I’m fairly new to the myCAD community but have been using SOLIDWORKS professionally for a while now. Recently, I’ve started exploring some of the myCADtools add-ons and I’m really impressed with how much they can streamline repetitive tasks.
So far, I’ve been experimenting with tools like BatchProperties and SmartProperties to manage part metadata across large assemblies. It’s saving me a lot of time—but I know there’s still so much more these tools can do.
I’d love to hear from others here:
Which myCADtools features do you use most?
Have you customized any tools to fit your workflows?
Any hidden gems or tips you’d recommend for someone diving deeper?
Looking forward to learning from the community and sharing experiences!
For our BE: Smartproperties for parts or assemblies properties Smartbom to export a bill of materials in an excel file for our launches. Integration for the export of dxf for the laser and for the pdf export of each plan by fetching the quantities in the exported BOM with smartbom. No more quantity errors in our cartridges = performance gain! Cutting optimization for tube nesting and know how many to order. And a few others in a very basic way (Batchproperties, Batch converter, Project Manager...)
We export via macro a list of MEP files to be processed in csv. This file is imported into the Integration list of documents to be processed. In integration condition with AND " If the document is a plan ". Then in the operation modify a property from an Excel table, as on the capture if attached:
With the path of the excel file to point to, then the name of the MEP property to complete, and finally the sheet number, the file name (pathname) and the name of the column. Then another export operation in pdf (carried out here by macro for an internal reason)
Then the =a list of FIs and fabs from the excel nomenclature, is exported to our in-house ERP (with purchase request and automatic production order, time to be added)
Thank you very much for the information, but that was not how I saw it. For me it was the addition of the right quantity to be added to the drawing, e.g. the exact number of parts to be made for a sub-assembly. We do it manually by enclosing text, hence errors... Thank you again. @+. AR.
This is exactly the method I describe. Maybe not good enough by the way! In SW: Example of an unfilled property And after export via Integration:
At the very beginning we export a BOM of the set to be launched, then integration fetches each rep to be launched and fills in the quantity according to the main BOM exported at the start.
Several years ago this quantity property was already hard-coded, via the smartproperties after having (incorrectly) counted the number of parts in the assembly.
Smartproperties (Must-have) for parts properties, assemblies and MEP. ProjectManager (Old Version) to duplicate our assemblies with changes to File Names and Properties. (Too bad we can't rename the reprtoires in batch with " replace X characters with..." ") Integration to restore the properties of our new units. SmartBom (Old Version) to raise bills of materials and then to edit specific bills of materials for our ERP (Via in-house Macro). BatchConverter to create PDF and DWG documents for our MEPs FindDocument for searching our commercial parts libraries. (the database will be too large if we include all our 3D components) BatchPropeties (less often) to change a few specific properties. CleanProject to clean up our directories.
However, the whole thing is often associated with " in-house " macros for reasons of specificity of our " creation " or because the Mycad tools do not meet our needs or bugs on specific points. See List of Mycad fixes (AM/BG):
The rest of the Mycad tools (and there are a lot of them, often well hidden since they are not installed with the latest versions of Mycadpassport) are not often used here... (no internal uses for the most part) but I like to test them on occasion.
The following are currently being evaluated by us: Data Recovery The new version of SmartBom (Not convincing for now) The new version of ProjectManager (Unusable in our design office as it is) SpareParts (not yet tested but seems interesting)
No longer in use (replaced, for the most part, by internal macros): All the Drawing tools: Layermanager; SmartBalloon; FontConverter; ColorChart; SmartCounter... CustomToolBar.
Finally, but this is very personal, I hate their new " Settings " and " Share Options " tool... I don't understand their logic...
