Please be aware that the SolidWorks 2012 Check for Updates seems to be able to find 2013 Beta 1 as an available update. SolidWorks has confirmed that this was not intended.
Please call your reseller BEFORE updating to ANY major release change, it's worth the time to talk about the process, benefits, etc.
Best regards,
Jim K. - CATI Support
Last night I got home and it was Christmas, a bright shinny package was sitting on my front door. It was from Verizon, my new Galaxy S3. This thing is really pretty compared to my old Motorola Android 1. Ok, shorten the story Bob. I need a case? I don’t think so because besides the 4.8 in screen and dual core processor this thing has Gorilla Glass Version 2. This phone is one of the first products to show off this extremely strong and scratch resistant alkalialuminosilicate(big word) material. But don’t take my word for it; check out the material properties and video from Corning.
Properties
Density 2.42 g/cm3
Young’s Modulus 71.5 GPa
Poisson’s Ratio 0.21
Shear Modulus 29.6 GPa
Vickers Hardness (200g load)
Unstrengthened 534 kgf/mm2
Strengthened 649 kgf/mm2
Fracture Toughness 0.68 MPa m0.5
Coefficient of Expansion 81.4 x 10-7 /°C
(0-300°C)
Have a Great Day.
Bob McGaughey, CSWE
Technical Applications Mgr.
CATI
For the 3rd year in a row Adrian Fanjoy and I have done one of our favorite SolidWorks World presentations, "Maximizing SolidWorks Performance". The presentation was well received and we thought it would be a good idea to share the information with more than just the SolidWorks World attendees.
We will be publishing our presentation thru a series of blog articles so check back to the blog often to see what we have added to the series. We have also included a set of links at the bottom of this article that will take you to all the future articles.
To get the series started we are starting with Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of putting together this information.
Introduction
From the standpoint of performance in a SolidWorks modeling environment; large assembly modeling is the most strenuous endeavor. Large assemblies can easily take a workstation to the limits of its capability. We have, over time, determined many different means of improving performance for SolidWorks but we never could quantify the improvement or determine if the improvement was worth the investment.
To overcome this dilemma we decided to create a benchmark from the ground up. We created a large assembly, built a macro that would run the model through many aspects of SolidWorks utilization, and began measuring SolidWorks performance in a manner that had never been done before. In our tests we isolate individual changes in our environment and measure the time difference of running the benchmark against the baseline. This allows us to measure the effect of a single change and then compare that to other changes to determine where to invest time and resources to improve SolidWorks performance.
Please realize that the results that we are presenting in this document are specific to our environment, models, and tasks performed. While we are certain that you can expect similar results when making such changes, the magnitude of your performance increase will definitely be different than ours. When working with large assemblies the benefits that you realize may be more or less than ours overall you should see an improvement but realizing that we cannot determine what other environments may hold, we will not guarantee the effect these changes will have in any environment other than ours.
Tests
To determine what changes make the most significant difference in modeling performance we ran our model through a custom SolidWorks macro that performed operations common in a typical designers day (ie. modeling, rotations, rebuilds, opens, closes, saves, etc...). We tested many specific aspects in the categories of hardware, system configuration, and modeling methodology.
Environment
To run tests of this nature and insure that the integrity of the testing was maintained we needed a system that was extremely adaptable. Boxx Technologies provided that workstation. The 3D BOXX 8550XTREME Workstation gave us the ability to test a wide range of configurations without jumping from one workstation to another which would have made maintaining consistency in our configuration almost impossible. This ability to adapt allowed us to run tests that ranged from:
We were also able to run tests on 10 different hard drive configurations include standard and solid state hard drives, different RAID configurations, and different options for storage, swap, and OS locations.
Model
Our model is a combination of several models that our customers have sent to us over time because they were experiencing poor performance. Since these models are from our customers they are not available for the public. However, we can give you the stats. They are:
In total it takes up 2.4GB of disk to store the model.
Baseline
For our baseline test we chose to run the benchmark in a manner that we felt was consistent with typical environments that we see with customers.
The core aspects (These never change)
Hardware
Configuration
Modeling methods
With our environment configured as above our benchmark ran in 5:01:35. Most of the comparisons that follow in our blog articles will be compared to this baseline.
In the subsequent articles in this series we are going to explore each test that we did starting with the change that produced the least amount of improvement to SolidWorks performance and continuing through to the change that produced the largest amount of benefit. We will finish with 2 optimal configurations to see what the effect can be when you combine all of these improvements together into the same environment and model set. Occasionally we will veer off track and discuss a side topic here and there as well.
I hope you find these articles informative and helpful.
Please check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Maximizing SolidWorks Performance and links to each with their release date are listed below:
Thanks,
Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager
Adrian Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director
One of the inherent benefits of using SolidWorks to model is that you never have to calculate mass properties for any part. The software is intelligent enough to calculate these based on your geometry, the material choice and its position in space as defined by the part origin. To get these properties, you can navigate to the tools pulldown menu, then go to mass properties, or go to the evaluate tab and select mass properties from there. SolidWorks then gives you a nice layout that you can actually print out on its own. Below is an example of this table.
An important fact to realize is that SolidWorks uses the material choice in these calculations. This means that when the material is unspecified, SolidWorks will use arbitrary values, therefore, the calculations will not be correct. A lot of times, you may have a component of your part that you do not want to account for in a property, such as its weight. In such a case, leaving the material choice unassigned will give you erroneous results. For these cases, SolidWorks has a way to fix that property. Simply check the ‘Assigned mass properties’ box and you are good to go from there.
Now as opposed to arbitrary values, you will be able to fix and even zero out the weight of a component and that weight will be factored in to the rest of your calculations. SolidWorks allows you to assign the weight, as well as the COG, giving you ample flexibility in your mass properties.
Brian Adika CSWP
Computer Aided Technology Inc.
Try before you buy with a complimentary 30-day evaluation of SolidWorks Simulation Professional!
Here's how it works:
To help demonstrate the value of Simulation Professional, Solidworks will be hosting introductory customer webinars focused on the Value and ROI of Simulation Professional. Sharing examples of how a company can recover their complete investment of Simulation Professional in one use. All you need to do is attend one of the following webinars to receive your SolidWorks Simulation Free Trial.
Be sure to list CATI as your SolidWorks Reseller when registering.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM CDT REGISTER NOW
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM CDT REGISTER NOW
So what are the requirements to get your Evaluation?
To enhance your experience even further, you will also be given access to a simulation support portal and live technical support via Q&A webcasts and E-mail throughout the trial.
Are you ready to step up by reducing material and physical testing costs? How about saving time while creating innovative new products?
Get the power of Simulation Professional for 30 days and optimize your design analysis experience.
Jim TeDesco
Marketing Computer Aided Technology, inc.
SolidWorks Sketch Slot Symmetric Relation
There are often times when designing a part that a typical placement for a sketch entity doesn't always conform to the standard horizontal or vertical placements. Sometimes you need to get creative in how you place the "design intent" into your sketch for parametric updates. We use parametric software, so why not get the most out of it. Introducing an outside of the box solution. Take this example of a block with an irregular cutout on the surface. Your task is to create a slotted cutout that remains "centered" between the two angular edges of the cutout.
So, you make a sketch on this surface, and create the slot sketch entity. Now you need to define this. So select the center line of the sketch slot as well as the two edges of the angled cut from the previous feature.
Once selected, either pick the symmetric relation from the pop up box or the property manager window on the left side of your screen.
Here is your result. Now, when you complete this feature, you can control the design of the angled cut and see how this cut will update and maintain this symmetric relation throughout your design iterations!
So there is another tool for you to keep handy in your office desk drawer. Remember that relations in sketches are often displayed only when viable. So don't hesitate to click around to see what other goodies might be hiding around in your next SolidWorks design session. Enjoy!
Brian Reel
CATI Technical Analyst
Adrian Fanjoy and myself began doing performance testing for SolidWorks four years ago. We have presented those results at SolidWorks World each year as we have continued to refine our tests each year. This past year we partnered up with BOXX Technologies who lent us one of their top of the line CAD Workstations which allowed us to put together a large range of different test variables and produce our best set of results to date.
After all our testing and presentations were done this year BOXX and Intel asked us if we would work together with the team at Desktop Engineering to turn our Allowing SolidWorks to Perform presentation into a white paper.
The white paper that we developed takes you through our entire process starting with the computer setup, to the large SolidWorks assembly we used for testing. The paper then talks about the macro we built that takes our model and runs it through a battery of standard operations that a user of SolidWorks would do in a "typical" work day. Next it takes you tests that we performed which were included everything from changes to the SolidWorks System and Document Options to changes in the amount of RAM and type of hard drive that were installed in our computer. Our testing started with an initial baseline run of just over 5 hours with a setup that we see on most users computers. For each of our tests we isolated one item in our SolidWorks or System environment then reran our macro to see how much of a performance difference that one change made. The paper concluded with our optimal system setup which shows the combination of changes that can increase your performance by as much as 5.5 times.
The link below will take you to the CATI site where you can download the Maximize SolidWorks' Performance White Paper.
http://www.cati.com/maximize-solidworks-performance
Please check back to the CATI blog as we will continue posting our series of articles that goes further into the details of each of our tests. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Maximizing SolidWorks Performance and links to each with their release date are listed below:
Thanks,
Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager
Adrian Fanjoy, CATI Technical Services Director
