Is It Time to Reconsider Toolbox?

Toolbox is a piece of SolidWorks software that I have been in the habit of giving very poor reviews. In the SolidWorks releases prior to 2007, these reviews were definitely warranted, but in 2007 they (partially) solved the Huge Screws issue, and since then they have solved a number of smaller problems.

Due to all of these changes, I’ve recently done a bit of research on Toolbox again. It has been a couple of years since I went through the software thoroughly, and it was time again, mainly because of preparations for the upcoming SolidWorks Administration Bible (available this winter?). Anyway, Toolbox is a huge administration topic, and using the book as a platform to rant with the same old tired rants is not really an option. That’s what the blog is for ;o). How huge of an administration topic is Toolbox? Well, here’s a list of functionality that you will find either inside or associated with Toolbox:

• Fasteners: screws, bolts, nuts, washers,
• Bearings
• Bearing calculator
• Bushings
• Keys
• O-rings
• Grooves (O-rings and circlips)
• Pins
• Sprockets, Gears and pulleys
• Retaining Rings, Circlips
• Structural Members
• Beam calculator
• Cams
• International standards including ANSI (USA), AS (Australia), BSI (UK), CISC (Canada), DIN (Germany),  GB (China), IS (India), ISO (International/Europe), JIS (Japan), KS (Korea), and MIL (US Military).
• User-defined standards
• Uses mate references
• Brand name parts including Helicoil, PEM, SKF, Torrington, Truarc, Unistrut
• Mold components including DME, Hasco, PCS, Superior, Progressive
• Smart Fasteners: auto-populates assemblies with fasteners, also uses semi-auto mode
• Smart Fastener configuration with fastener types, hole types and size tolerance
• Hole Wizard: database of hole sizes to fit standard hardware including 3 fit conditions
• mass-populate holes through selection techniques
• Link hardware and hole sizes
• Special recognition as Toolbox parts in PDM
• Limiting selection by standard, type and size
• Automatic application of custom properties
• Customized part numbers and descriptions
• Specify drive type and thread display for screws
• Option to use configurations or create parts for separate sizes
• Administrator lock down of library settings with password
• Sharing Toolbox between multiple users

Wow. That’s a list. The problem is, does it all work? And if it does, why don’t people love this stuff? Is it really just that we have become so accustomed to hating Toolbox? My new take on Toolbox is that the main things wrong with it are that 1) Smart Fasteners delivers much less than its potential in fully automatic mode, and 2) that the documentation really doesn’t even begin to be adequate and 3) Toolbox is not a plug and play library – contrary to the “dumb-it-down” philosophy at work in the rest of the software, Toolbox is too complicated – itrequires implementation setup for any set up other than a stand alone user who never shares assemblies and doesn’t use Toolbox meta data.

They have improved the documentation significantly, but the problem is still the “why” question. I think SW fails to realize that knowing what every button does is not enough. You have to somehow be able to apply that information to a real world situation. There has to be some sort of interpretation.

Again, I have mixed feelings about the documentation inadequacies, and maybe this is all by design, who knows. If they had great documentation, I’d still have a 9-5 day job. So as a writer, I’m glad the dox suck, but as a customer advocate, I wanna rail at it a little bit.

What were the major arguments against Toolbox? Has the situation really changed that much to warrant a whole bloc of people changing their minds about it? Really the big thing for me was the huge screws problem, where configurations would go missing due to changes or reinstallation, and you’d lose all your size info in assemblies. But that has been fixed, it now (since 2007) recreates missing configurations. If you look at Toolbox now, you see that it is very complex, at least the set up for it.

Why is there no option for just a simple library? You can actually use TB to create a simple library.

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