Bracketage (rhymes with "garage") is the art of designing, making and installing brackets. Working mechanical engineers spend a significant amount of their careers designing ways to bracket objects onto each other.

This page is intended to support that important though unglamorous subject, which will be taught as a 3-session class. To view the EventBrite listing, please click here.

Solidworks Tutorials

Simple Angle Brace

Below is a set of tutorials showing basic use of Solidworks leading to sheet-metal bracket design and fabrication in the Metal Shop

Solidworks Tutorials

Tutorial 1	Tutorial 2a	Tutorial 2b
Beginner's Introduction	Designing a Bracket	Building the Bracket

Low-Tech Tutorials

No-Solidworks Tutorials

Tutorial 3	Tutorial 4	! Tutorial 5
No-Frills Shelf Bracket	Cardboard Aided Design 1	Tutorial 2 Bracket Redux

Glitches On Loading Solidworks

Enable the Sheet Metal Tab

Several of the tutorials in this set use the Solidworks Sheet Metal tool. The tool is accessed through the Sheet Metal tab in the Solidworks main window.

If the tab isn't present, you can enable it very easily. Right-click on any tab (such as the Sketch tab adjacent to it) and a popup menu should allow you to enable the feature.

Here is a video that tells you what to do at a time stamp between 1:00 and 1:17.

Link to: Solidworks sheet metal video

Solidworks Requires Update

Solidworks needs to be updated periodically. If a particular computer needs an update, this computer will fail to load Solidworks until it has been correctly updated by someone who has Admin privileges on the machine.

The dialog box signaling this problem is show below:

If you try to load Solidworks and you see this message, put a note on the bench with that machine and move on to another.

There is currently no organized system for reporting software issues, but people are alert to this problem and will act if notified.

A second glitch occurs sometimes, but it is less of a hassle. When you load Solidworks on a machine, it will sometimes ask for a password. The username and password are written on the slip of paper taped to the lower left corner of the monitor. Occasionally the dialog box glitches out and shows up blank as shown:

If this happens Solidworks can't be loaded unless you restart the computer. Sometimes it will take two or three restarts, but the problem isn't fatal.

Solidworks License

On October 25, 2024, the Asylum Solidworks license was allowed to expire. It was restored two weeks later on Nov 7, 2024. Service may be a little bit rocky in the near future as the interested parties work out some snarls with the server.

If you see a dialog box similar to the one shown here, please contact <facilities@artisansasylum.com> to inquire about its status.

Server Connection

If you try to start Solidworks and you see the following message, the computer has lost contact with the server.

See the connection fix for instructions.