Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you know that it is becoming easier and easier to "network" with other like-minded individuals around the world.  The proliferation of Web 2.0 "social media" networks (sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Pownce, and MySpace instantly spring to mind) is growing by leaps and bounds.  It seems like every week, there are a dozen new services to join (yes, I am a joiner).  Even SolidWorks is in the fray with 3D ContentCentral.
One of the key things …

Welcome to CADFanatic‘s Tips & Tricks Tuesday!  Hopefully, this will become a regular feature here on CADFanatic.  Every Tuesday I plan to post a short tip or trick that will hopefully help you become more proficient with SolidWorks.
So at a SolidWorks 2009 What’s New presentation I gave a couple of weeks ago, I was working in SolidWorks and mating two components together.  As I added the mate, literally everyone in the room said in unison, "How did you do that??  Is that a new feature in 2009?"
I was a little …

In part 1 of this series, I laid out the steps for creating a SolidWorks administrative image.  In this article, I will describe how to apply a service pack to create a new image that will automatically roll out to your users.  Again, the SolidWorks version shown in this series is Solidworks 2008, but based on my experience, the procedures for creating a SolidWorks 2009 Administrative Image is similar.
First off, prepare your file folders.  In this case, I am upgrading from SolidWorks 2008 Service Pack 3.1 to 4.0.  So I …