Engineering↗
SolidWorks API: COM Registration and Add-in Discovery
The COM registration path for a SolidWorks add-in: GUID and visibility attributes, the SwAddin descriptor, register and unregister hooks, the discovery and start-up registry key…
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Engineering
Engineering articles and subject areas in the KEVOS knowledge library. 2237 pages.
All Engineering 2237Civil & Structural 53Mechanical 204Electrical 25Physics 14Engineering Mathematics 1543Computing & Software 21Manufacturing 129Materials 11Machine Design 168CAD 28Metrology 29Maintenance 3Welding 9
Engineering↗
SolidWorks API: Command Manager, Menus and Toolbars
Building SolidWorks add-in menus and toolbars through the Command Manager: callback registration, command groups, AddCommandItem2 parameters, enable methods, user identifiers an…
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SolidWorks API: Deployment Methods and Installer Engineering
Deployment options for SolidWorks add-ins: manual installation, archives, self-extracting packages and full installers; installer requirements definition, COM registration durin…
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SolidWorks API: Development Environment and Project Configuration
How to configure a .NET project for SolidWorks add-in development: class library selection, COM type-library references, namespace imports, COM-visible assembly settings and deb…
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SolidWorks API: Event and Notification Architecture
How SolidWorks notifications reach an add-in: application-level events, document event interfaces for parts, assemblies and drawings, re-hooking on document change, selection ha…
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SolidWorks API: Licensing, Distribution and Commercialisation
Taking a SolidWorks add-in to market: per-seat licensing and machine fingerprinting, self-implemented versus commercial licence management, product presentation, online and in-s…
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SolidWorks API: Planning, Structure and Debugging Discipline
A structured approach to SolidWorks add-in development: pre-development architecture decisions, interface-first modelling, skeleton builds, adding functionality in user-journey …
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SolidWorks API: Property Manager Pages and the Control Model
Building SolidWorks Property Manager Pages: the handler interface, CreatePropertyManagerPage options and status checking, the control catalogue, identifier conventions, callback…
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SOLIDWORKS Automation: Macros, API & Task Scheduling
Levels of SOLIDWORKS automation and where each fits, worthwhile targets and what not to automate, unattended batch work, treating automation as software with ownership and versi…
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SOLIDWORKS Backup, Restore & Disaster Recovery
The three PDM backup artefacts and why synchronisation matters more than coverage, the non-vault artefacts routinely left out of scope, automation and monitoring, recovery scena…
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SolidWorks Custom Properties and Configurations Through the API
Reading and writing SOLIDWORKS custom properties through the API: document-level versus configuration-specific managers, adding, updating, deleting, auditing, and treating the p…
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SOLIDWORKS Deployment Methods & System Options Governance
Delivering SOLIDWORKS to a fleet: the three deployment methods and their rights and upgrade profiles, rollout sequencing and pilot design, and a defensible policy for which syst…
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SolidWorks Drawing Automation: Creation, Views and Printing
Creating drawings from templates through the SOLIDWORKS API, generating standard view sets, walking sheets and views for auditing, and printing with control over ranges, copies …
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SOLIDWORKS File References, Search Paths & Data Portability
How SOLIDWORKS references resolve, which ordinary file operations break the reference graph, governing in-context references and duplicate filenames, and choosing formats for tr…
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SOLIDWORKS Governance, Standards Register & Change Control
Sustaining a CAD environment: dividing responsibility between engineering and IT, the standards register and what belongs in it, change control by reversibility, the annual revi…
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SOLIDWORKS Licence Models & Entitlement Planning
Choosing between standalone and network licensing for SOLIDWORKS, how base tiers and add-in entitlements are consumed, and how to size a pool from measured usage rather than ass…
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SOLIDWORKS Materials, Drafting Standards & Units
The third standards layer: building a verified custom material library, holding a modified drafting standard as a controlled external file, setting units and precision consisten…
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SOLIDWORKS Network Licence Administration
Administering the SOLIDWORKS network licence manager: server placement and ports, the options file and its control categories, idle reclaim, borrowing policy, consumption order,…
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SOLIDWORKS Operating Environment Configuration
Configuring the operating environment around SOLIDWORKS: operating system support lifecycle, antivirus exemptions, graphics driver policy, account rights, path conventions and t…
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SOLIDWORKS PDM Architecture & Server Topology
The three PDM server roles and where data physically lives, the local vault view as cache rather than storage, topology and storage sizing, database edition consequences, prereq…
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SOLIDWORKS PDM Implementation & Legacy Data Migration
Running a PDM implementation as a change programme: phasing and where effort actually goes, deciding migration scope, pre-migration cleansing, preserving reference integrity thr…
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SOLIDWORKS PDM Vault Configuration: Workflows, States & Permissions
Designing a PDM workflow from the engineering change process: states and transitions, revision schemes, the layered permission model, data card variable mapping, transition cond…
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SOLIDWORKS Performance Diagnosis & Troubleshooting
A diagnostic method for SOLIDWORKS performance complaints: isolating the workstation, model, network and server layers, the two-test triangulation, common causes at each layer, …
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SolidWorks PropertyManager Pages: Building Native User Interface
Building PropertyManager pages through the SOLIDWORKS API: the handler interface, control identifiers, page and group options, selection boxes, and the full event lifecycle.
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SOLIDWORKS Templates, Sheet Formats & Custom Properties
Governing the SOLIDWORKS template set: what templates carry versus system options, why sheet formats are separate artefacts, designing a custom property schema before the first …
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SOLIDWORKS Toolbox & Design Library Governance
Controlling shared component libraries in SOLIDWORKS: where the Toolbox should live, configuring numbering and naming before production use, permissions and the silent-write fai…
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SOLIDWORKS Upgrade Planning & Version Compatibility
Planning a SOLIDWORKS upgrade: the four compatibility rules that govern sequencing, deciding when to adopt, pre-upgrade validation, the server-side sequence, and where rollback …
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SOLIDWORKS Workstation Specification & Hardware Certification
How to specify engineering workstations for SOLIDWORKS: why single-thread frequency governs rebuild performance, how to size memory against assembly scale, and why graphics supp…
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Spanning the Gap: The Iron Bridge, the Truss and the Suspension Chain
Three milestones in which metal replaces masonry as the primary structural material, and in which someone tests it before building with it.
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Spur and Helical Gear Fundamentals
Gear fundamentals for mechanical design: velocity ratio, hunting teeth, module and tooth proportions, involute profile and pressure angle, face width rules, and tangential, sepa…
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Steam Afloat and on Rails: Wilkinson, Trevithick, Fulton and Rainhill
Four milestones in which the compact high-pressure engine and the iron hull between them end the age in which transport meant wind, water and muscle.
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Steel Beyond Bessemer: Regenerative Heat, the Basic Process and Alloy Steels
Four milestones showing a field that acquired chemistry rather than physics, and in which the decisive advance came from a part-time experimenter working in a cellar.
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Stopping a Train: The Air Brake and Fail-Safe Design
Three milestones producing the clearest example of fail-safe design anywhere in this set: a brake that applies itself when its own control system fails.
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Storing Energy: The Lithium-Ion Cell, Hybrid Traction and Grid-Scale Batteries
Three milestones that made stored electricity dense enough to move a vehicle, then fast enough and cheap enough to stabilise a grid.
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Telegraphy: The First Electrical Industry
Four milestones in the first industry assembled deliberately out of laboratory physics, and the first to design against a transmission medium that could not be inspected.
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The Age of Applied Science: How Engineering Learned to Use Science
A structured reference series tracing how engineering stopped learning only from experience and began deriving results from science, with electrical engineering as the paradigm …
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The American System: Interchangeable Parts, Assembly Lines and the Sewing Machine
Interchangeable manufacture and the lockstitch sewing machine replaced skilled fitting with repeatable process, moving the engineering effort from the product to the system that…
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The Engineering Profession: Competence, Registration and the Duty of Care
Statutory engineer registration began in 1907, the year the Quebec Bridge fell. How the four-pillar competence model works and what it requires of Australian engineers today.
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The First Practical Motor Car: Benz and the Features That Stuck
Three milestones, and an unusually clean case of a first design getting the architecture right, plus a patent case worth knowing.
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The Gothic Structural System: Ribbed Vault, Pointed Arch and Flying Buttress
Four milestones in which builders working without any theory of statics arrived, by observation and by failure, at a structural system of remarkable efficiency.
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The Greek Contribution: Abstract Geometry, Mechanics and the First Machines
Six milestones including the single most consequential idea in the whole set: that there are general laws and that they can be known.
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The Grid: Large-Scale Generation, Transmission and Interconnection
Interconnection turned separate power stations into one synchronised machine spanning a country, buying shared reserve and merit order dispatch at the price of propagating faults.
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The Iron and Steel Ship: Cellular Hulls and the Great Eastern
Three milestones in which a ship stopped being a shaped assembly of timbers and became a designed structure with a calculated stress distribution.
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The Medieval Power Revolution: Water, Wind and the Horse
Six milestones that together constitute the largest single change in this set: the replacement of human muscle as the primary source of mechanical power.
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The Petroleum Value Chain: From the First Oil Well to the Modern Refinery
A cased, drilled well and fractional distillation created an industry in two years. How well construction, barrier philosophy and refinery architecture actually work.
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The Programmable Machine: The Microprocessor, Flash Memory and Lithography Scaling
Three milestones that made computation a component rather than a facility, gave it persistent storage, and kept both getting cheaper for five decades.
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The Solid-State Revolution: The Transistor, the Integrated Circuit and the First Network
Three milestones that replaced the vacuum tube, removed the wiring between components, and then removed the assumption that computers must be connected point to point.
Engineering↗
The SOLIDWORKS Administrative Image
Creating and maintaining a SOLIDWORKS administrative image: image types, the option editor and its configuration scopes, path constraints that cause obscure failures, and the ma…