What is SolidWorks Mechatronics and why do I need it?

Michael LaFleche — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:36:41 +0000

Designing 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.

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:

I’ve got the power!

Michael LaFleche — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:07:59 +0000

In my webcast today on Event-Based Simulation I showed how SolidWorks revolutionizes the way controls and CAD modeling work together. This approach allows you to directly integrate your models with the behaviors you desire, bringing mechanical and electrical design to the forefront while maintaining machine controls flexibility. EBS accomplishes this in a novel way: instead of defining specific times for events, you can start and stop each event in relation to one another. This translates into major savings. Companies can make and modify products in simulation rather than after manufacturing and can avoid a costly rework of the design process.

During today’s webcast I discovered how you can extract detailed quantities relating to components in the design. For example when an simulation is running, you can choose the “results” button on the MotionManager toolbar and then choose a motor component in the MotionManager tree. The selection choices are myriad to say the least. One selection most machine designers are concerned with is Power Consumption, so that they can pick the right sized motor or actuator to handle the movement of a component.

Another possibility is running a static stress analysis during and event-based simulation run. A user can choose to run the static analysis on one or more components during the event simulation. Users can specify if they want to run the simulation during the entire motion run (which may take a while) or choose to run the static study during a small portion of the motion run, during a critical time. This critical time can of course be found by adding a “result” plot to the component in question and running the static study only during the peak of acceleration or power consumption. To learn more, please contact us here at CAPINC.

CAPUniversity » Event-Based Simulation

What is SolidWorks Mechatronics and why do I need it?

I’ve got the power!