Monthly Archives: October 2012
Maximize your punkin’ chunkin’ catapult with SolidWorks Simulation
Have you ever wondered how far you could throw a
pumpkin? No? Me neither. However, a lot of people not only give this significant thought, they also meet in a big field to test their weird and wonderful contraptions
at the Punkin' Chunkin' World Championships.
In a nutshell, teams compete to see how far they can launch
a pumpkin by catapult, trebuchet, or air cannon. I first learned about this weird and wonderful completion a while ago, and I
decided that rather than build my own physical catapult and test it, I would do the smart thing–build and test it in SolidWorks first. Now, I
didn’t want to spend a ton of time creating a detailed model to test; I just wanted
a quick and dirty model that I could use to test my design hypothesis and make some initial determinations, namely:
- What beam sections to use on the design?
- Where to put the arm stop?
- What are the impact stresses?
- How far would the pumpkin go?
So my first design was quite basic, but it still had enough
detail to provide meaningful design data. This is a really important point for any design analysis: analyze early and often to get the
maximum benefit.
New in SolidWorks 2013: Weldments, Sheet Metal, and Multi-Body Library Features
New enhancements in SolidWorks 2013 let you quickly design weldments, sheet metal, and multi-body parts and increase standardization. Save time and automate outputs for manufacturing For Weldments—Access overall dimensions of the part bounding box for BOM, cut list, or annotations
... ContinuedRho, Rho, Rho Your Boat: Conics in SolidWorks 2013
SolidWorks 2013 introduces a sketch entity type that was once the soledominion of expensive Class-A surface modeling systems of yesteryear: The Conic Section. As I learned in 10th grade, if you take a cone and slice it with a plane,
... ContinuedHow POLYRACK Makes Its Products “Cool”
Complex technologies, such as desktop computers, involve many different components that have the tendency to overheat, including multiple printed circuit boards. How do you measure the impact of electricity and heat running through your product? POLYRACK Tech-Group employed the help
... ContinuedNew in SolidWorks 2013: Section View Assist
The new Section View Assist feature in SolidWorks 2013 helps you speed the creation of production drawings for faster and more consistent section views. Quickly document the interface between internal components Use specialized functionality to quickly create section views, aligned
... ContinuedSolidWorks Library Features to “Die” For (with video tutorial)
I have been getting tons of questions lately about how to create Library Features. In Tip #3, I didn’t go in great detail about how to create a library feature from start to finish, so I wanted to spend the time to go into this process a bit more.
... ContinuedNew in SolidWorks 2013: CAD Administrator Dashboard
New in SolidWorks 2013, the CAD Administrator dashboard lets you easily monitor all your SolidWorks user hardware and software performance to keep your design office running smoothly and at top efficiency. See status, performance, and system options settings for each
... ContinuedUsing SolidWorks Plastics to plan your mold
You may be aware of SolidWorks Plastics, but are you aware of the benefits that its functionality could give you?
SolidWorks Plastics is a fully integrated tool set for SolidWorks that allows users to simulate the injection molding process for your SolidWorks designs.
For this example, a basic plastic cup made from ABS Polycarbonate is used.
New in SolidWorks 2013: Network Rendering for PhotoView 360
SolidWorks 2013 introduces the ability to render complex scenes faster using the processing power of other computers on your network. Save time with faster rendering of photorealistic images Network multiple computers to share the computational load Adjust image aspects such
... Continued