Where-Used application. (Click image ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/08/07/new-solidworks-where-used-tool/ Coordinate Systems in SolidWorks have been a disappointment from the beginning. Like a freshman congressman, they have little purpose but to wait around, be present and hope for greater possibilities as they gain seniority. Unlike said congressman, coordinate systems are just not gaining any power. SW Help's own description ... http://esoxrepublic.com/blog/2008/07/30/sw-coordinate-systems-are-nearly-useless/