Welcome on-board to SOLIDWORKS Community

I'm not trying to force it on you but here are some guidelines/suggestions which will help you to take the full advantage of the forum and extend your help to those who need them.

1. SEARCH: Before you start asking any question, prefer to do a quick search on the forum, SOLIDWORKS Knowledge Base or Internet. You might find someone having a similar issue and possible solution to fix the issue.

Check out this FAQ post from which would guide you right direction and help you getting the answers/solution quickly.

2. USING SEARCH ON THIS FORUM: Type in your keywords and press enter. You would be prompted with some options while you’re typing (which you can choose for quicker search). After that you would see the search results and there are more options on the right and left which can help in more advanced search. You can utilize wildcards when searching.

3. Also take a look at SEARCH TIPS for tips on performing a better search.

4. Do check “Get Started in the community” document. You can also set bookmarks in your browsers for specific pages/places. For e.g. I’ve set this bookmark to show all contents: https://forum.solidworks.com/content?filterID=all~objecttype~objecttype%5Bthread%5D

5. POSTING YOUR QUESTION: On the home page, type your question in the box. SW forums will try to find similar questions for you and you can check if any of those is relevant to you else click on “Ask it”.

6. PICK WHERE YOU WANT TO POST: Pick as what you want to do and post it in the appropriate location/category/place. For e.g. DON'T post a Drawing related question/issue in Assembly section.

7. You can also be in the specific location/category/place and can post there directly.

8. KEEP YOUR PROFILE UPDATED: OK the search did not resulted into anything useful. Well not to worry but go ahead and post your questions. But before you do that, make sure you've included your OS, Laptop/Workstation, SOLIDWORKS version with SP and other relevant details in your profile. This will help people to under the issue much better and there can be better solutions which may be related to one of the things hardware or software. To do this go, click the icon on your profile icon (top right) and select Edit profile.

9. USE APPROPRIATE POST TITLE: The post title should be as specific as possible; it cannot be too long. Titles like "Help me with my model" rarely get much attention from other members and many of them don't even look. So in case you looking for a speedy resolution and of course better one keep your post title short and appropriate.

10.  QUESTION OR THOUGHT: OK, the post title was great and appropriate to the need but make sure you decide that whatever you want to post is a question or you just sharing some thoughts/idea. In either case check or uncheck the box accordingly.

11.  USE PROPER FONT STYLE: Just a thought after seeing some really bad posts in the forum. Please use appropriate font size, type and style so that it is easy for people reading your post. DON'T USE ALL CAPS

12.  SPELL CHECK: Forum post give you an option to do a spell check, so take advantage of that.

13.  ATTACHMENTS: As said "A picture is worth a thousand words". Include pictures, SOLIDWORKS OR related files whenever possible along with the post. You can insert a picture with in a post using the buttons. In case the picture is too large, prefer to use file attachment option rather than insert option. In case you're uploading SOLIDWORKS files, make sure you include all the files. For e.g. uploading an assembly or drawing file should have corresponding parts, sub-assembly, files to avoid any issue in opening them.

14.  UPLOAD PICTURES DIRECTLY: Don't insert pictures in word and then upload here (as DOC file or PDF file). You can simply use print screen option on the keyboard, paste in paint, save and share here. Prefer to use .PNG format because the quality is really high as comparison to JPG and size is less as comparison to BMP. You can also paste a picture directly while editing/writing a post without a need to save the picture first; just use snip-it or similar tool and paste the image.

15.  PACK AND GO: Use Pack and go option in the SOLIDWORKS to make a zip of all the files so that you can avoid missing any file. Make sure you're using "Attach file" option to attach the files.

16.  NO TO WinRAR/7zip: Lot of people I've seen use WinRAR/7zip as their file zipping app. Please DON'T use that as lot many people don't have WinRAR/7zip installed on their machine. This may result in no answer or may be a delayed response. Instead use WinZip or better file compression option within windows. In case you’ve larger video files, then use free utility Handbrake to compress the video files. Also don’t try to post external links. Use forum to attach up to 25 mb files.

17.  MARK CORRECT ANSWER/SOLUTION: OK, you posted the question and someone or many people responded to that. Please make sure you pick the best solution/answer which resolved your issue to help someone who has similar problem and can benefit from your post.

18.  REPLYING TO A POST: Click on reply when you want to reply to someone's post. In case you need to attach a file (picture, video, SOLIDWORKS file) with your reply, please use advanced editor in the reply post. Click on reply and then click on "Use advanced editor". Scroll down to see the option to attach file. The file size allowed currently is 25 mb.

19.  EDIT/DELETE YOUR REPLY: You want to edit your reply post (not the original one) or delete the reply which you didn't wanted to post and then use these buttons under actions in the post.

20.  MORE ACTIONS WITH YOUR POST: You can edit your original post (the 1st one), move it to appropriate category/location in case you posted it in the wrong place (instead of deleting and starting a new one), can bookmark it (or even bookmark other posts too). Explore the options on right side of your post.

21.  MORE LIKE THIS: While you're searching or reading a post while looking for answer, do check More Like This on right side to find some more relevant post and one of them might have solution to your answer.

22.  USE TAGS: Using appropriate TAGS in the post help in searching the post while someone look for them.

23.  CONTACT MEMBERS: You can contact other members on this forum in private also in case you want to discuss something with them. And to the best you don't need their email-ids. Simply hover over their profile OR open their profile and click on message. You can include multiple people on the same private message.

24. NEED TO CHECK ALL YOUR DISCUSSIONS : Go to All content and click on "Authored"

25. Change Profile/Login Email Id: Log in to your customer portal account on SOLIDWORKS site. From there click on "My profile" (on left side) under Quick Links (1). Then you would find the option to request for the change of email id and other information on the next page (2).

26. Forums FAQs Section: Do check out the ​ section having wonderful and helpful post from ​   and   which tends to solve most of the general issues.

I hope that this post would be helpful to you in effectively using these valuable resources to help you in finding solutions to your issues. Once again welcome to SOLIDWORKS Community and this forum.

Happy SOLIDWORKING