Part VIII: Appendixes
answer questions, and knowledgeable users often give good answers and invaluable perspectives
on not just modeling and CAD admin topics, but also general mechanical engineering.
You can get an account to read and post messages even if you are not on maintenance. You can
find the forums at http://forum.solidworks.com.
Knowledge Base
If you think you have used the Knowledge Base before and found it less than satisfying, you owe it
to yourself to try it again. Searches actually turn up a lot of useful information. Results may include
tech support responses to customer issues, SPRs (software performance reports — also known as
bug reports), white papers, articles, and so on. In addition, you can look up SPR numbers you
have received from tech support to check the reports’ statuses. I have consulted the Knowledge
Base several times while writing this book. It has been built from vast amounts of internal
SolidWorks corporate support documentation, as well as the support database. I give it very high
usability marks!
Software downloads
Manually downloading and installing software and upgrades for SolidWorks is becoming outdated,
although you can still do it. The SolidWorks Installation Manager works much like Microsoft
Automatic Update. It downloads and even installs updates for you automatically. You can also
make it work with administrative image installations. I particularly like that it can download ser-
vice packs before the links on the SolidWorks Web site are active. Of course, if you need or simply
want to download them manually, this option is also available.
Release Notes
All the Release Notes for all the service packs of the current version are also available from the
main Customer Portal window. This is essential information for CAD administrators. Technical
Alerts, changes to the System Requirements (such as SolidWorks 2011 dropping support for
Windows XP), and new installation details are listed here.
Even if you think you do not need to know any of this information, it still makes for interesting
(and at times alarming) reading. The Technical Alerts typically warn of severe bugs or other prob-
lems and how to workaround or fix them.
What’s New
What’s New is a great document to refer to when you are learning a new version of SolidWorks.
For the SolidWorks 2010 version, the What’s New document comes in HTML and PDF formats.
Installation and administration guides
Installation and administration guides are available for SolidWorks, eDrawings, and Cosmos. They
contain the basics about the topics, and are not as detailed as other sources of information. For a
complete installation and administration guide, please refer to the SolidWorks Administration Bible
(Wiley, 2010).
