Hey puzzlers,

There are several issues I have always had when designing puzzles in SolidWorks. I found an appropriate thread in the SolidWorks forum, and decided that it was finally time to ask them to fix it.

https://forum.solidworks.com/message/328829#328829

I'll let you know if anything happens. (BTW, the picture at the bottom of the post serves as a good hint picture for one of my next puzzles. No guessing here, okay?)

-Eitan

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've found all 3 of those issues to be extremely annoying, and would really like to see them fixed.

Chandler

I'm hitting another multi body part issue in solid works, possibly related to the above post...

I have an object that I split into 3 distinct parts.
I want to have grooves cut in one of those 3 parts, and selectively suppress/unsuppress those groves in different configurations of that one part. (there are 8 different configurations for that one particular part).

but when I try to save bodies, it doesn't save any of the configuration information...

I'm trying to keep the entire design in a single design file if possible...

Hmmm... I haven't delved into part configurations very much. You should post about it on the SW forum!

You aren't trying to make a knucklehead mechanism, are you? Those are soooo 2008.

-Eitan

nope, not a knucklehead design this time... it isn't even a twisty puzzle...
but definitely a puzzle!

-D

Hey, that sounds like a challenge!

I'm glad you're asking about these problems. My index finger would thank you for a "select all".
In my opinion, it could be a checkbox property on the split feature, so that if I change my slice profiles, I don't need to edit the feature just to "select all" again.

Eitan, I found me too the first issue you mentioned about the check boxes is very annoying. Even if I have a very powerful PC, when splitting a solid into a lot of part, when I check the boxes a little too fast, a dialog open to ask me to save the part, which is very annoying. But I found a little "solution"

I use a program called "Super macro", as the name says I made a macro that check a check box then hit the down arrow key in a loop, repeated according to the number of part.
While it's running I take a little coffee break

That Super Macro program looks like a winner of a workaround. I'll give that a shot.

-Eitan

Though a select-all checkbox would be insanely useful (and the hidden part issue is very annoying) I do find that by cutting of various sections of the puzzle which are not needed anyways I can drastically reduce the number of boxes I have to click and also make the calculation a lot easier on the CPU. I am all for this feature being implemented but if you find yourself having to check 200 boxes you're doing something wrong.

Certainly, Tom. I recently started doing the same. But it's still annoying to check 100 or so boxes.

-Eitan

I found a workaround for my particular issue (being able to save different configurations of each particular body of a multi body file) by adding individual "delete body" commands that are suppressed appropriately in each configuration.