What?

Recently my company switched to the CAD software Solid Works. In general, I enjoy using this software a bit more than our previous antiquated version of Solid Edge. But today I came across one of the most confusing error messages I’ve ever seen.

I was happily dimensioning a part within a model when I mistakenly over-constrained the model. For the non-mechanical amongst us, that means that I measured the same thing twice. This tends to confuse modeling programs because they don’t know which of my two dimensions is more important. If I change one of the two, which should it follow?

To fix this problem, the primary dimension is defined as the driven dimension. Once you set the driven dimension, the software knows which dimension gets the priority and acts accordingly.

But today, when I mistakenly placed an extra dimension, The software came back with this:

comfusing-error.PNG

Should I “Make this dimension driven” or do I “Leave this dimension driving”?

Huh? These are all the same things.

This makes no sense.

9 thoughts on “What?

  • 2/23/2010 at 12:03 pm
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    I believe that “making the dimension driven” is making it a slave to driving dimensions where “driving” is making it the master of the driven dimensions.

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  • 2/23/2010 at 12:05 pm
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    Thank You! It still seems convoluted to me, but this explanation makes sense.

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  • 2/23/2010 at 12:18 pm
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    I think it would help since the error message has a question in it, to say, “Yes, make this dimension driven” and “No, leave this dimension driving”.

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  • 2/23/2010 at 12:22 pm
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    I feel for you, but you should step up to Solid Works’ big brother, CATIA. The Franlish Dassault uses is hideous.

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  • 2/23/2010 at 4:26 pm
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    Try using Pro/E all day. All I get for help is “see error log” which consists of hexadecimal code with no meaning. I can only dream of using Solidworks again.

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  • 2/23/2010 at 5:40 pm
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    I remember back in the day at WPI when I thought Pro/E was the shiznit. How wrong I was.

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  • 2/24/2010 at 10:03 am
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    I remember those days back at WPI too, on those crazy expensive Sun Microstation computers, Pro/E was the greatest. Professor Cobb would relentlessly claim how great the software was and I drank the koolaid. It was like a Pro/E cult.

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  • 2/24/2010 at 10:16 am
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    I also remember the Cobbster saying that a license of Pro/E was $25,000 and thinking that because it cost so much it must be so much better than the competition. He must have been getting massive kickbacks from PTC for pimping out their wares.

    Reply

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