Re: RedLight : new free add-in to block rebuilds (danger?)

bob z. wouldn't call it stupid. bob z. just accidentally did this correctly. what you need to do is drag and drop the .dll file into the solidworks background. o.k., picture this - you have solidworks open and maximized. no parts, dwgs, or assy's open. just solidworks. open window$ explorer and drag the .dll out of their and drop it into solidworks like you are going to open the .dll with solidworks. purty darn nifty!

Philippe, Solidworks often boasts of the productivity gains to be made by upgrading to the 'latest and greatest'. 99% of the time it's been bullshit. This bit of code you've written (redlight) is already saving me more time than any of the crap enhancements SW has come up with in recent memory. Often when mating components, normally SW takes shitloads of time to rebuild. With Redlight, it doesn't rebuild until you want it to. One nice thing I've noticed when using Redlight is this. If instead of hitting your rebuild button after creating mates, you drag one of the components, only those mates just created resolve, even better, eh.

Regards Alex

Oh man! That is the bee's knees!

That was the goal ;-)

Good news. Actually it is a good surprise since RedLight wasn't specificall designed to work this way. From your feedback I understand what happens: In apihelp you can see there are different levels of rebuilds. There is one: "swUpdateMates Assembly Only rebuilds mates, which is much faster than rebuilding the geometry. Especially useful for Component2::Transform." which is probably called when dragging a component (since you modify its transform) but isn't blocked by RedLight.

I'd appreciate to hear from people who have found problems with RedLight. If there aren't, I could put the "Special Disclaimer" at the bottom of page

Philippe Guglielmetti -

Philippe, another nice surprise. When creating angle mates the SW way, normally I line up the components roughly in the way I want them using the rotate component tool. Then I add the mates with the 'closest' option. I have found that SW never gets it right in the preview so I have to go through the other 3 combinations available, each time of course sitting back for the mind numbing rebuild. Quite often when I then get out of the mate dialogue the mate flips. So far without fail, using your Redlight, if I go into edit mode and drag the component as I've described before, the mates are exactly as I've intended. Without pissing in your pocket Philippe, if the SW programmers could work code the way you do, I wouldn't hesitate Beta testing the product because you know everybody is trying to achieve a better product, not merely sell more seats. As a programmer you seem to at least know what a cad end user requires of his software, unlike the sausage manufacturers at SW. BTW your epay, is it secure? I haven't used it before and am a bit loathe to use it. Regards Alex

specificall

RedLight Rocks !!!

saves me lots of time; very nice

Truly excellent add-in. You can even map the functions to ye olde Spacemouse. What more could you ask for?

Cheers

Jim Elias Munich, Germany