SOLIDWORKS tools in Additive Manufacturing

The adoption of 3D printing has become the mainstream for prototyping because of its ease to use criteria. The exponential growth of CAD and the real increase in computer power has further accelerate the assimilation of 3D printing into industries. By using 3D printing, 3D models can be made so fast and cost effectively. Everybody wants to see a design before tooling is made, and that is just one small part of its portfolio of uses.


Additive manufacturing in another word also referring to 3D printing where the manufacturing process by which material is added, layer by layer to build a part. Let’s come back again to the main topic. The main sharing today is to let people to know what will happen between the collaboration between SOLIDWORKS and 3D printing. This content is credited to Aaron Kelly who is currently a marketing consultant for Desktop Metal. To make this simpler, I shall start with the concept behind 3D printing. The popular technologies for additive manufacturing nowadays include Stereolithography (SLA). Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and so on. all of them using the same concept where a part is analysed and sliced into many sections to create a build plan for the part. Throughout the 3D model to prototyping processes, SOLIDWORKS play vital role to identify design or geometry problems early in the design phase to reduce costs and save time. There are some of the useful features to introduce that will prepare designs for addictive manufacturing in general.
The main discussion will focus on features of SOLIDWORKS:
• SimulatioXpress
• Print3D
• Geometry Analysis
• Thickness Analysis
• Undercut Analysis and Draft Analysis
• DFMXpress

a) SimulationXpress


SimulationXpress is a free built-in tool that is activated within SOLIDWORKS that enables first-pass finite element analysis (FEA) inside SOLIDWORKS interface. This feature is useful in helping engineers and designers to make sure that the part they are designing will be functional as designed and this is an important step that will decide whether the deigned part can be functional or not. An important thing to note is that most parts that are created with FFF or similar technology will not have 100% infill by default. An infill percentage will often be used when talking about 3D printed parts. The designed parts will not have the strength of a part with 100% infill (fully dense), but tool is still valuable when comparing stress and deflection across materials.

b) Print3D

The blooming of 3D printing trend has triggered SOLIDWORKS to add in features for 3D printing. SOLIDWORKS introduced a feature a few years back that makes printing to 3D printed as easy as 2D printers by printing to the 3D printer from within SOLIDWORKS application. However, this feature does not catch the attention from 3D printer manufacturers, only some printers support its feature like Makerbot. This feature has some valuable functions that assist the prototyping processes. The feature has a lot of value when considering it has a thin wall checker, a scaling feature to make sure parts can be printed accurately and a printer bed volume checker to see if your part will fit on a 3D printers’ build bed.
c) Geometry Analysis


Geometry analysis is a feature that allows users to specify values of control parameters to identify geometric entities. For example, you can specify the maximum length for short edges. The results can be graphically analysed with geometry analysis Property Managed that appears after the analysis complete. Geometry analysis identifies problematic geometries that could cause problems to the application or assembly. This feature is also important to avoid stress singularity happens at sharp edges, small faces and discontinuous edge. Of course, we do not want our fellow printer to create a geometry that out of its capability and fails at the end. A lot of these errors occur around the complex filleting operations. It’s trivial to fix the problems inside SOLIDWORKS rather than the fabricated parts.

d) Thickness Analysis


Thickness analysis is an important analysis especially designing plastic parts or castings. This feature is used to determine the different thickness at each point of part, which helps designer to inspect problematic region in the design that might be too thin or too thick in certain regions. In general, 3D printers have its unique design guidelines like the minimum thickness 3D printer can achieve. Hence, here come SOLIDWORKS come in to support. In SOLIDWORKS, these can be input as parameters to generate feedback specific to your 3D printing process. Very thin walls can buckle or fall over using addictive manufacturing using any material, so proper design and inspection is needed during the process. From figure above, it can be seen SOLIDWORKS will automatically senses where either thin walls or thick walls exist in your part.

e) Undercut Analysis and Draft Analysis


These features are typically for mold design applications, but they are very useful when looking at additive manufacturing applications. SOLIDWORKS users just need to define the “pull” direction or the direction which the part will be constructed from and a defined angle threshold and SOLIDWORKS does the rest. Whenever there is an undercut condition or faces at angles approaching or exceeding 45 degrees, supports are often necessary. Supports should be avoided when possible, so it is important that SOLIDWORKS tell you when these conditions exist, so you can address them right there in the software. Depending on your print method, supports can be difficult to remove after printing and can leave very rough surfaces. In the image above, the red and blue faces would need supports, while the yellow and green would not. The yellow and green faces will not need supports as they are under the angle threshold in the direction of building the part.

f) DFMXpress
DFMXpress is another free tool but this tool has nothing to do with additive manufacturing. In fact, this tool is specialized to milling and drilling processes. The value in this tool here is to show where the use of addictive manufacturing would be advantageous when machining will be hard or impossible. This feature will expose to user about the regions that are difficult to mill or drill using subtractive manufacturing.


Summary:
SOLIDWORKS helps designers and engineer’s shortcut the part iteration cycle by identifying areas for redesign prior to print. While many 3D printers have proprietary software with geometry analysis, orientation modification, and geometry detection built in, finding these issues at the print stage, means engineers are going between their CAD programs and the print software to modify and ready their parts for print.
With use of these tools, SOLIDWORKS users can detect upfront potentially problematic areas for a 3D printing process; edit directly in the program; and as a result, greatly improve print performance and lower iteration cycles due to failed prints.

Stress Singularity in SOLIDWORKS Simulation

In the midst to produce the best quality products, designers and engineers often use simulation to simulate the circumstances that a product will experience when subjected to different forces and stress. One thing that always bothers designers and engineers is that the accuracy of the simulation sometimes might not seem to be reliable. Hence, in this session, I am going to discuss about the stress singularity in SOLIDWORK Simulation. Of course, all the contents are referred to SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog CAD2M.

            Before the manufacturing and real tests on a prototype, SOLIDWORKS Simulation provides user the chance to test the prototype virtually during the engineering phase in the project. It’s so powerful that it can help you to solve difficult engineering questions in a short period of time by using it mesh analysis and iteration functions inside the system. However, the correctness of the boundary conditions and parameters will bring a huge difference in result. Once you accidentally set the parameter incorrectly, all the computational efforts will be gone, and user needs to simulate again. Hence, due to this issue, I would like to share how to mesh modelling will affect stress convergent.

            Let’s start with a basic concept which is known as principle of convergence. To further demonstrate how the convergence can be done, a simple example is used. Assume that there is a fixed geometry fixture in the two holes and a force is pushing in the counterbore hole.

According to CAD2M, 5 static studies have been created to further discuss the details of convergence. Throughout the 5 studies, the mesh element size at the location where the highest stress exists. The mesh control is applied to decrease the element size at some regions such as the turning region. Below are some of the fine adjustments that have been done to further elaborate the convergence principle. As you can see in the diagram below, the mesh size becomes smaller and refined at the intersecting region. That setting is important to identify the accuracy of stresses applied to the region.

After running the studies with similar forces and boundary conditions, the end results are as shown below. Maximum Von Mises Stress of different studies are as shown. The red regions are region with maximum stresses.

As predicted, the stress value becomes more reliable with smaller element sizes. With a 4mm element size, the maximum stress spot quite small, like it is concentrated at an element node. After refining the meshes a couple times, the maximum stress does not really change at mesh size of 1mm, 0.5 mm and 0.25 mm. To have a clearer interpretation, a graph is plotted out.

The graph above shows the convergence graph. It shows the convergence of the stress at a certain location, based on the element size. Under normal conditions, you will notice that from a certain element size. Form the results, the stresses are converging to a certain value. Hence, further refinement is not necessary as the results will be almost the same and it will not influence the solution of study.

Sometimes, users might find the solution isn’t converging. This is the case known as stress singularity. It happens frequently in simulation study. A stress singularity is a point of the mesh where the stress does not converge towards a specific value. As the meshes are kept refining, the stress at certain regions keep increasing. Theoretically, the stress at the singularity is Infinite. Typically, this situation happens where the appliance of a point load, sharp corners, corners of bodies in contact and point fixtures.

            If to show stress singularity in a clearer way. Let’s assume that the sharp corner has its fillet being suppressed. Once again, similar 5 studies created with same mesh controls at the sharp edges. Below are the results after running the simulation.

This time the maximum stress at the sharp corner keeps increasing. In the diagram above, maximum stress is concentrating at the sharp corner (Red region becomes smaller). This is the sign for stress singularity. The plotted graph is as shown.

The maximum stresses increase as the element size reduces. No sign of converging in the value. To prevent stress singularity, sharp corner can be solved by adding fillet radius at that corner. This means that the stresses at that location can converge and singularity will disappear. To allow users to better differentiate between stress singularity and convergence, a simple guideline can be applied, if the stress concentration is happened to be showing a finite value, then it’s the stress convergence. Stress singularity doesn’t mean that your study is wrong but rather a deviation created at the region. But at some distance from singularity, the stress results can be trusted also the displacement results are correct, even at the singularity point.

 

Flow Simulation to RC Helicopter Rotor Blade

The introduction of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as drone has made a big leapt towards a smaller aircraft with greater mobility. The flights of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by human operator or autonomously by onboard computers. Since UAV is an aircraft that travels with lower speed, hence most of the UAVs are installed with propeller. The propeller of UAVs is also called as spinning wing. As it rotates, it creates a force called lift that allows the UAV to rise into the air as well as giving high manoeuvrability to the aircraft itself. Hence, in this case study, we shall focus on how to simulate the helicopter rotor as well as the flow around the it. The reference for this case study is from Hawk Ridge Systems.

            Assume that now you have a RC helicopter model and you would like to know the performance of the helicopter by varying the rotor spinning rate. As mentioned, RC helicopter flies when the lift is sufficiently high to rise the RC helicopter. Lift is defined by the component of force generated by solid body that is perpendicular to the flow direction. To better understand the lift, a pressure difference around the aerofoil is used. As the aerofoil is moving toward the airflow, the air at the upper surface of the wing experience higher velocity and reduced pressure. Whereas, for lower surface of the aerofoil, the air velocity is lower than the upper surface and producing higher pressure. The pressure difference between upper and lower aerofoil surface produces a perpendicular force which is known as lift.

From Hawk Ridge Systems, the RC helicopter is designed to have a mass of 2kg. To allow the helicopter to lift, the spinning rotor needs to generate the lift more than 20N (4.5 Ib) to make the lifting possible. Helicopter blades are designed to operate at a constant RPM. The amount of that the rotor able to produce is dependent to the pitch angle of the rotor. Let the pitch angle range from -10 degrees to +10 degrees where zero being neutral or no lift produced. The diagram below shows the pitch angle at +10 degrees. Different pitch angle will produce different lift due to the aerodynamic lift contribution. Hence, flow simulation is to be done to test the maximum lift the configuration can produce as well as the maximum torque the rotor need to withstand during the spinning.

Here come the suggested set up to perform the helicopter rotor simulation. Before jumping into Flow Simulation tool, we first need to create a couple of parts that represent the rotating region of our study.

Theoretically, the rotor blades should produce flow fields that may not axially symmetric. Therefore, the local rotating region (sliding mesh) technique will be used. The setting of the mesh is as shown below. Since the simulation is an external region of the rotor, the analysis type must be set to “external”. To make the simulation run faster, stuffs that no direct influence to the flow may ignore by exclude cavity and internal space.

Of course, the working fluid is also important. In this case, the fluid is air and all the other conditions are maintained to be standard. The main study for this rotor blade is the driving force that produced by the spinning of the rotor blades. As mentioned, the focus the flow around the rotor blades. Hence, all the components that are irrelevant can be “switched off”. theoretically, to obtain accurate result, canopy and main structural components for completeness must be included. Other details like the inner frame or little bots and gears will not give any accuracy also can be ignored. Otherwise, the mesh around the bolt and gears will refine and massively increase the cell count and solver time.

After identifying the important components in the assembly, the next step will be setting the boundary conditions. The set up for this case is rather simple. Only the two rotating regions need to be define and we are ready for the simulation. Hereby, the author set the rotational speed at 2000 RPM, which is the general speed for most of the RC Helicopter motor. After setting the boundary conditions, here come one of the most important part which is the “meshing” process.

            The simplified model is left with the components that will have direct impact to the flow of the helicopter. Since the business and of the case study will be taking place at the rotor, hence the mesh is refined in those area, particularly at the blade tip which contribute the trailing vortices. The bulk of the surrounding volume can be much coarser because it has least impact to the lift produced. This can be done by specifying local refinement regions and overall course setting (author set at 2). By keeping the overall cell count low with enough small volume cells where you need them you can get good results having to let your computer run overnight. In some complex case, more mesh is needed and hence more time is required to solve them.

After the simulation, it’s time to let the simulated results speak the words. When the pitch angle is zero-degree (neutral) position, the flow is not being directly axial through the blades and is this not developing any significant thrust. From the diagram below, the contours at upper and lower regions are almost the same. This means there is no significant resultant force acting downward to provide lift to the helicopter.

There is about 1N of thrust produce, nowhere near the 20N threshold that required to lift the RC helicopter. When the pitch angle has been adjusted to 10 degrees, there is a huge contour difference between upper and lower blades. All the flow is being directed downward. The details are lost in this plot since the direction of the velocity id not being recorded. Therefore, the flow trajectory plot would be needed to further study the flow behaviour.

The flow trajectory plot for 0 degree and 10 degrees as shown below. The compare tool can generate plots from multiple studies, allowing you to quickly view and compare the performance of various design configurations.

0 degree inclination

10 degree inclination

What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2019

The most anticipating CAD software, Solidworks 2019 will be hitting the market after the summer. This year, Dassault Systemes makes a quantum leap by further introducing more than 27 exciting features to Solidworks 2019.

As an instance, a whole new “Slicing Tool” is being added to create 2D sections at the intersections of the chosen geometry and planes. Simply setting the number of slicing planes and the offset and the sketches and the rest is let Solidworks to do all its work. The resulting sketches and planes will be grouped in a single folder in Feature Manager. To be mentioned, these sketches can be edited any time for exact positioning and can also be used to create complexed geometry or referenced to define the lofts and surface needed to construct a solid model.

Currently, Solidworks 2019 are engineered to combine real life and design together. Therefore, “3D Texture Tool” feature is added to allow user to generate an image with bumpy pattern. This feature is imperative as some designs require applying special patterns to complement with their scientific purposes. Traditionally, users need to use a lot of “ribs” feature to create texture which is time-consuming. However, the new “3D Texture” command can be used to turn appearances into 3D geometry rapidly and this can increase the efficiency and save up gazillions of operating cost.

“Multi-Body Part modelling” is applied to create designs like weldments. Nonetheless, the “Interference Detection Tool” is available in the Part Mode and this enables great view into the parts. Likewise, an additional “Group Mates” option is available and this makes your assembly much easier than previous. For an example, you can lock all concentric rotations in single click or lock the rotation of components from toolbox on a specific location.

A New Way to Visualize Your Design

Dassault Systemes always takes their own customers’ bucket list of requests as their top priority. Recently, SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2019 has been upgraded to fulfill the current design market demand and challenges. One of the cutting – edge features, AI Denoiser is being introduced in it. From the name itself, AI Denoiser utilizes Artificial Intelligence technology aid to reduce the noise effect from your renders, making your design extra crystal clear to meet the highest precision in the industry.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional 2019 wishes to redefine your way of designing and product quality. It is included with a new advanced feature, “Appearance Types” to give you a bigger freedom to express your creativity on your design without having to making your custom materials. Aiming to connect your design with reality, you are given the privileged to scan the real world materials to your Visualize via NVIDIA MDL or PBR.

Decals have always been a handy tool to consumers in Visualize. Now, Visualize will add-on a whole new Decal Mapping to provide the users the accessibility to increase their sophistication of design. What if we can add extra element like video in it?  Rest assured, Visualize Professional has included support for Video Decals to allow you to import digitalized content to create animations of products such as smartphone, car headlight, speedometer and the list goes on.

Distinctively, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional 2019 is built up with physics mechanisms to unlock the unlimited capabilities. Simply control your own mouse, you can make your items to collide or roll, simulating the real environment. Utilizing the Earthquake tool, you can add a natural touch to your own items and move them together to save up scene setup time.

In addition, a brand new Vehicle Driving Simulator is introduced specifically to designers and engineers. It allows them to create driving footage in different field while taking multiple dynamic still shots in the same time. Xbox controller is also compatible with the Visualize software and you can plug in to dive your own vehicles.

For designers, time is utmost importance and therefore Visualize let you to customize your own shortcut key according to your own preferences.

 

Are You Using the “Right” Computer Aided Design (CAD) Software

The revolution of technology has altered the way people design stuffs and machines. The advancement of computer aided design (CAD) software gives people a new way to design and create things using computer. More and more powerful computer and electronic gadgets have been produced to follow this trend. Some international primary school has brought in CAD into their course to allow students to have early exposure to CAD and 3D printing. Nowadays, employers are looking for candidates that know how to utilize 3D technology in creating new solution. SOLIDWORKS is one of the profound companies that uses 3D technology to create, simulate, optimize, manufacturing a 3D design. In this session, the focus will be on how to select the best CAD software to suit your needs.

From ­Engineering.com survey, 230 product development professionals have conveyed their thoughts about the CAD system they have been using and the considerations when choosing new CAD system. The valuable data is published to allow design teams to make decision regarding the future CAD software to purchase. Here are the top five considerations in choosing the right CAD. Let’s see through these criteria one by one.

  1. a)      The application features set fully meets our needs
  2. b)     The total cost of ownership of the application
  3. c)      Ability to easily find answers to common questions throughout community resources
  4. d)     The CAD solution is natively interoperable with other solutions such as simulation
  5. e)      There is an active online support/community

 

From the survey conducted, users are paying more focus to the practical feature sets that are available to help them to finish their designs before the deadline. Due to the time constraint and the upcoming deadlines, CAD users certainly not going to spend their precious time to outsource for new features. Some firms are focussing on the product they are specialized at without stray off the path a lot. These firms will certainly not be going to explore new features because it’s not part of their core business. For instance, if a CAD user is working in sheet metal enclosure for air cooling system, there’s a certain group of commands in CAD software that they are using daily. Normally, users often don’t have time to explore new functions. Hence, the best way they can do is to select the CAD software that must contains all the features they required on work.

NX part: Grillex US_03_asm

Having a CAD software is not something easy. If a company is decided to install CADs, the overall production cost will increase due to its expensive ownership cost. If purchasing CAD doesn’t fit into company’s budget, it may be off the table. A proper cost evaluation must be done so that the value and ultimate project savings of using such an advanced platform could displace the cost to maintain it. Nowadays, precision machining is used to create a product with greater accuracy. If a CAD software enables a product to be drawn faster and accurate with lower costs, that will be the best software to purchase. The ability to catch problems by using simulation earlier in the design process makes it possible to reduce costs that would have been incurred during physical prototyping and testing.

        Sometimes, we may face difficulty to solve designing problems such as how to use certain features to make complicated design. If the software developer has its own community resources with answers to common questions, it will help to reduce the time to crack the issues. The more active the community is, the more resources CAD users can obtain in aiding their works. SOLIDWORKS Community happens to be particularly powerful, given the variety of forums and other sites where users go exchange knowledge and experiences. Though there us a company’s official MySolidWorks community provide its very own trove of resources including forums and eCourses, there are still numerous unofficial forums have sprung up as well. There are tonnes of references about SOLIDWORKS.

        More delicate tools are being designed to suit the customer needs. To reduce the cost of production, many companies use simulation for virtual prototyping and testing. This allows users to iterate on designs more before incurring the costs of physical prototyping and testing. The CAD with a built-in package that is interoperable with other solutions is an advantage because it helps to catch problems before it occurs during the real prototype. Uses of simulation is allowing companies to iterate design, make different choices much earlier than having to make choice later based on physical testing. Hence, more cost can be saved up.

        Lastly, an active online support/community is a plus point for users. Once again, SOLIDWORKS won the reputation for having the best active online community. The exact number of forums and YouTube Channels dedicated to the usage of software is difficult to pin down, but these resources make it possible for all the users to quickly and easily seek help when necessary. The main question comes back again. Are you choosing the right CAD to utilize?

Xtended Reality (XR) – New Lead to Visual Experience

Pokémon Go was first published in July 2016 had knocked the bell to pronounce beginning of all innovation about augmented reality (AR) and this technology had been spreading not only to gaming but also designing field. With AR implementation to devices with integration of accurate GPS positioning system have eventually created a new horizon to let “things” appear vividly in front of users. AR is shown to be more interactive and interesting comparing with previous technology that relies on television or personal computer screens to look into another world. The senses only focus on the screens rather than surrounding atmosphere. The intuitive display method is the main reason why Pokémon Go able to hit a total download of 500 Million at the end of year 2016.

However, the virtual reality (VR) which simulated environment as well as giving auditory, visual and sometimes a hint of sensory feedback such as haptic is extremely powerful and cannot be ignored. Frankly speaking, AR may consider as a form of VR that layers virtual information over a live camera feed through smart devices such as tablets and smartphones. The immersive environments regardless real world or a fantasy can be created and experiencing with the usage of virtual reality headset and this is highly demanding to those who wants to experience full diving like inside of the movie “Ready Player One”.  In short, you feel like living inside another world with your bodies in the real world. Adrenaline racing, driving with rages, dragon spitting fire and explosions, making yourself totally leaving the carcasses that embodies the soul.

            Let’s come back to the main topic here. SOLIDWORKS 2019 has now proudly release the Extended Reality (XR) that allow users to publish your SOLIDWORKS projects to immersive Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Web experiences. To further explain about XR, it can be said to be a combination of all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology. The implementation of XR technology in SOLIDWORKS 2019 has lead the story telling to become more vivid and crystal clear about your concepts and projects. Trying to imagine that you have drawn a robotic dinosaur and you animated it with the sceneries you want it to have just like in the movie. All your imagination can be coming true with XR where scene data such as geometry, appearance, light, camera and motions will retain and show it in front of you.

            With XR Exporter in SOLIDWORKS 2019, you can re-play animations you created inside SOLIDWORKS CAD, toggle through pre-defines Display States, or trigger an Exploded Animation within supported AR/VR/Web Experience. This will able to give you a plus point when presenting your projects and selling your designs more effectively with immersive experiences. Let’s the animation does its work to leveraging the sensation to be in front of the unbuilt obelisk. Let’s virtual world tell people the ultimate senses of being part of the virtual reality. Never let all your focus away, experiencing it to the fullest!!

            Throughout years, SOLIDWORKS 2019 has making all the ways to become the best it could to serve its purpose as the CAD leader. Stay tuned for the next updates. Cheers!

SOLIDWORKS 2019

SOLIDWORKS, part of Dassault Systemes, is a world leader in providing 3D solutions that helps millions of engineers and designers succeed in producing innovation and updates. SOLIDWORKS delivers and intuitive experience in product design, simulation, publishing, data management, and environmental impact assessment. Throughout years of endeavour, SOLIDWORKS has established itself as a leader in CAD market that focusing on ease of use, affordability, and community. To make sure this legacy retains, SOLIDWORKS is continuing its efforts to make itself not just a tool but a must to all CAD users in this year.

            Hence, it’s time for SOLIDWORKS 2019 to be disclosed in front of audience. In this coming SOLIDWORKS 2019, there are more than 27 updates and upgrades are queuing up in a line to meet with all CAD users. It is a norm that SOLIDWORKS continues to focus on ease of use which is the main criterion top-performing companies in CAD solutions while continuing to invest 80% of its revenue back into its development with the aim that all its customers enjoy a competitive advantage with tools for a better decision that lead to more competitive products. Just to disclose one of the new updates will be the DraftSight/ 3D EXPERIENCE Marketplace Integration.

            DraftSight is a professional-grade, powerful 2D design and drafting solution with a familiar user interface and a minimal learning from your current 2D CAD application at a fraction of the cost. It’s also a free CAD tool that lets you to make changed to your DXF or DWG files into their native formats. In SOLIDWORKS 2019, DraftSight functionality has been upgraded to provide the most seamless way to let your DraftSight design and content made and collaborate with leading digital manufacturers worldwide.

 

The connection between DraftSight with 3D EXPERIENCE Marketplace enables millions of CAD user especially to those using DWG to experience a smooth and intact journey from design to manufacturing of the products. It also provides an alternative path for CAD users to collaborate with qualified industrial supplier across a range of services throughout the design and manufacturing processes.

            The DraftSight/3D EXPERIENCE Marketplace Integration will be based on the specification set by the CAD users to select the best partner and qualified ecosystem industrial manufacturer to allows their DWG/DXF and STL contents ready for laser cutting or 3D printing.

Using Cut List Sorting Option

In previous SOLIDWORKS versions , the cut list would create an entirely new item folder, instead of staying in the original item folder and limited control over the way they could sort the cut list components. Now, cut List Sorting Option, cut lists are more flexible and can be worked with to avoid instances like this from happening, which can lead to a much more organized cut list.

Below as per example, I have created a weldment with six solid bodies, all of which are the same size.

 

I add a slot to 20x20x1.6 SHS<8> by doing a cut extrude. In this moment , SOLIDWORKS will come out four component in the cut list. SOLIDWORKS will identify these are different geometries , you may want to keep two side bar under one cut-list-item . In drawing cut list table , the cut- extrude will separate to be new item.

 

If you wanted to keep those weldments in the same Cut-List-Item folder in your cut list, you may right-click the cut list and selecting the Cut List Sorting Options .

 

In Cut List Sorting Options , you can choose which features you’d like to exclude in sorting the different welded parts in your cut list.  The Collect Identical Bodies feature will collect all bodies that are geometrically identical.

 

You can see that the Cut-Extrude feature now included in your same cut list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automating Your Repetitive Task Part 2

Hi there, are you doing the same repeating process everyday with SOLIDWORKS? Ever thought of how to automating your repetitive task?

Ever thought of how to automate your SOLIDWORKS to boots the productivity? Most of the time when talking about automate people are thinking about API or macro. Today, I will show you how to automate your SOLIDWORKS without the needs of API or macro with the help of DriveWorksXpress. DriveWorksXpress is available in every SOLIDWORKS license.

1. Activation is needed for first time use. To activate your Driveworks Xpress, first go to Tool, Xpress Products > DriveWorksXpress.

automating repetitive task

 

 

2. You will be prompt to key in the activation code.

automating repetitive task2

3. Click on the link for My.SolidWorks.com/xpress to get your free activation code for DriveWorksXpress. You will need to login your MySOLIDWORKS account.

automating repetitive task3

4. Copy the DriveWorksXpress activation code and paste it into the “DriveWorksXpress Product Code” box the click ok. Activation Done. Now we can continue with our automation task.
automating repetitive task4

 

5. Start to model the part that we want as usual. automating repetitive task5

6. Save the model with appropriate name.

7. Start DriveWorksXpress from:
Tools > Xpress Products > DriveWorksXpress.
Once DriveWorksXpress was started, you can access it thru the taskpane.

 

automating repetitive task6

8. Click on “Create/Change Database” then click “Next

Give a name to the database and save it.

Click next again to “add model”.

automating repetitive task 7   9.  Select Use current open model and next again.

automating repetitive task 8

10. This is where we capture the features and dimensions that we like to automate.

automating repetitive task 9

11. Click on “Dimension and Features”
Click on the feature that we wish to automate, and DriveWorkXpress will capture it.  

12. Using the same method to capture dimension that we wish to automate.

13. Design the form and entry field to automate the parameters. Click next.

14. Rule summary: DriveWorksXpress will show the rules summary.

Red color indicate that rules are missing and needed to create.

15. Creating Rules
Double click on the “green box” to link the Input that we created in Step 13
Green Box is value we capture from model (step 11 & 12)
Red box is input that we create in step 13.

Now we are mapping them. 

16. You can also use logical or mathematical formula when creating rules

17.  Once we created all the rules, we are ready to go.
Key in the desire value and click “Create”

18. Now I can create my model with slight modification in second just by filling in the form and hit button “Create”. A big time saver!!

19. Just another set of value

20. Have fun!

Let us know if you would like to know more. =)