Is there any way to alter the output line color of a DXF save for sheet metal parts from white to any other color? The answer is yes and you don’t have to be Magellan. Use the SolidWorks DXF Entity Mapping to save your company many hours of time. To export a DXF file of a sheet metal flat pattern, save it like normal, then chose “Options” in the Save As… dialog box. Here you will notice a host of options, but the most important one is the Mapping choice. Flip this switch on the on position and close the Options box. When you save the file, you will get a box that pops up that asks you to translate SolidWorks Entity types to DXF layers, colors and line-type. Save this mapping file out in a central location that everybody in the company can access. The next time you export a DXF file, go back to Options to tell it not to ask you again for the mapping information so the save process is transparent. A quick tips is to create a DXF/DWG mapping file for each piece of equipment that requires different mapping or for customers that you work with that need DWG/DXF, typically for schematics or plant layouts.
One of my customers has indicated that it is a bit cumbersome with the large volume of DXF files to change the color every time after export. The reason for the color change is that their CAM/Laser/Waterjet systems all use white as a highlight color, so creating machining/laser files is not practical when you can’t tell what is/isn’t selected. This will save time when exporting DXF output! Watch the video below for a full description of the mapping process. Happy trails!
In today’s competitive landscape, keeping costs down without sacrificing quality is paramount. But how can we minimize costly materials used in a design and still ensure it functions correctly? In this transfer mechanism seen below, we need to remove material from the bracket castings and torsion tube. But how do we find the locations in which to remove material and how light can we actually make it? Can we understand the forces experienced by each component without building a prototype?
SolidWorks Motion allows users to simulate the conveyor operation and obtain the loads in the linkage system from the actual operation. These loads can then be used in SolidWorks Simulation to evaluate the strength of the design. This really takes the guesswork out of determining the inputs needed for strength calculations. While we can study the entire structure, let’s focus just on the pivot linkage. SolidWorks Motion can also be used for quickly sizing motors and actuators in a system.
Now that we understand the working loads, optimization couldn’t be easier. Being part of the SolidWorks environment makes geometry changes child’s play. All the designer has to do is pick what features he would like to change and a dimensional range of which they can vary. In this case, we let SolidWorks vary the Web, flange, and hole offset thickness as well as the torsional tube’s wall thickness. We also set a constraint that stress must remain below a certain value, like 50 MPa.
SolidWorks Simulation does the rest of the hard work; trying many different geometry combinations to find which one require the least amount of material while still keeping stress within an acceptable range.
In a matter of minutes a new more efficient design is achieved with very little effort.
In the example we are working with here, we were able to reduce the weight from 10.5kg to 6.15 kg). That’s a 40% weight saving.
SolidWorks has updated it’s Simulation suite of software to include a basic tool to check for fatigue problems. The Fatigue Check plot alerts you if certain regions of your model are likely to fail due to repeated loading and unloading over infinite time. You can assess in advance the safety of your model due to fatigue, without running a fatigue study, based on results from static studies. This is available as a plot type when you run a Linear Static simulation and if you have SolidWorks Simulation Professional or higher license type. If you are curious about more in depth Fatigue calculation and crazy statistical calculations, I ran a webcast on this stuff recently which can be viewed here. The video below is a great testimony to running a proper fatigue study in SolidWorks:
A bit of a farce of course, and I love it, but fatigue analysis can come to the rescue. New in SolidWorks 2010:
S-N material curves are now defined in the fatigue study, not in the associated studies. You can view other material properties in a fatigue study.
You can now use stress results at a particular solution step from nonlinear and linear dynamic studies.
When creating a fatigue study, you choose constant or variable amplitude. The Change Event Type command is removed.
Body icons appear in the fatigue study tree to allow you to define S-N fatigue curves. Much easier
Damage is shown as a percentage instead of as a fraction in Damage plots.
Did you know that you can show an exploded view of an assembly in SolidWorks eDrawings. But what if you do not have an exploded view created in the assembly created in SolidWorks? Well here is a tip. You can hit CTRL-E inside of eDrawings and auto-explode your assembly! No strings attached. Hit CTRL-E on the keyboard again to put you design back together. Have fun!
There are many ways NOT to use AutoCAD to create 2d Schematic diagrams, wire summaries and P&ID (Process and Instrumentation Diagrams). Many users that I talk to have Microsoft Visio installed on their machines. If you have Visio 2003 or higher installed, you can use SolidWorks and Visio together to overthrow AutoCAD. Here is how it works: In a SolidWorks drawing, from the pull down menu’s, Click Insert, Schematic. The Position Schematic PropertyManager opens. Under Schematic Templates, select a template. These are all the templates the come with Visio or the ones that you have customized. Note: The PropertyManager lists the templates most commonly required in SolidWorks. To choose from the more extensive list in Visio, select Other from the bottom of the SolidWorks list, or else make no selection. Next, Drag-select a box in the graphics area of your drawing to size and position the schematic. Now you can drag and drop components from the Visio library to create the schematic in SolidWorks. Click outside the OLE object that is dropped into SolidWorks to accept it.
Even better yet, you can use the Visio diagram to drive a 3D Pipe route. In SolidWorks 2010, you can import a Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) file created with an external system such as Visio and use that file as a guide in building route assemblies. To import route specifications from a P&ID file, click Piping and Instrumentation tab (If you have SolidWorks Routing turned on) from the SolidWorks Task Pane, select the P&ID file, and click Import P&ID. Note: You must import the P&ID data file in .xml format. For an example, see Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SolidWorks\SolidWorks_Version\design library\routing\piping\pnid sample.xml. The path to the Application Data folder depends on your operating system. You must show hidden files to view this folder. A wizard will then guide you through the process of dropping in the piping components. As a best practice, import schematics from a P&ID file to design a piping route so that the piping design matches the connectivity and pipe sizes in the schematic and the design validation tools in SolidWorks Routing warn of any deviation from the schematic.
SolidWorks Toolbox has a plethora of available mechanical hardware for machine designers to choose from. In fact, the estimate is that there are over 2 millions distinct sizes of hardware to grab. In playing around with Toolbox today, I rediscovered a trick to rapidly insert screws into an assembly. The normal process to insert a screw is to drag and drop the appropriate screw into an assembly model and drag it close to a hole. Then it will SmartMate itself into position and ask for the size and length of the screw.
The rediscovered shortcut is to pre-select the edges of the holes that you wish to add hardware to. These can be on completely separate surfaces, or on separate parts. After you choose the edges, go ahead and right-mouse button click on the part in the Toolbox browser and choose “Insert into assembly” Then it will happily go on its way to placing the hardware in exactly as you will it. At the end of the process, it will then prompt for the size and length, which you can select in the PropertyManager or dynamically on-screen with the drop down list and green arrow. See the YouTube video below for more.
A question that pops up from time to time with our customers is how to create a Title Block. More specifically, the description field. Many times, a description for a part on the drawing will not fit on one line of text. This is in many cases rectified by adding another field for the second line or third line. While this serves it’s purpose of producing a drawing that can be printed and sent out for manufacturing, a sinister problem surfaces. The custom property field for description is no longer one field that is easily searched for in a a PDM or ERP system. So if you set up your SolidWorks properties to be synchronized with your ERP system’s item Master or even on your BOM on the assembly drawing, the note for description is truncated.
To solve this issue, the flexible and stretchable annotation field comes to the rescue. To enable this, double-click the note and a border appears around the note. Drag the handles surrounding the note to fit to your description box in your title block. To make filling out the title block even more seamless, use the “Title Block Area” functionality to edit the description without having to go back to the part model The YouTube video below will show how to accomplish this.
Ask a hundred engineers wow they would go about the process of generating a hole pattern with lots and lots of holes, and you will get a hundred answers. So this is just my two cents, but a penny saved is a penny earned.
The technique that I am going to show you describes using the all powerful “Fill Pattern”. The Fill Pattern feature lets you select an area defined by co-planar faces or a sketch that lies on co-planar faces. The command fills the defined region with a pattern of features or a predefined cut shape. The typical uses for this are for ventilation, filters, grips or to reduce the weight of your parts.
The best way to set these up is to create to sketches to capture the region that you want to work in and to create a sketch to orient the pattern of holes. In the YouTube video below, you will notice that I offset the boundary of the cylindrical disk for one sketch, then in another sketch I create a single line for a direction vector for the pattern to line up on. Now, here is the coolest part: I get to make the pattern, even without creating the hole ahead of time as a feature. The “Fill Pattern” tool, which is found under Insert… Pattern/Mirror… Fill Pattern or in the Pattern Drop down toolbar button, can create a hole for you, without a sketch. The video below describes some of the features and menu picks to set this up.
After quickly creating the pattern, I send the file out to the laser drilling machine by saving a DXF file directly from the part file by selecting the pace with all the hole, choosing File.. Save As… and choosing DXF as the file type. SolidWorks nicely presents a preview of the DXF file to ensure that it will be good for the Laser machine.
The infamous “Dimension palette” introduced to the SolidWorks user community has been received with much fanfare. Many people have come to love it or hate it. The concept is great. As soon as you select a dimension, it gives you a heads-up interface in which you can change the tolerance, unit precision and browse to you company standard favorite dimension styles, and even a list of recent styles you have used. The issue many customers had was that it either got in the way or botched up their graphics. This has been fixed for SolidWorks 2010 SP3! Take a look at the video below to see how it has been implemented. Essentially, once you pick a dimension it pops up with a more innocuous button. Once you hover over that button it opens the full “Dimension Palette”. The next cool thing deals with the position of the palette. You can grab the tab on top of the palette and move it if it is in the way. On the graphics standpoint, it does not use the fade in effect, like it used to, which will take less of a toll on systems with lower resources. Check it out and use it and drop us a comment on how it works!!!
SolidWorks has great technology to put parts together called mates. In my previous article about the Wild Kingdom of mates I indicated there are various “phylums” of mates. This topic will hone in on the Geometric Phylum of mates and specifically on the “Width” mate.
The Width mate saves a lot of time for engineers who are putting parts together that are not line to line fits, which constitutes the majority of mechanical fits. Prior to the width mate, an engineer would have to break out the calculator and add the distance between all the faces up and divide by two and use a distance mate. Or if the models were built with planes down the middle of the part, then the engineer could drill into the feature tree of the part and mate the parts to one another using planes(not too bad…) The width mate allows a user to pick to 2 faces on each part and SolidWorks will do all the math to center the two parts based on the selected faces.
I discovered something of a shortcut today relating to the width mate. As in the image above, you can pick 2 faces on one part and a face that is adjacent to those first selections in the second part and the width mate still works! Jason Pancoast, the Engineering Manager here at CAPINC indicated some reasoning as to why this works. It is because it is a cylindrical face I am selecting. The Width Mate also works with V-shaped gaps & tabs. To quote Mel Allen: How about that! (see youtube link)
Is there any way to alter the output line color of a DXF save for sheet metal parts from white to any other color? The answer is yes and you don’t have to be Magellan. Use the SolidWorks DXF Entity Mapping to save your company many hours of time. To export a DXF file of a sheet metal flat pattern, save it like normal, then chose “Options” in the Save As… dialog box. Here you will notice a host of options, but the most important one is the Mapping choice. Flip this switch on the on position and close the Options box. When you save the file, you will get a box that pops up that asks you to translate SolidWorks Entity types to DXF layers, colors and line-type. Save this mapping file out in a central location that everybody in the company can access. The next time you export a DXF file, go back to Options to tell it not to ask you again for the mapping information so the save process is transparent. A quick tips is to create a DXF/DWG mapping file for each piece of equipment that requires different mapping or for customers that you work with that need DWG/DXF, typically for schematics or plant layouts.
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