Reduce Mass & Cost with Optimization Studies in SOLIDWORKS Simulation
To meet safety and strength requirements, designers may over-design the materials for their purposes. These common practices contribute to hidden cost though. Equally, we want to get closer to designing the best and profitable products.
With SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional, engineers and designers can take advantages of design optimization, which allows to integrate the results of linear-static studies to parametrically optimize specific dimensions of choosing. Therefore, why not let SOLIDWORKS Simulation find an ideal design to save your money, without sacrificing confidence.
An optimization study is defined by goals or objective functions, as well as design variables, and constraints. For example, you can vary dimensions of a body to minimize the amount of material while constraining stresses so that they do not exceed a specified limit. In this case, the volume you are minimizing is the objective function, the dimensions you are varying are the design variables, and the stress limit is the behaviour constraint.
A sensitivity study systematically evaluates the change in response to input variations. Input Parametric optimization involves the following concepts:
- Variables: These are the values that the user wants to modify from the part design.
- Constraints: These are the limits that are placed on various parameters.
- Goals: This is generally the parameter optimized. For example, minimizing weight on a part would be a common goal.
How to Turn Your Topology Optimization Into CAD
Figure 1.0: SOLIDWORKS calculates a smoothed mesh and inputs it into the assembly
One advantage to SOLIDWORKS’ topology optimization tool is that it is designed to take these designs into a CAD environment.
Three methods to bring your optimization into CAD for further analysis and processing:
First, you can display the results on top of the original CAD model that spawned the optimization. The engineer can then use this overlay to guide the changes to the original geometry.
Figure 2.0: Simulation results of a topology-optimized part overlaid onto CAD geometry
Second, engineers can save their topology optimization geometry into an STL file. Because there is a new ability to work with mesh bodies in SOLIDWORKS, this effectively brings the geometry into your CAD.
From here, the engineer can use the “calculate smooth mesh” function to get their geometry as surface body.
In this blog, we took a look at how the Design Optimization expands the capabilities and improve the value of productivity, and by reducing the cost of producing it by reducing the amount of material used.
EXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS 2020 WITH US NOW!
SOLIDWORKS 2020 offers innovative tools and features to help engineers and designers slash design time, reduce design costs, minimize production errors and build better products.It is molded based on the feedback and request of over 5.6 million users worldwide, and here is your chance to have a first hands-on experience on the capabilities and potential of simplified 3D design with SOLIDWORKS. Register Now!
Day/Date: Friday, 10th April 2020
Time: 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
For Malaysia, contact event@cad-vision.com.my
For Singapore, contact event@cad-vision.com.sg
