Drawing Views of Individual Bodies

I have recently had a few Technical Support questions
regarding how to create drawing views of individual bodies from within a
weldment. This is actually very simple
and can be completed by using the little known command Relative View.€ While in a drawing, go to €œInsert, Drawing
View, Relative to Model€

Select the face of a body in your drawing view. SolidWorks will then switch you to the model
where you have the option to choose the €œScope and select €œSelected
Bodies€. Select the body you want to
detail. For orientation, select a First
Orientation€ and a €œSecond Orientation€.

Click €œOK€ and the drawing document window will appear. Based on the orientation you chose for your
part, you can now place the view any where you like and you can now project
views off of the new view as shown.

These views can also be moved to other sheets in your
drawing. Relative view will save you
from having to create multiple configurations where you have to hide or suppress
components to be able to get the drawing views you need.

 

Phil Whitaker

Technical Support

YouTube COSMOS Tutorials

If you have trouble using COSMOS, just go to www.youtube.com and look up cosmos tutorials.  They have a lot of videos that explain certain types of analysis.  It is not in-depth knowledge on why it works the way it does but it can provide step-by-step instructions on how to create certain studies. 

For instance, understanding airflow through a centrifugal pump:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=solidworks&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=
UTF8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADBS&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-rev
ision&cd=1#q=solidworks%20simulation

This is just one of the analysis tools that are available for viewing.  They do have other analysis packages that have been recorded so just search through the website.

Ketul Patel

Technical Support

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

Do your Designs Sing?

We often
consider design to be safe if prototypes work out fine, or if over a period of
time legacy data has paved the way. If comfortable with analysis, static tests
are the first line of defense to prove concepts. Knowing loading conditions,
and component interaction with its environment we identify success with an
appeasing color chart of blue and green colors. Could it be we missed a few
nuances making our best design not perform as planned? Let me clarify….

As you're
cruising along in your ride there is a sudden noise that always occurs at a
certain speed. It goes away as soon as you cross that speed. Or remember the
time when the plastic stool could not hold your weight and you simply
attributed that to Walmart’s poor quality products. How about excessive use of
certain microwavable utensils and then suddenly the lid never fits. Do you
think these all are poor designs or someone didn’t do their homework? Can there
be a similar case at work…..how about the motor in a plant shop that hums at a
certain rpm, or certain portions of work space that are over cooled compared to
others. Maybe it's time we tried to look at designs in their environment,
rather than simply understanding loading conditions.

 

Frequency / Modal tests: The reason why you hear odd sounds
in the car is because a car body’s natural frequency matched the rate at which
wind load was acting on it, the same reason why the motor in plant shop hums at
a certain rate. This concept is called resonance. In the case of a guitar,
resonance appeases ear buds.

 

Buckling tests: WalMart’s plastic stool which is
designed to hold a certain weight failed because of a phenomenon called
buckling. When thin slender cross sections are subjected to compressive loads
they fail in a combination of yielding and buckling. The material cross section
deforms slightly and hence incapacitates it from providing resistance to an
applied load.

   

Thermal tests: When a component heats up it
expands. This is precisely the reason why there are gaps in rail road tracks.
There are slots made in the cutting blade of a saw to accomplish effective
heat dissipation.

Fatigue tests: When a component is repeatedly
loaded and unloaded, there are residual loads left in the component. This is
what causes the microwave utensil lids to not fit in after an extended period of
usage.

COSMOS or
SolidWorks Simulation can help you account for all possible design scenarios.
The idea is to empower you to think more about your designs rather than the
design process.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

Instant 3D Tool

Are you seeing a preview like this when you try to edit a
sketch?

Click to enlarge picture

If so, you may have your Instant 3D tool turned on. This is
a new feature to SolidWorks 2008 and many people have been confused as to why
they are not able to dimension properly or select certain things when editing a
sketch. Instant 3D is a great tool, but in certain cases it can cause you to
not be able to select or dimension properly when editing a sketch. Here is how
to turn it off: first, make sure your toolbars are in ‘command manager’ mode. Your
toolbars should look like this:

Click to enlarge image

If they don’t, please refer to Leslie’s post below; ‘Do you
like the new in-context toolbars in SolidWorks 2008?’ to get them into this
mode.

In the features tab you will see the button for Instant 3D.
Make sure this is not highlighted and your Instant 3D will be disabled.

Bria Helgerson, CSWP
CATI Technical Support

 

Help with Help Files

We often tend to look up help in our software for
information that either isn’t intuitive or that we are confused about. But more
often than not we have to access the software itself to get to the help
menu. Wouldn’t it be nice to have help
at your beck and call as it should be?

You can have the help menu show up in Start \ All Programs
menu \ SolidWorks 2008 \ Help

Click to enlarge picture

To do this:
1. Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\” user name on machine ”\Start Menu\Programs\
2. Right click and create
a new folder called “Help”
3. In this folder create a shortcut to
the help file (*.chm file) for Solid Works Help. This is usually where the
software is installed. C:\ProgramFiles\SolidWorks\SolidWorks\lang\english\sldworks.chm
4. Similarly create shortcuts to all
the help files you might want in there.
Eg. COSMOS works C:\Program
Files\SolidWorks\COSMOSWorks\Help\cworks.chm

Now you can drag and drop the Help
menu created in the Program files menu under the SolidWorks folder.

Machine
specifications
Many a times users
need to know their machine specifications in a quick and easy manner. If you hit the windows button on the keyboard

Click to enlarge picture

+ Pause key; machines' System Properties come up. The other method to bring
this up is to right click on My Computer and click on properties.

 

Click to enlarge pictures

Rajat Trehan
Product Manager – Design Validation
Computer Aided Technology Inc.

Central Indiana SolidWorks User Group

Do you get excited about SolidWorks and its capabilities? Do you want to meet other individuals who feel the same way? Then come to the Central Indiana SolidWorks User Group! Meet users from all different industries and expand your knowledge of SolidWorks. The group meets every other month, and presentations are given in an open forum to share new ideas and functionality with SolidWorks and related products. Computer Aided Technology has been involved with this group for many years, and I will actually be presenting on eDrawings at the next meeting.

Next Meeting-
When: Thursday, July 17th
Where: GT South Rib House 4919 S. Emerson Avenue Indianapolis, IN (Beech Grove)
Time: 4:30 to 8:30
Main Topic: eDrawings
http://www.indianasolidworks.org/

Hope to see you there!
Leslie Lougheed

Do you need a slam dunk test?

Static
studies assume loads are constant or applied very slowly until they reach their
full values. Because of this assumption, velocity and acceleration of each
particle of model is assumed zero. As a result, static studies neglect inertial
and damping forces.

For many
practical cases, loads are not applied slowly or they change with time or
frequency. For such cases we use a dynamic study. The software calculates
response of model by accumulating the contribution of each mode to loading
environment. In most cases, only lower modes contribute significantly to the
response. The contribution of a mode depends on load’s frequency content,
magnitude, direction, duration and location.

To test the
effect of slam dunk on a basket ball rim we need a linear dynamic test. Let’s
say it takes 0.5 seconds for a player to dunk the ball. We will solve this
problem using linear dynamic analysis in COSMOS or SolidWorks Simulation and
then solve again using Linear Static analysis.

For load case we will consider, slam dunk force
to be 260lb. For a static test we will consider the load to be constant. For
linear dynamic, we will apply the load over 0.5 seconds and calculate upto 10
seconds duration. Also, we will include material damping effects, hopefully
making it a realistic simulation.
















Stress from Dynamic Test                    Stress from Static Test

Displacement
from Static Test               Displacement from Dynamic Test

From the
stress and displacements plots, it is obvious if we use static analysis for
this problem our results would be inaccurate. Static tests shows a stress and
displacement value of 83443 psi and 0.83 in respectively. Dynamic tests on the
other hand indicate stress value of 1284 psi and 0.006 in respectively. If we
were to go by static tests we would be severely over designing the rim, making
it more expensive.

A time based
test is needed to accurately slam dunk a basket!

Rajat Trehan

Product
Manager – Design Validation

Computer
Aided Technology Inc.

SolidWorks World 2009 Call for Papers

As everyone may or may not know SolidWorks holds a user conference every year and it has come time once again for SolidWorks to ask it users to submit ideas for presentations for the upcoming SolidWorks World.

So the questions that arise are Where in the world is SolidWorks World, When is SWW, What is SWW, Why is SW looking for presentation ideas & How is it going to benefit me if I submit a presentation idea?

Where in the world is SolidWorks World? Every year SolidWorks World is in a different location. This year it is in Orlando, Florida. Past locations have included Las Vegas, San Diego, and New Orleans.

When is SWW? This year it is Sun Feb 8^th – Wed Feb 11^th and is generally held anytime from mid Jan. to mid Feb. each year.

What is SWW? SolidWorks World is an annual user conference that SolidWorks hosts for its users. The conference gives all the SolidWorks users a chance to get together in one location and see over 100 presentations on all aspects of the software. Attendees have the ability to see the different partner products that SolidWorks has to offer along with seeing some of the products that are designed in SolidWorks. The conference offers the opportunity to take the CSWP (Certified SolidWorks Professional) Exam or enter into a SolidWorks modeling competition.

Why is SolidWorks looking for presentation ideas? The presentations that are offered at SWW are presentations or hands on sessions that are created by the users, resellers and SolidWorks employees on every topic from hardware setup to surface modeling and are intended for users of all experience levels to attend to learn more about SolidWorks and what it can do to make SolidWorks and the attendees more efficient in how they use their software.

How is it going to benefit me if I submit a presentation idea? When you submit a presentation idea and it gets accepted SolidWorks will pay for your entry fee into SolidWorks World. The only cost incurred by the presenter is hotel, meal and travel costs.

I have presented at SWW2006, SWW2007 & have submitted three presentation ideas for SWW2009 and have enjoyed each year that I have been to SWW and always gotten positive feedback from each of my presentations.

If you would like to submit a presentation, go to this web page and fill out the online form https://1bosweb3.experient-inc.com/Events/Solidworks/world2009/CFP/Speaker_guide.cfm . The deadline to submit ideas is August 31^st but get your ideas in soon as space is always limited. I would also suggest to type out your ideas in Word first so to check spelling, grammar & word count. I have included a series of screen shots from the online form along with a copy of one of my submissions to give everyone an idea of what SW is looking for.

Download solidworks_world_2009_online_form.pdf  Download solidworks_world_2009_topic.pdf

If there are any questions about this process feel free to contact me at any time.

Josh Altergott

Support Team Leader

Computer Aided Technology

888-308-2284 x1229

Do you need a specific type of machine to run Analysis?

Well the
question cannot be answered without understanding what is it being utilized
for? Depending on the type of analysis versus size of analysis problem; the
range could vary significantly. In this link I will try to give an over view of
what should be considered.

RAM

Having a lot
of RAM on your machine is like having a vehicle with a lot of Horse Power. The
difficult the terrain the stronger the engine should be. In SolidWorks and
COSMOS world that means solving large and complex problems.

Two gigs of
RAM is adequate for solving linear analysis on small assemblies. As you go
higher up the chain, from frequency to optimization tests to flow analysis RAM
will start playing a significant role. On a x32 machine Windows takes benefit
of 4GB RAM. Note: 3GB switch should be activated. On a x64 machine technically
user can go upto 64 GB RAM.

Processor

Processor
speed as well as number of processors can improve solution time. The main advantage of having multi-core and
multi-processors installed is that if you have many programs running at the
same time your processor won’t get overloaded because there are other
processors to share the load. Having multiple programs running in different
processor cores also makes them more responsive over a single core processor,
because there is little delay while waiting for another program to complete its
processes.

COSMOSWorks,
or COSMOSFloWorks analysis would see more benefit from the quad core processor
because those programs are more multi-threaded applications. COSMOSFloWorks is
truly multithreaded and even has a batch processing application to allow you to
pick the process cores you want it to run on and keep others open for
continuing work in SolidWorks or other programs at the same time. Currently,
you can install up to two quad core processors on some Intel Xeon based systems
for a total of 8 cores to run processes.

Some
key points to keep in mind

• If you have to choose between RAM and Processor speed, I would go for more RAM.



• Myth: two slower processors perform better than one faster processor. Performance can be gained only if all processors are equally powerful.



• Video Card: Having a very powerful card and not enough RAM can be very detrimental. Video RAM eats of hard RAM.Also, with Real View graphics running a good video card helps with
       displaying images sharp and crisp.

Here
are a few links for hardware and graphics cards to take a look at.

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/SystemRequirements.html

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/VideoCardTesting.html

I
hope this gives you an idea what to look for when deciding on a machine to run
analysis upon.

Rajat Trehan

Product Manager - Design Validation

Computer Aided Technology Inc.

How to avoid a Redneck Workaround to capture a screenshot

Now we all know we are big fans of finding ways to do things faster and simpler but there are some Redneck Workarounds that you are just better off not using and capturing a screenshot from your computer is one of them.

When you call in to a technical support line and they ask for a screen shot of the problem you are having the one thing they do not want to see is this, a digital picture of your screen.

 

While this shows that you know how to use a camera and shows us the issue you are having this is not the easiest way to get the job done.

There are several ways to avoid having to use your camera to capture what is showing on your screen.

• The first option is to use the Print Scrn button on your keyboard this will capture everything that is showing on your monitor. Then all you need to do is paste (Ctrl+V) into a program like Word or Paint.



• The second option is to use Alt+Print Scrn this will capture everything that is showing on the program or dialog box you have selected/active on the sc reen. Then all you need to do is paste (Ctrl+V) into a program like Word or Paint.



• A third option to use if the problem is reproducible time and time again is use SolidWorks Rx this is found in your list of programs usually under SolidWorks, SolidWorks Tools and will allow you to record your session of SolidWorks.



• Your final option is to use a 3^rd party program that is designed for capturing screen images. I use a program called SnagIt and in my opinion this is a great tool because it gives you many different options for capturing and editing images.

If you have any questions about any of these options please give us a call and we will be happy to help you capture a screen image without having to get out the camera.

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Team Leader

(no this is not my car)