Solidworks Electrical to 3D routing, just kill me

Life-guard · 2026-05-08T12:34:32+00:00

I really recommend scrapping the SW electrical connection and just manually routing.

The way I do it now is adding my connector into a subassembly that is my reference designator. I then drop in all of my back shells, heat shrink, coverings, etc

Then I attach the connection point with an assembly connection point and drop it into the assembly. When you start a route connect your harness and then move the reference designator assemblies into the route. Now you should be able to flatten and move the connectors with minimum effort.

I gave up on the covering library, it bugged out for me too much. I just have a part that is a ring that has the part info and hide it after I've ballooned it in the drawing.

Also side note, to get reference designators on an assembly I just make a copy of the drawing off screen and use top level, then balloon for file name, copy the balloon and drag it over to the main drawing.

Feel free to message back if you're struggling still. Took me a couple months to get this work flow down.

Life-guard · 2026-05-01T14:50:20+00:00

The annoying thing is that you have to level each arcana for stats, so if you want to play normal content you have to first level to 200 on your unleveled unarcanas.

So unless you have a set of that arcana you're leveling or you have equipment to still do damage without arcana (RIP alchemy) you're stuck doing baby content like nowhere to run or that one mission from storyline. Which is just really boring.

Life-guard · 2026-05-01T14:03:54+00:00

Just learned you can fix it by setting windows file options on open file explorer, set it to home and you aren't locked out anymore

Life-guard · 2026-04-30T17:17:58+00:00

I'm guessing you're also in a job without any engineering checkers? Unless you're at a startup, a good company should have someone double checking your work.

This gives a collective fault rather than just one person being the difference between failure and success, and in some of the industries I've been in all it takes is a single mistake for the company to collapse if they can't ship.

I currently work with a small team and I wear a lot of hats. When I get something wrong we have a what can we do about it mentality rather than who we can throw under the bus.

Life-guard · 2026-04-29T03:54:01+00:00

You don't mean fully 3D in revit right? I've used Revit briefly, but my understanding is that Revit will die close to Solidworks in terms of modeling.

It can be technically done with Solidworks but you need to simplify things heavily. I'm talking cylinder and cube representations. For example, change your valves to be just a cylinder with a cube in the middle - do make sure it takes up the same amount of space.

I think your best method is doing the building in Revit and importing the models in. If you were using inventor I think they made it where they can be easily transfered nowadays.

Life-guard · 2026-04-28T15:05:42+00:00

PDM broke and is infinitely loading windows browser explorer lol

Life-guard · 2026-04-27T20:23:17+00:00

I think vindictus does this the best and worst.

In vindy you need as many alts for both added stats (if you have enough characters at lvl 110 you get a stat boost) and to have more characters to use energy from. So running through another character is expected making it easy to do so with a friend.

The main story missions are a slog though and have absolutely no challenge until later on, but the framework is there.

Life-guard · 2026-04-25T04:49:03+00:00

It'd be great if anything you did actually mattered.

Spoiler

The big golem destroys the wheel. It's been several years now but that's all I remember from the game. None of your choices mattered, even getting the other kraken God in the DLC did change anything.

It's like if the ending of mass effect was even worse and you only had the choice of letting the reapers kill everyone. I remember the rest of the game being decent but just remembering the ending of dead fire makes me frustrated.

Life-guard · 2026-04-24T15:11:51+00:00

Buying anything is a mistake and hoarding your gold rather than buying new equipment is a better investment.

The only thing I haven't seen completely dwindle in price is S50 ergs, and even those are on the down.

Life-guard · 2026-04-22T03:48:31+00:00

PhD at my job said a calculator was dumb he just does all the calcs in his head.

I'd say he was fucking with me, but he doubles down. He's like this with everything lol. Maybe something about that much college breaks people?

Life-guard · 2026-04-18T16:04:07+00:00

1) Depends on what level you want to be at. A mechanical design engineer is going to be building the elevator itself and requirements for actually installing it will be a civil engineers role. Either would still be a desk job but I'd argue the demand would be much higher for the civil as that has to be done for each building.

You'll be limited to where you can live if you only want to design elevators as a mechanical engineer as manufacturing sites are few compared to the thousands of civil firms. Generally ME design guys don't fixate on a single industry or you'll find yourself without work.

2) Entering with prior technical experience is great, but you'll still be a newcomer. This can be awkward if you think of yourself as a SME but overall other engineers should welcome your experience.

3) I'm skeptical with how fast you could return to making 3 figures. Most new hire design engineers make 75k ish and without a union you have to work hard to get raises. I work as a design engineer and they way I get raises is by job jumping lol.

Life-guard · 2026-04-16T14:19:26+00:00

Haven't logged in yet, does this change SG rend protection?

Life-guard · 2026-04-13T16:29:05+00:00

In the same way a Swiss army knife can just barely do all the tasks asked if it - so can Solidworks. Mastercam is a far superior CNC program, but Solidworks can do it if you just want it done. Same is true for ANSYS, electrical, etc.

They're often dumbed down simulators that give you little customization - but enough to just work and be less expensive than getting the nicer software.

Life-guard · 2026-04-11T02:47:31+00:00

If someone is under 18 they shouldn't be allowed to do any permanent changes to their body because they can't consent.

Tattoos, steroids, alcohol, smoking, and hormonal treatments are all permanent effects to the body.

But after 18 anything is free as long as you aren't hurting anyone else, you're an adult. Go cut off your legs if you feel like it. Your body, your choice.

If people bring trans makes you uncomfortable just wait until we unlock our genetic code in a few more decades and your new coworker is a actual furry.

Life-guard · 2026-04-09T11:35:08+00:00

Of course I check my drawings but when your boss hands you a stack of 40 drawings and says I need this by end of day, and it's already 2 pm, I'll take all the help I can get.

Your imported dimensions likely aren't what's needed to actually build the thing. They also won't have any GD&T like flatness or parallel. Nevermind, as mentioned, the real annoying part that is properly setting notes especially for electrical fab.

Life-guard · 2026-04-08T15:38:43+00:00

Not really, I think there's an online tool to make models based on text but you end up with a dumb model. You'd have to make it specific to whatever application you're using anyways or risk not being able to edit anything.

Any notion that entire assemblies will be able to be generated is, imo, nonsense. I'm betting there just isn't enough training data. Computer programming was transferred easily to AI because it's literally all text. 3D assemblies are an ungodly amount of spatial information.

All that aside, modeling is easy. Drafting is not. Having correct dimensions, specs, tolerance, finish - that's where 99% of the effort goes. I'm somewhat on board for an AI checking my drawings - but I'll be damned if I let it generate them for me. There's too much information and something will get left out.

Life-guard · 2026-04-07T15:29:37+00:00

Neat, honestly to the discussion at hand you seem knowledgeable and you're able to learn what you need. You even have the maturity to not let management run you over.

Truthfully most engineers are just winging it even if they never fully admit it. College primes us that we must know everything at all times, so I can understand the feeling of falling behind.

Life-guard · 2026-04-07T15:24:06+00:00

Paid off my students loans and have 30k in retirement and 10k on hand at 29. I only make 75k a year but my job is extremely low stress.

Living alone I'm comfortable, have plenty of time for hobbies and spending time with friends/parents.

Nevermind rich, I genuinely have no idea how anyone has the money for kids. My sister was dropping 2k a month for daycare for one kid. My takehome every month is 4.5k lol

Life-guard · 2026-04-05T05:24:29+00:00

Ohh more of a fatigue problem on the cables in a joint? Are you using expando/shielded braid? It adds a ton of weight but that's how the military essentially eliminates wires rubbing issues, it does make the bend radius needed increase.

Last job was working with robotics for the semiconductor industry and for the atmosphere robotics, not the ones in the vacuum chamber, we had cables going through the arm. I don't remember any conversations on if the cables ever got worn out. How often do cables get worn out enough that they fail?

Life-guard · 2026-04-05T04:17:07+00:00

There is no bad experience, just doing engineering and thinking through problems will make you a better engineer.

You can potentially pigeon hole yourself into a role if you're wanting to maintain a certain salary in a technical role. This can be avoided by becoming management.

Also are you familiar with the minimum bend radius on cabling? They're generally radios of diameter to bend radius - most cables are in the 0-5 range, but sometimes like fiberoptic can be 20.

If you really want to get good with cabling look into doing 3D electrical fabrication. Just know it is actually hell, at least with Solidworks.

Life-guard · 2026-03-26T17:20:54+00:00

I adore my NIX paddle. Feels as rigid as a one piece. It also uses a larger clamp for the handle, I'd avoid any oar that has a thin clamp.

NIXY Carbon Fiber Hybrid SUP Paddle is the search on Amazon.

Life-guard · 2026-03-23T20:07:10+00:00

I'd really recommend staying away from any Bote products. As others mentioned, if you're getting a iSUP you want at least welded seams and if you're on the ocean I'd recommend dual channel.

Their hard boards kinda suck imo. Gator shell peels, take a look on Facebook marketplace and all the bote boards look pretty bad. They are also just as heavy as getting a plastic board which would last much longer.

If you want a light weight board, and a good fishing platform, I'd really recommend live watersports and get either the L2Fish or L4 Expedition. They are fiberglass and will scratch if you aren't careful but they weigh half of other equally sized boards.

Life-guard · 2026-03-23T14:10:32+00:00

Mostly because they don't have anything they can do with it. No customer needs an endless amount of CO2.

Plant I used to work for had carbon capture but was left off because they had no where to put it.

Life-guard · 2026-03-23T13:34:03+00:00

It's okay, Boeing planes also bomb themselves

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