SolidWorks PDM
Since SolidWorks PDM (Product Data Management) release, many designers are benefited from its advanced functionality and user-friendly experience. It is a mainstream data management system that stores and organizes engineering CAD data files in a central vault server. The clients are able to access all the files without any hassle in the database with much more control. From a conventional view, SolidWorks PDM utilizes an organized local cache where files are automatically retrieved from the server and placed in the user’s local cache in the storage. This unanimously increases performance during the process of opening and saving files on network shared folders. Users are required to obtain the right access before they can edit the files. After editing, the file will be copied back to the Archive Server and this automatically creates a new version of the file.
A lot of imperatives are being brought to you by the powerful SolidWorks PDM. It can drastically save you ample time searching for a safe centralized place for your own design documents. When a file is needed, you can use the configurable search cards to enter the search criteria to search for your own design easily. For the right access issue, the admin can set the authority for a user to access specific files. In addition, designer can enable remote designs locations to receive real-time updates on design changes when it is edited by others. Likewise, you can avoid crashing caused by old 3D CAD format file which likely leads to file corruption and data loss as SolidWorks provide user-friendly compatibility.
In the next topic, more detailed product knowledge of SolidWorks PDM will be discussed deeply. Stay tuned.
Until next time. See ya.
What’s new in SolidWorks 2019? – Part 6
Fancy on the Ironman in the movie able to design its plasma suit with a few simple gestures in the air? SolidWorks 2019 will be rolling out one of its newest features, Extended Reality (XR) to the 3D CAD community, meaning that extend our idea to the reality. It is meant to introduce a whole new method to publish your CAD data in front of yourself as if a live, well-fabricated model.
This year in Los Angeles, SolidWorks has demoed their newest Augmented Technology (AR) for the first time. The model can be viewed through Meta’s Model Viewer platform on a Meta 2 Development Kit headset utilizing a feature called publish to Xtended Reality”, which allows the users to export their own CAD model to an altered open-source file format called “gITF”. Although the 3D model will suffer from some metadata loss after being exported from the original file format, this AR technology provides a deeper insight for the users to scrutinise their prototypes.
Besides for the user’s experience, Extended Reality can also provide a new way to the other organization to demonstrate and promote their own products. As an instance, a company can demonstrate their customers the customised prototype clearer during presentation. Without shadow of a doubt, viewing and presenting 3D CAD models can aid with product development workflows, reduce the conventional way of requiring the first article and speed up design review cycles.
Till next time. See ya.
How to secure your Intellectual Design Properties with SOLIDWORKS?
Sometimes, we want to protect out designing details when we are presenting our designs. Those confidential information is the key for the whole design and functionality of the products. Hence, SOLIDWORKS has taken its action to protect designer’s sensitive intellectual properties of a product. SOLIDWORKS introduced “Defeature tool” to help designers to hide certain properties or details when they are required to show their designs to others.
With the Defeature tool, you can remove details from a part of assembly and save results in a new file in which the details are replaced by “solid”. Hence, you can then share the new file without revealing all the design details of the model. This feature also helps to save the less-detailed model to separate file and maintain references to the original part or assembly as well as specifying the details to be removed when customers configure and download the model.
The defeature is not only for Part designs also helpful for handling large assembly files. Since, Large assembly files has more number of components [internally & externally], the rebuild time and large file size is more. Therefore, defeaturing also helps users to share the files effectively. In this sharing, I with share with you guys about how-to setup the defeaturing process in SOLIDWORKS. All the contents are taken from SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog and all the credits go to EGS India. Well, let’s get started.
The above diagrams show the step 1 to step 3 in selecting the parts and components you wish hide from people. Removing components can be done by 2 methods. One is based on size and other is selective components. In the diagram shared, “selective components” option method is chosen. Hence, selective components and small components with 5% of assembly such as nuts, bolts, washer etc are removed.
After selection of components, I moved to next step to control motions of my assembly. Hence, a group so that motion is allowed between the groups.
Next, we are going to step 2 which is the motion selection. In this scenario, no retain to any feature and geometry. Therefore, the box is left empty. We shall proceed to next step which is removing the features we like. Since, all the necessary parts already removed in step 1. Hence, the box is left to be blanked again.
Hence, the final output will be as shown below. The amazing results with no extra feature is shown. Of course, the size of the assembly has been reduced and so do the size of the files. The rebuild time of the design in between “without defeature” and “with defeature” are different.
Before defeature, the size will be bigger as all the parts are squeezed inside a file. However, after defeaturing, the size of the file has been reduced hence shorter time is required to read and rebuild the contents.
What’s new in SolidWorks 2019? -Part 5
The theme this year, ”Proven Design to Manufacture Design” has showed the determination of Dassault Systemes to promote SolidWorks in the CAD community. SolidWorks 2019 has been included a new feature which is a good news to the users. This time users will have the capability of “Defeaturing Assemblies”, which they are able to remain the shape of the assembled model while concealing irrelevant details. They can also control how much defeaturing they desire on their design. This feature will come in handy for general arrangement drawings and upholding intellectual property of a company.
SolidWorks CAM 2019 could not become any smarter than before. Now, users can use Corner Slow Down and Arc Feedrate which allow slowdown when approaching vulnerable corner and arcs. You can also create a machine-specific machining strategy which provides the most effective yet efficient tool path when manufacturing.
In conjunction with the Industry 4.0, more durable and cutting-edge machine is being demanded to improve the efficiency of production. Therefore, more powerful constraints are added such as Topology Optimisation with Stress and Frequency, enhanced non-linear pin connector and the list goes on. Users can reuse the data easily with drag-and drop connectors in to Non-Linear Dynamic studies without and hassle. In a nutshell, you can set up the boundary conditions and perform intricate simulation studies easier and with greater accuracy in SolidWorks 2019.
Until next time. See ya.
What’s new in SolidWorks 2019? – Part 4
Often the best way to present your idea is roughly drawing out your sketch and some bits around it. This method has been implemented by mankind since the invention of paper and ink and also acts as a catalyst of different versatile machines. However, our work has become digitalized and most of the edits are done online. Sometimes these edited works require certain attention of other viewers as reminder before fabrication.
To further enhance your design experience, SolidWorks 2019 introduces you the whole new 3D Markup. It allows you to include additional markups and notes straightly on your 3D model and export them in different formats. Simply orient your model, right click the new Markup folder in the Feature Manager and begin adding notes using Microsoft Ink functionality. If the model is rotated beyond a certain angle, the markups can automatically disappear. Likewise, you can click on a markup and save it as image or document in tiff, jpeg, pdf formats.
If you are a hardcore fan of touch and stylus interaction, SolidWorks 2019 will bring you some extra support to Microsoft Surface users. You can use the Surface Dial to make some simple commands, such as pan, zoom, rotate and the list goes on. In addition, Surface Pen gets to unleash its capability as the software will automatically convert from hand-drawn sketch to useable features. As an instance, a sketched spline will be instantly recognized by the AI engine and converted a smooth spline.
What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2019 – Part 3
What’s new in SolidWorks 2019?- Part 3
“A picture is worth a thousand words, but an animation is worth unlimitedly. Now, assembly function has not been easier than before. The features such as exploded view and animations can provide you clearer insight of your components in the assembly. Furthermore, you can move back and forward through steps, drag and reorder the existing steps or even suppress and unsuppress steps to hide the parts. You can even reset the whole explode steps options by clicking reset if accidentally explode the wrong view. Lastly, to animate the exploded view, simply choose “Animation Controller” and click “Exploded View.”
This coming September, Dassault Sytemes has provided the consumers a more friendly user interface in SolidWorks 2019 by offering a new graphics architecture for displaying parts and assembly. The users can expect a more dynamic display performance and smoother frame rate while examining around the model.
In addition, Large Design Review, LDR is being introduced to enhance your experience. With this enhancement, you can edit the Assembly in LDR mode by simply clicking the top-level assembly and then choose “Edit Assembly”. Also, you can use the “Magnetic Mates” or “Lightweight Mode” whenever you want LDR mode and only exclusively in SolidWorks 2019.
SolidWorks 2019 is cautious enough to warn you when inserting complex components that are unfeasible in real life. As an example, you will receive a warning when a high number of faces are detected in the part and this shows that a high level of detail.
Finally, to make you more convenient, you can temporarily disable the automatic update of mates between a Toolbox components and a non-Toolbox Components by disabling “Automatic Update” for “Toolbox Mate”. One last thing to mention, the performance can be improved by making it quicker to carry out different commands such as edit mate, add and manipulate components.
Setting up for Composite Material
The usage of composite material has been increased rapidly due to its extraordinary characteristics. Racing cars, aircrafts, ships and bicycles are now integrated with composite materials to make them harder and lighter than it was 10 years ago. A composite material is a mixture of two or more materials merge together and the materials do not dissolve with each other. Normally, composite material is made up from certain portion of fibres and resins. Once the composite is fully solidified, it becomes a hard piece of material. Some composite materials are stronger than steel while some have high endurance. Composite material is usually unidirectional fibre combined with a softer matrix element. The goal of such a mixture gets more desirable overall properties that each individual material could not provide. Due to its good strength to weight ratio, more and more manufacturers are focusing on the production of composite material.
Since hand calculation for composite material will become more complicated as the number of layers increase, so we need to make use of the available tool to help us. SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium has a built in SOLIDWORKS Simulation Composite Analysis capabilities to perform a composite analysis. Users can perform a Linear Static, Buckling or Frequency analysis with composite materials.
Why there is a need of a Composite Analysis Tool? As mentioned, the main reason is that the material properties of a composite material are hectic to calculate by hand. The tool in simulation premium helps to simulate different layer and angle configurations to see which material composition will be able to produce stress results that are acceptable by iterations.
Of course, there are some failure criteria specific to composites. Tsai-Wu and Tsai Hill are two composite failure criteria commonly used in the industry and these outputs can be seen using SOLIDWORKS Simulation. After the simulation, the stresses in each layer can be observed through colour contour and the stresses between layers called interlaminar stresses may also be viewed to make critical design decisions. Let’s see how the tool in action.
Given the nature of where it is used, composites are defined as Shell elements. Hence, each composite part is assumed to have a uniform cross-section and a high length to thickness ratio. A maximum of 5 layers may be defined. The type of layups available with SOLIDWORKS simulation is as shown below:
- a) Symmetric Laminate: Plies stacked symmetric about midplane
- b) Asymmetric laminate: Laminate does not exhibit symmetry
- c) Sandwich Plate Laminate: Softer Core with a Stiffer symmetric top and bottom layers
If you are also FEA software users, there is good news for you. SOLIDWORKS also had the ability to export results to other FEA software such as Nastran and Ansys. Typically for aerospace companies, verification of any FEA tool is critical before they can start using it. SOLIDWORKS had independently verified the accuracy of the composite tools.
This passage is referred to GoEngineer. All credits go to the authors.
What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2019 – Part 2
What’s new in SolidWorks 2019? – Part 2
Before putting into production, drawing is an important procedure to depict the design of the model. Dassault Systemes always aims to improve user experience and accessibility and therefore SolidWorks 2019 is being developed.
Creating Hole Tables could not become way easier than before. Dassault Systemes has provided users 3 new methods for ordering tags by creating new Hole Tables in the group box called ‘Tag Order’. Firstly, you just need to use the same traditional method, XY orders tags and then access the shortest tool path to find the most effective method between all holes of the same size and order tag number.
Likewise, you can save Bill of Material (BOM) to Excel together with images file. Simply click ‘Save as’ in a BOM table to include your desired image file in the ‘Save As’ dialog and then your AOM attached with images will be automatically exported to Excel. A whole new feature, ‘Removed Section’ is now being introduced in SolidWorks 2019. Users can ultiilize it to examine the detailed view of specific parts of the drawing by creating a slice section.
In addition, a new ‘Automatic View Update’ is included 2 new features which is ‘Drawing View Exclusion’ and ‘Document Property’. For the former, when the Exclude is checked and automatically View Update, is active, the drawing view will not be updated. Also the latter will enable the Automatic View Update to turn into a document property that is remembered within the saved drawing.
In the aspect of tolerances, the ISO tolerance modifying symbols can be added straightly to dimensions and tolerances using Tolerance modifier group box in the Property Manager for Dimensions New ISO Tolerancing Symbols like ISO 14405-1:2016, ISO 8015 and ISO 1101:2017 have been added into the library to increase the availability and choice for designers.