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Get Involved…

SolidWorks Forums

One of the best ways to get involved in the SolidWorks community is through the SolidWorks Forums.

Ask questions, help others and make use of the masses of helpful info posted by other uses and SolidWorks employees.

Visit https://forum.solidworks.com

Register if you aren't already signed up for a Customer Portal account. If you already have a Customer Portal account then simply just login.

On the right you will see some links to help get you started. follow these for videos that help you get the most out of you SolidWorks Forums experience.

 

Other ways to get involved

If you have ever wished SolidWorks had a particular feature or you want to help shape the development of future releases, here are a few options for you:

Enhancement Requests*

Suggest new functionality you would like to see in SolidWorks products.

Early Visibility Program

The Early Visibility (EV) program provides you with an opportunity to review and test a Service Pack before general release.

Beta and Pre-Release Programs

Each release of SolidWorks is preceded by a beta program. Participating in beta programs gives you the opportunity to test the new release, identify any critical issues, and submit bugs for correction before the SP0 release. The 2011 beta program has changed a bit from previous years. There are more special competitions, more prizes to be awarded, and you'll have a chance to raise your visibility within the SolidWorks community. Our 2011 beta programs will be released in early July, 2010. Please log in to the Customer Portal to sign up today!

User Research Program

At SolidWorks, we constantly focus on the design of our products. With every release, we consider hundreds – if not thousands – of decisions that affect your experience. The SolidWorks User Research program helps us design products that fit your needs, and gives you the opportunity to help shape product concepts early on.

Visit the SolidWorks website for more details: http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/get_involved.htm

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Welcome to a better way to read, write and share DWG files – and the place to do it all.

Download our free* software and start working with your DWG files. Then start sharing, connecting and interacting with the 3DSwYm DraftSight™ community members.

The DraftSight 2D CAD Product. Public Beta Now Available.

DraftSight is a professional-grade, open 2D CAD product for users who want a better way to read, write and share DWG files. DraftSight is easy to use and is available for professional CAD users, students and educators to download and activate for free.*

Based on advanced architecture, DraftSight has a small footprint, should take less that a few minutes to download, and runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows XP®, Windows Vista® and    Windows® 7.

Find out more about DraftSight. Check out the introduction video below.

SolidWorks 2011 Beta is coming…

July sees the start of the SolidWorks 2011 Beta! Don’t forget to sign up for notifications by adding Beta News to your Customer Centre profile.

With the Beta coming very soon it has made me think of the last release and which new functionality or tools I used and got the most out of.

From my previous posts you will see I am a fan of the mouse gestures… I think these had the biggest impact on me as I soon found myself using these in a natural way, I really missed them when I was using 3DVIA Composer and even started wishing that PowerPoint and Excel had support for them too. Here are a few tips to get the most out of Mouse Gestures:

• Make the options common in all environments. This makes it easier to remember which directions do what.
• Don't worry about empty directions. If it doesn't make sense to use the gestures for an option then don't use them. For the sketch environment I only use about half of the directions.
• Go for 8 directions straight away… you don't need to remember and use them all straight away, once you have got used to a direction doing a certain command it is hard to change your automatic reactions.

Another tool that I have used quite a lot is the Assembly Visualisation tool. If you need to sort and view your assemblies by any property such as Mass or Material then Assembly Visualisation is the tool for you.

 Image (A) On the Evaluate tab you will see the Assembly Visualisation tool

Image (B) Assembly tree is sorted by Mass and colour coded to help understand the impact of mass in the design.

The assembly tree, although sorted differently is still available to interact with to open or edit any of the components.

The colours bar is editable, you can also filter the tree and graphics area to hone in on important areas of the design.

Image (C) Here the tree has been filtered by dragging the top rollback bar to show only the bought in components.

The Assembly tree and properties can also be saved out as text, Excel or in PDF format!

Now is a great time to take a look again at the 2010 What’s New PDF (found under the help menu) and refresh on some of the tools added last year while we look forward to a great 2011 Beta!

…I don’t think I mentioned that there are some great prizes this year for the best Beta testers!! Look out for notifications in July!

 

Technorati Tags: SolidWorks 2011,SolidWorks 2010,SolidWorks Tips & Tricks,SolidWorks Beta,SolidWorks

Heads Up…

As of SolidWorks 2010 the heads up toolbar can be completely customised to locate any tool that you wish to place on it. I have recently seen a couple of additions that I thought were very useful.

I always forget that you can right click on the double chevron at the top of the feature manager to change display states so I like to have the display states fly out on the toolbar.

The selection filter is also good to have on there… quick access to selection of certain types of entities without having to bring up the toolbar every time.

Creating planes and curves is always a common task… having these fly outs on the heads up bar means you don't have to go back to the features tab all the time, it also helps keep the “S” key shortcut bar cleaner.

Just right click on the heads up bar and choose “customize”. Pick the “commands” tab and simply drag and drop the commands onto the toolbar.

/Justin

Technorati Tags: SolidWorks 2010,Tips and Tricks,User Interface

Applying dead loads to fatigue

I was recently asked how to apply a dead load in a fatigue study (a none varying load that is applied to a structure all of the time, as opposed to a live or dynamic load that generates an alternating stress).

The diagram below shows the definition of alternating stress (or stress amplitude) and mean stress, both of which are important in influencing the lifetime of a material.

The normal inputs to a fatigue study are the stress amplitudes, but as you can see in the next picture, mean stresses also have an impact on the lifetime of a material. The higher the mean stress, the lower the predicted lifetime.

Dead loads are not alternating but do contribute to the mean stress, so it is important that we can consider them in a fatigue study. But how do we do this?

Alternating load only case

In a normal fatigue study, the method takes the max stress, S_max from a static study loadcase and we use the loading ratio (R = S_min/S_max) to define S_min directly.

For example,

• Picking ‘zero based’ means we define S_max but S_min = 0.
• Picking ‘fully reversed’ means we define S_max and S_min = - S_max.
• Picking ‘loading ratio’ means we can define any arbitrary S_min from the S_max value.

The fatigue setup simply allows us to pick the relevant static study and along with the loading ratio this provides our alternating stress values. These are then compared to the S-N curve to get the lifetime or damage plots.

Dead load case

Dead loads however are constant and therefore by definition not alternating. This means they only apply a non-zero mean stress, which must be considered for the reasons argued above, but cannot be applied in SolidWorks Simulation in the normal way.

The method we use therefore is the ‘Find cycle peaks’ method. This method takes the peaks of multiple loads to find the damage so we must build our static studies with the ‘peaks’ in mind.

Therefore if we had one alternating stress and one dead load, we would need two studies:

• Static study 1 including S_max and the dead load.
• Static study 2 including S_min and the dead load.

You can see here that we are not using one study for S_max and implying S_min from the loading ratio, rather we are doing two separate studies with S_max in one and S_min in the other. However both include the dead load.

Finally, in the fatigue study you reference both of these studies using the ‘Find cycle peaks’ method. This then takes both S_max + dead load and S_min + dead load extremes and combines them to find the worst case for fatigue.

Technorati Tags: SolidWorks Simulation,Fatigue,Dead Loads

All buckled up!

I recently did a simulation product demo for a Norwegian customer and the question of buckling came up. I realised this was an excellent example of understanding the assumptions of the solutions you are producing plus the physical implications of your modelling methods.

We started off with a simple curved panel from a training example,

 

and used shell elements to perform a linear buckling study on a quarter of the model. You can see the edge restraint on the bottom right edge, and the other two symmetry restraints with a point load at one corner, equivalent to the centre of the full panel.

 

The output of interest from a buckling study is the buckling load factor, which was obtained by RMB on the Results folder, and was reported as 27.9. This means that the load must be increased by 27.9 times to make the panel buckle.

However this was a ‘linear’ buckling study, which assumes that the deformation occurring in the component before the onset of buckling must be small. If the panel shows large deflections before buckling occurs, then its stiffness may change. Our linear buckling study solves this in one step and has no opportunity to update the stiffness matrix, therefore giving us a potentially wrong answer.

To test this we ran a nonlinear buckling study on the same component, where the final load is applied in a series of incremental steps. This allows the stiffness matrix to be updated at each increment and so the stiffness of the panel is more realistic as it deforms.

In such a study we do not have a simple buckling load factor report, rather we can plot the displacement of the corner node where the load is applied in a Response Graph. The result looked like this:

where the curve needs to be read from right to the left since the displacement (on the x-axis) is in the negative Y direction, or downwards in our model.

What this shows is that the displacement increases as the load is applied up to a ‘snap-through’ point where it begins to change direction. This snap-through point provides the value of the incremental Load Factor at the onset of buckling and is equivalent to our buckling load factor. Here you can see that it is reading about 13.2, which is a lot less than the linear case of 27.9 above!

So you can see that with a nonlinear buckling study our model would buckle if we increased our load by 13.2 times, rather than 27.9 times; a much more sobering figure.

There is one final step that is worth considering too. Our model here is perfectly symmetrical and the solution is also symmetrical due to the way it has been constructed. However the real world is not symmetrical with manufacturing variations and real loads resulting in an asymmetrical setup.

To see what effect this has on our buckling load factors we re-ran the ‘full panel’ model with a slight offset of our load as an example of an inherent asymmetry. Here you can see a split line used to create a vertex on which the load is applied, slightly to one side of the middle of the panel.

The response graph of displacement at this point shows a different result again, however the buckling load factor is even lower, coming out around 11.7.

So you can see that buckling of ‘real-world’ structures should consider potential asymmetries that allow the structure to buckle sooner than in a symmetrical case.

All-in-all buckling is an interesting failure method and for an accurate solution you should consider both the real structure, your modelling methods, and the solution type to make sure it is as accurate as possible.

Technorati Tags: SolidWorks Simulation,Buckling

Empire Cycles’ innovative downhill mountain bike

Empire Cycles Uses SolidWorks to Develop New Lower-Cost Method for Producing High-Performance Mountain Bikes

 

A maverick U.K. cycle company used SolidWorks^® CAD software to create a mountain bike that defies conventional design techniques and didn’t need endless prototyping to get to market.

 

 

 

SolidWorks helped two-year-old Empire Cycles incorporate automotive and aerospace manufacturing techniques into its high-performance Empire AP-1WR mountain bike.

 

 

At £3,065 for the frame only, the AP-1 is for serious riders who want to get down the mountain fast and smoothly, and who also like futuristic, unconventional styling.

 

 

It is made from three large cast components in a design that requires no welding or riveting, much like a vehicle or aircraft suspension. No welding and riveting make the AP-1 faster and cheaper to produce because Empire does not have to purchase and ship parts to attach to the frame. The cast components also make the AP-1 stronger and able to resist powerful shocks despite its relatively light weight. With the frame subject to no distortion or thermal shock from riveting and welding, testing the design was simpler because there were fewer spots where it could fail.

 

Empire Cycles co-founder Chris Williams said SolidWorks helped him overcome production challenges that led Empire’s first foundry to declare the design impossible to produce.

 

 

“One foundry told us that it was impossible to cast the swing arm – which is a hollow, rigid shell – at the four millimeters we wanted,” Williams said. “That turned out to be false. We moved to another foundry and explained what we were trying to achieve. They weren’t able to understand what I wanted them to do with the swing arm’s inner surface, so I did it myself in SolidWorks to show them. I could create cutters in SolidWorks that let me design very complex shapes and do many iterations quickly without wrecking the overall design.”

 

 

When the foundry was able to produce the cast parts – the swing arm, frame and seat post – Empire built a production model of the bike and gave it to a test rider “and he basically tried to destroy it,” Williams said. He performed preliminary analysis with SolidWorks Simulation Xpress, modified the 3D models and sent them to a specialist for more detailed analysis. This replaced the conventional prototyping process, where companies might create dozens of prototypes before going to production.

 

“It was a very risky strategy but it worked because SolidWorks enabled us to see everything we needed to see,” Williams said. “We could analyze the weight, see how everything fit together, and SolidWorks was brilliant for manipulating the assembly so we had a true idea for how everything would work in the physical world.”

 

Go to www.empire-cycles.com for more information.