New in Lightning: lock rotation for non-Toolbox components

Lightning is a SOLIDWORKS add-in that makes working with fasteners fun again.

Instead of scrolling through endless lists of fasteners, we let you select a type, size and material. After that, you just drag the part into your assembly and we’ll add a washer and a pattern for you.

We just released a new version. Here are the highlights:

1. Lock concentric mates – even for non-Toolbox parts
2. Internal cleanups
3. Improved consistency in the settings
4. Show the Stock Level of a selected component
5. Prevent identical configurations
6. Simplified Database Management window
7. Update thumbnail images
8. Bug fixes
9. What’s next?
10. Start filtering today

1. Lock concentric mates – even for non-Toolbox parts

SOLIDWORKS can lock the rotation of a concentric mate. This is great when you don’t care about the rotation of a part, like with fasteners. These concentric mates get a locked rotation icon:

See Preventing Rotation in Concentric Mates in the SOLIDWORKS knowledge base.

To enable automatic locking for Toolbox components, enable this setting in the SOLIDWORKS settings:

Lightning now completely honors this setting, there is no setting in Lightning for this. But to make it even cooler, we do this even when your fastener parts are not Toolbox components. We will lock all concentric mates for fasteners added with Lightning, it’s awesome.

2. Internal cleanups

Lightning seems so simple, but that’s because we hide all of the complex stuff.

And as things got more complex, we needed to take some time to clean up the code. So we made this the main goal for this release. Zero new features was the second goal, but we failed at that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The results are great. We improved the quality of the code by removing duplicates, organizing it differently, adding more tests and splitting big objects into smaller ones. This will make it easier to add new features in the future.

If everything goes well, you will never see any of this.

3. Improved consistency in the settings

As Lightning gained more features, we kept adding panels to the Settings window. But we lost track of the complete picture.

So we redesigned every settings panel to make it simpler, more consistent and easier to understand. Every step now has these three sections:

1. A list with properties on the left
2. An explanation and extra buttons on the right
3. Buttons and a progress bar at the bottom

The result:

4. Show the Stock Level of a selected component

Lightning makes replacing fasteners easy. Just select a bolt, click Replace selected, select a new type and click a button.

We also help you manage preferred fasteners using our Stock Levels feature. Every fastener size gets a label like Preferred or Avoid and a color for easy identification.

This lets you to nudge your engineers into using more preferred or in-stock fasteners.

From now on, we show the stock level of the selected fastener at the top of the replace window. A tiny, useful change.

5. Prevent identical configurations

We used to allow fasteners with identical properties. If you selected one of these while adding a fastener, we had to make you choose one of the identical ones.

This confused our users, so we fixed the problem at the root. Now, we do not allow identical configurations in the settings. You will get a popup that tells you which sizes need fixing.

6. Simplified Database Management window

Lightning stores your data in a database file called database.db. You can store this file in PDM so everyone uses the same data.

We simplified the window to manage the database location. There used to be three options, two of which let you select a folder. So we merged those two into a single Select folder option.

We also removed the Rebuild database button because people didn’t understand what it did. We now always perform this action silently.

But instead, we added a Reload database button that refreshes all data in your current session. That one should be more useful.

7. Update thumbnail images

We have refreshed our Fastener Models library, our user-friendly Toolbox alternative, and added 12 new fastener types. The thumbnails we created for these parts are now also added to Lightning. Here’s a preview:

8. Bug fixes

We found and fixed a few bugs. Thank you for reporting them, you are making the product better!

• Fixed the Skip Component button not being enabled when replacing fasteners.
• Fixed updating data for existing fasteners when refreshing a folder in the settings.
• Fixed mates being added twice when adding a washer.
• Fixed the future version file warning not being visible

As always, please let us know when you think you found a bug. We respond quickly and generally fix it in the next version.

9. What’s next?

For the next version, we will try to add support for cut-extrude holes. We already support Hole Wizard holes, but not every company uses them. We think they should, but hey.

We’d also like to support more pattern times, like linear and circular patterns. We only support Pattern driven component patterns right now.

10. Start filtering today

Lightning makes working with fasteners fun again. You can add, edit and replace fasteners much faster with this affordable (€150 or €220 per year) add-in.

We have a 14-day free trial. The add-in contains a helpful getting started video and 100 free fastener samples. All features are available during the trial.