8Apr10 What is SolidWorks Mechatronics and why do I need it?

EBSDesigning production machinery is a challenging job, especially when integrating controls and making sure everything works. Today I put together a pre-recorded presentation showing machine operation in SolidWorks Motion as well as the integration of tools from National Instruments and Rockwell Automation. With SolidWorks and National Instruments LabVIEW, you can lower the cost and risk of machine design by creating a virtual prototype of your motion control system. By using NI SoftMotion with SolidWorks to simulate your system with actual motion profiles, you can simulate mechanical dynamics, including mass and friction effects, cycle times, and individual component performance, before specifying a single physical part and connecting it to an actual control algorithm. Virtual prototyping (also known as digital prototyping)offers you the ability to visualize and optimize the design and evaluate different design concepts before incurring the cost of physical prototypes. Integrating motion simulation with CAD simplifies design because the simulation uses information that already exists in the CAD model, such as assembly mates, couplings, and material mass properties. LabVIEW provides an easy-to-use, high-level function block programming language for programming the motion control system that is simple enough for users with little or no previous motion control programming experience. To learn more about this watch the webcast and download the tutorial on this topic.

NISoftmotion

Rockwell Automation’s Motion Analyzer, which so far has only been used for motor computation, has now become a centralised tool that can be used to optimise machine designs. With Motion Analyzer 4.7, application data can be imported into SolidWorks Motion. An estimation of the loading, as was often the case previously, then becomes superfluous and a genuine computation of the drive load is possible. Based on this data, the tool suggests a suitable drive, taking into consideration local conditions such as the supply voltage and even the altitude. Furthermore, Motion Analyzer is able to carry out a comparison of costs and performance for various drive technologies. This means that users can select the variant most suitable to the machine’s use and the customer’s requirements. System designs can also be optimised for energy efficiency and/or performance, yet payback periods for additional-cost options can be assessed before any specification is finalized.

To learn more about this watch the webcast here! or watch this YouTube recording below:

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28Mar10 Mates: The Wild Kingdom of SolidWorks

01_MatesYou don’t have to be Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom to appreciate the number of ways to pair parts together using “Mates” in SolidWorks. However, if we take a page or two from Darwin, we might make sense of the classifications of mates in SolidWorks. Let’s think of how Darwin classified the kingdom of plants and animals. Take a look at the image on the left, showing the classification system that the Wild Kingdom uses. Let’s Presume that the Kingdom we are dealing with is the “Mating” Kingdom. Beneath that in the hierarchy is the Phylum. SolidWorks mates are broken down into two Phylums, the Geometric Phylum and the Horizontal Phylum. The Geometric classes of mates are as follows: Basic, Advanced and Mechanical. The other Phylum is the “Horizontal”, which deals in the realm of mating to sketches, planes, ect… In this blog article, I would like to focus on the “Horizontal” phylum and it’s two classes of mates. These two classes are dubbed as the Layout class and the Delphi class.

The layout sketching technique is quite powerful, especially for larger designs and machinery. Take a look at the engine image below. You can see how one could design a quick mechanism in 2D, with all the mechanism dynamics of the alternator bracket, positions of belt tensioners, ect… Each of these components would be “block” entities in a single layout sketch in assembly mode. Once the components work to you satisfaction, you can drop in the 3D components if they all ready exist and mate them to the layout sketch. This approach is also great for program managers who want to retain control over the position of components and assign ownership of subsystems of components to project engineers using SolidWorks Enterprise PDM.
05_Mates

The other class in the Horizontal phylum of mates is the Delphi class. I did not make this up. This is been a technique that has been around for quite some time in the world of CAD. Long before SolidWorks and their new-fangled geometric, associative mates, the Delphi technique allows engineering teams to mates systems of components to datum planes that are strategically places. Much like the compartments of a submarine, components are mated to sketching planes are various stations., as in the image below.
06_Mates

This technique actually holds a patent, filed under US Patent 7472044, in which the patent abstract states: Abstract
A method for converting a vertically structured CAD/CAM model to a horizontally structured CAD/CAM model, comprising: identifying and establishing a base feature; establishing a parent coordinate system; identifying a parent modeling element; identifying each dependency for each feature from the parent modeling element; restructuring each dependency for each feature for placement, such that each feature exhibits a direct associative relationship with a reference feature; and restructuring each dependency for each feature for positioning, such that each feature exhibits a direct associative relationship with another reference feature.

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23Mar10 Can my part be manufactured?

As a mechanical designer or engineer, have you ever wondered what it will take for the shop to manufacture youre design? I bet you may have had the machinist come over to your office and say, what are you crazy? We can;t make this make this part! The design stage is considered the most crucial component in the product lifecycle process – the platform for the conception and development of new products. Manufacturing companies continually fight the battle of lacking communication and coordination between the design and manufacturing departments. Approximately 80 percent or more of the life cycle costs of a product are determined during the design stage. Finding errors and fixing defects during the design stage is the optimal scenario to achieving both high quality and cost effective products.

Most engineers use an iterative approach to determining how a part will be made. The iterative approach to the design process involves the designer approaching the manufacturing department at an early stage to receive feedback to address any manufacturability concerns before they occur. This methodology is ideal and the desired process, however it is generally only feasible in an environment where the manufacturing & design departments are co-located. It is unusable with the “Design anywhere – Make anywhere” philosophy common throughout the world today. In addition, because it’s traditionally a manual process it is quite likely that some errors in a fairly complex part model may escape correction during a review.

Well, SolidWorks offers a tool called DFMXpress, (Design for Manufacturing) which combines a high level of functionality and accuracy with ease-of-use to give designers and engineers some basic manufacturing checks. Fully embedded inside of SolidWorks since version 2008 an available in everything from Standard SolidWorks and beyond, it is perfect for the designer who needs process analysis, but is not necessarily a manufacturing expert. DFMXpress allows you to easily gain insight into the manufacturability of your design under real world conditions. Essentially, it is a tool with manufacturing knowledge base for use by designers. Early identification of areas that are difficult to machine are identified. Recommend alternatives that will help manufacturing feasibility / cost savings are offered with the solution. It includes basic sets of rules for drilling, milling &
turning and now sheet metal manufacturing in SolidWorks 2010. The best thing is that rules and parameters can be configured using a simple Graphical User Interface with is seamlessly integrated into SolidWorks.
01_dfm 02_dfm

This tool help companies that have models other than native SolidWorks parts too. If you recall, SolidWorks opens many different types of models, like Pro/ENGINEER, UNIGRAPHICS NX, SolidEdge, Autodesk Inventor, Kubotek KeyCreator (Cadkey), Rhino and many intermediary formats like IGES, STEP, ACIS, Parasolid, ect… Since DFMXpress runs a Feature Based Automatic Feature Recognition engine, any model that SolidWorks can open can gain the benefits of the insight that DFMXpress provides.

Example of one rule

Example of one rule

Above is one example with Holes with small diameters (less than 3.0 mm) or high depth-to-diameter ratios (greater than 2.75) are difficult to machine and are not recommended for convenient mass production. Deeper holes also make chip removal more difficult if the hole is blind.

Try this stuff out! These tools can be accessed in SolidWorks in the Tools… pull down menu or on the Evaluate CommandManager.

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22Mar10 Planes, Trains and Automobiles (or maybe just Planes…)

01_planesSolidWorks 2010 overhauled the Reference Planes tools so that they work like familiar and easy to use Mates. By implementing this new way of developing Reference Planes, it doubles the amount of planes that you can create in one step. Here’s how it works: Go to the Reference Plane tools in the drop down menu “Insert… Reference Geometry… Planes… or choose the Reference Geometry drop down icon in the Features Command Manager all the way towards the right side of the toolbars. You will then be presented with a PropertyManager that looks like the one pictured to the left.

You may ask yourself, where are all of my choices I used to love? You may then ask yourself, is this good or is this bad? You may ask yourself, my God, what have they done? (Sorry, I was just listening to the Talking Heads on my drive down to the office this morning). Essentially, SolidWorks interprets your selections just like Mates. For the first reference, select a planar surface and you will then see the PropertyManager come to life, like in the image below:
02_Planes

You will notice it defaults to an offset plane. But you could also select a second reference, like another edge, to create a plane rotated at another angle. My favorite is creating a center plane. Simply select 2 planes and it will give you the choice of a centered plane. Selecting 2 cylindrical planes will give you an easy tangent plane. Try it out!!!

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15Mar10 How do I render something 1:1 scale?

Photoworks (and the young up-and-comer, PhotoView 360) are great tools to make images for a marketing brochure, website, or just to show off your cool product. 

But what if you need an image rendered 1:1 scale at exactly a certain size, let’s say 8.5″ x 11″, for printing out?  It’s not immediately obvious how to do this, but you can do it too, after understanding two key points. 

First, that the “Render to File” command always renders a certain number of pixels.  All the “Image Size” options just dance around that, even image size in inches.  So first, figure out how many pixels by pixels you want.  For an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper at 200 dpi, that would be (8.5 x 200= 1700) 1700 by 2200 pixels.  Write those numbers down. 

Secondly, you’ll need to create a camera view to lock down how big things look on your screen.  (You can calculate exact pixels by pixels all you want, but if you accidentally zoom in a little before the render, then the whole kettle of fish is off.)

So, right click on the “Lights, Cameras and Scene” folder in the feature tree and add a camera.  Position the camera to look straight down on your part.  Sketch geometry is good for this- I made a line sticking 100 mm above my part and attached the camera location to that.  (Did I forget to mention before now about creating sketch geometry?  Now this post’s kettle of fish is off.)

The important part is at the bottom of the Camera property manager. 

The important part of the Camera Property Manager

 Turn off perspective and set the height to how high you want your total picture to be, 8.5 inches in my case.  Make sure your aspect ratio is what you want (8.5 by 11 for normal paper) and then hit ok.

Right click on the camera you just made in the “Lights” folder and turn ON camera view.  You should no longer be able to rotate the view, and the camera will only see as large as the camera view you created.   

Finally, “Render to file” and enter the number of pixels by pixels you wrote down from before, and the render will be 1:1 when you print it out.

The above is for PhotoWorks users only, and hopefully when Photoview360 steps up and replaces PhotoWorks next year, the capabilities will still be there! 

Happy rendering!

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15Mar10 Create an Alphabetical BOM

3DVC_BOM01Have you ever wanted to create a Bill of Materials from your design in an alphabetical list, like when you buy a piece of furniture? You can do this with 3DVIA Composer. Simply use the BOM Workshop within 3DVIA Composer, which looks like the image in the gallery below. The cool thing is that it creates BOM Ids from properties like actor name, actor tooltip, or a meta-property. Or you can have it generate your own index based on numbers or letters. Once you generate all the BOM ids then you can create the BOM callouts on the model itself. This can be done with the many options available for the layout of the balloons. Finally, you can export this image using the “Technical Illustration” workshop. This allows for a scaled vector image to be generated, with the BOM ids and the BOM table automatically generated. If you click on the part in the image or the item in the BOM, it will highlight it in both placed simultaneously. For more info on 3DVIA Composer, click here.

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10Mar10 Central MA and Northern CT SolidWorks Users Group on March 10th

swug The Central Massachusetts and Northern Connecticut SolidWorks Users Group (CMNC-SWUG) will be meeting tonight at Metso Automation at 44 Bowditch Drive, Shrewsbury MA, 01545. The festivities begin at 5:30pm with networking and refreshments. The presentations for tonight’s meeting will be delivered by Tom Cote, of Veeco Solar Equipment and Bruce Holway, of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation. Tom will present SolidWorks Configurations and Design Tables and Bruce will talk about the Weldment tools in SolidWorks. To sign up for this free event, click here. I hope to see you all there…

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10Mar10 “Big” News for SolidWorks Users

Plant Design in SolidWorksIn doing some investigation relating to the actual dimensional limits of SolidWorks CAD models I came to some compelling conclusions. Solidworks models are dimensional, (rather than unit-less) and the native modeling basis is 1 meter. The largest possible model dimension is 1000 meters, (39370.07874016 inches) and the smallest possible model dimension is 0.0000001 meters, (1/10th of a micron!!!). To put that in perspective, that is 100 times smaller than 1 human red blood cell.

Now let’s biggie size the conversation. In theory you should be able to fit a part file within a 1km x 1km x 1km cube. In practice, the best reliability (especially with graphics) comes from limiting a part model to +/- 350m. Because circles are stored via their Diameter value, not via Radius, arcs are actually limited to a 500m radius. Note – assembly files extend your working envelope. For example, If you model a city block as a part file 1 km on a side, you can lay out a ‘city’ of many of these blocks in each direction. Mates will still work, measurements and dimensions will report accurately, up to a working limit of 100km x 100km.

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8Mar10 Design Cams in SolidWorks

cam01 Did you know that you can create cams with fully-defined motion paths and follower types with SolidWorks if you have the Toolbox Add-In turned on? You can choose circular or linear cams with many motion types. You can select the follower track as a blind cut or cut through the entire cam. To create a Cam, Click Cams (Toolbox toolbar) or in the pull-down menus click Toolbox > Cams.
In the Cam dialog box, on the Setup tab, for Cam Type, select Circular or Linear and set property values for the cam type you selected. See images below. You can also create a cam based on a previously saved favorite cam. I recommend starting off with this so you can see how the cam is created. Once you have the jist of how the cam is created, venture out on your own be creating a new one based on your specifications. SolidWorks has a lot of great information on building the cam on their new web based help system. Check out this link showing how to create the cam motion here. Below are images of some of the Cam tool option tabs.

Once you create your cam, you may discover it looks a little rough. This is because by default it creates the cam in arc segments one by one. If you want it to be even rougher, you can un-check the “arc” option in the cam generation tab to have it generate line segments. For a smooth surface, you can convert the line segments or arc segments to a spline. To achieve this, edit the sketch of the cut that generates the cam path, then select the entire path of the cam and go to Tools > Spline Tools > Fit Spline. Here you should select that you want to contain the spline to the original geometry plus convert the original geometry to construction lines. See the images above for a comparison of the different options for generating a cam.

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4Mar10 SolidWorks Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Part II

interrogation Assembly Visualization provides different ways to display and sort an assembly’s components in a list and in the graphics area. You can sort the list by one property at a time. Basic calculated numerical data such as component mass, density, and volume are available in the tool. Additionally, you can create customized criteria which are dependent on several numerical values! If you defined noncalculated properties such as Vendor or Status in the component files, you can access those properties for modification and sorting. Properties from SolidWorks Sustainability are also available.

Here is a quick tip to help you find parts & sub-assemblies, within an assembly, that have long rebuild times. Using the Assembly Visualization tool in SW2010, you can sort all the components of an assembly using their Rebuild Time as the sorting property. See the link to a movie showing this here. SolidWorks Assembly Visualization Video

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