SolidWorks BOM Showing Incorrect Information

I recently had a technical support call from a customer who was trying to copy an existing project of assembly files and part files to make another project that was similar but different.  They had renamed the files with new part file and assembly file names, but the BOM information which was to show these new part names wasn't.  It was showing the old file names instead.  So after some head scratching, I checked to see if these files had configurations in them.  They in fact did and were set at the configuration property level to show a 'user specified name' instead of the file or configuration name.  This is why file name 102-12345 was showing as 102-xxxxx instead of the correct file name.  Once we set these configuration properties to show the file name, all was well.  So if you encounter this same behavior on your system, remember that the configurations each have their own properties and verify that they are listing what they should be listing in your BOM.

So hopefully if this issue ever comes up in your work flow, you will remember this simple tip.  Thank you.

Brian Reel
CATI 

Computer Aided Technology, Inc. Team raising money and awareness for men's health.

Over the last few years November has received a face lift, changing its name to Movember. The staffs at CATI, customers, and partners are working together to not only to raise money but to raise awareness on health issue. So if you are a mother, father, brother, sister or even a grandson or granddaughter you can impact the futures of your loved ones.

So visit Movember today, donate, learn and care about what matters most; people.

http://us.movember.com/team/443309

Thank you for your consideration.

Bob McGaughey, CSWE

CATI

Adding same size hole wizard hole to other faces

Have you ever come across an issue where you need to add an additional hole to a sheet metal part?  The issue is, if you have a hole wizard hole on a face of a sheet metal part.  If you later need to add the same size hole to another face you cannot just edit the hole wizard feature and place on another face because you lose the 3D sketch option when you edit feature (if 3d sketch was not used).  If you just add another hole wizard feature on the other face, the hole callout command will only list the one hole and will not show the 2X qty as you would expect.  You have a few options to correct this issue so let’s take a look.

Option 1:

You can always delete the original hole wizard feature and recreate it so you have the 3D Sketch option.

Option 2:

You can add an additional hole feature on the other face and use the hole table in the drawing to label the holes.

Option 3:

You can roll back your part before the hole wizard hole and use the unfold command to unfold the bends.  At that point, you can roll forward past the hole wizard hole and edit the feature and place the hole.  You don’t need the 3D Sketch option because the part is flat now.  Once the hole is added you just need to fold the part back and you are done.

Realistic load transfer in SolidWorks motion simulation

    When setting up a motion study in SolidWorks, the interactions between the different components of your part will be dictated by how the mates are set up.  This is because the mates will tie up respective degrees of freedom relative to the two components being mated.  This means that transfer of the loading from one component to another will depend on the mate.  In other words, how one part moves another based on the load it is under is controlled by how those two components are mated.

    SolidWorks mates do a great job in defining the degrees of freedom.  Any combination of motions is easily achievable by chosing the appropriate mates.  Load transfer, however, involves more than just direction and magnitude (freedom) of the motion.  Load transfer is also concerned with the stiffnesses of the part under loading.  This is because materials have the ability to deform both plastically and elastically. Simply creating the mate does not account for this flexibility.

    To deal with this inherent rigidity, SolidWorks has a utility that allows us to define a bushing in the mate. Right inside the mate command, there is an analysis tab that helps us set up such parameters like the flexibility of the mate.

This means that our study will reflect the real world that much more accurately as we are able to account for the deflection that occurs in the component before the load is transfered to the next component.

Brian Adika, CSWP
Applications Engineer, CATI

How to Set up Mouse Gestures in SolidWorks

Short little video on "How to" set up your SolidWorks interface.

 

Todd Werginz

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Customizing SolidWorks Flyout Toolbars

CATI's monthly contribution to the SolidWorks Blog was posted last week. This month I chose to write about how to customize the SolidWorks Flyout Toolbars. The article is based  upon a problem I ran into when watching a video on some of the new SolidWorks 2013 features and details the steps it takes to add, remove or reorder the buttons in your Flyout Toolbars.

To view the article use the link below.

http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2012/10/customizing-solidworks-flyout-toolbars.html

Before Customizing                                   After Customizing

 

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Manager

Why Automate Your Designs With DriveWorks?

There are several good reasons why companies want to
automate what they do:

• Reduce the cost of custom
  designs


• Respond quickly to sales
  enquiries


• Enhance product quality


• Reduce repetitive tasks 

The Benefits of DriveWorks

• DriveWorks lets you capture and
  re-use knowledge and rules to specify, design and engineer to order


• It allows you to respond
  quickly to sales enquiries


• DriveWorks can capture and protect
  individual's knowledge


• It reduces cost of custom
  design repetitive tasks


• DriveWorks can enhance the
  product quality/audit trail by elminating human error


• It bridges the gap between the
  engineering and sales departments


• DriveWorks offers a scalable
  solution all the way to 3D configuration on the web!

Jim TeDesco
Marketing Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.