The SolidWorks Blog

Free SolidWorks Certification for Subscription Service Customers

Are you looking for a way to test your skills in SolidWorks or maybe you are in the hunt for a new job and want to make yourself more marketable, then trying one of the SolidWorks Certification Exams is a good way to do that. SolidWorks has been certifying their users since the product first came to the market and has continued to add a variety of different certifications over the years. What many people do not know is that one of the advantages to keeping your license active on Subscription Service is that SolidWorks put out a codes that will allow you to take the test for free.

The best way to access the codes for the free SolidWorks certification is to go to the SolidWorks Customer Portal this can also be found by going to http://www.solidworks.com and selecting Login in the upper right hand side of the site. Once you log into the Customer Portal you can go to Certification in the Community section.

 

Note: If this is your first time logging into the SolidWorks Customer Portal and there are locks on many of the links you need to go to the Register My Products and enter in your SolidWorks Serial Number.

Once you select the Certification link it will take you to the SolidWorks Website and the you need to select the link for Certification Offers for Subscription Service Customers.

At the bottom of the page it will list all of the current offers and when the codes will expire. Make sure you read all of the notes at the bottom of the page.

You want to check the site on a regular basis for any new codes or offers that might be going on.

Good luck with your certifications

Josh Altergott, CATI Support Manager

 

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

You can learn more about SolidWorks certification programs and SolidWorks Subscription Services on the SolidWorks website

Allowing SolidWorks to Perform

For the 4th year in a row Adrian Fanjoy and I have done one of our favorite SolidWorks World presentations, "Allowing SolidWorks to Perform".  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 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 past and 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. As users of any CAD software can understand large assemblies can easily take a workstation to the limits of its capability. In working with several customers and from our past testing Adrian and I have determined many different means of improving performance for SolidWorks. This year we structured our testing a little differently so we could quantify the improvement and determine what improvement is worth the investment.

Our testing was different this year in that we were given a large assembly from Racine Railroad that we are now able to show. We also moved away from our benchmark macro to a custom built API that runs the model through many aspects of SolidWorks measuring our performance in a manner that has never before been done. In our tests we isolate individual changes in our hardware and modeling environment and measure the time difference of running the API against a Typical, Practical, and Optimal system. This allowed 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 realize that we cannot determine what other environments may hold, thus 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 hardware and modeling performance we ran our model through a custom SolidWorks API created by Bob Hanson (CATI/InFlow) 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 4920 Extreme 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:

• 1 core to 6 cores
• 3.42GHz to 4.43GHz processor speeds
• 2GB to 32GB of RAM
• 5 different Nvidia graphics cards
• 5 different hard drive types

Model

Our model was given to us this year by Racine Railroad Products and was the ideal assembly to use for performance testing. It is a combination over 10,000 components with many layers of subassemblies that gave us the flexibility to perform all of our testing. The model, as seen below, is their Safelok Applicator & Remover, A.K.A. SAR Machine. The machine both applies or removes the Safelok clip used mostly in concrete railroad tie scenarios; although there are wood tie applications as well.

The stats for this assembly are:

• 10559 total components
• 9693 parts
• 866 sub-assemblies
• 1292 top level mates
• 15093 bodies

In total the dataset takes up 1.92GB of disk space and has 4854 files.

Baseline or Typical Machine

For our baseline test we chose to run the API in a manner that we felt was consistent with typical environments that we see with customers and this will be referred to as our Typical Machine in all of our testing.

The core aspects (These never change)

• SolidWorks 2013 SP0
• WIN7 64bit OS

Hardware

• 1 - i7 processor with 2 cores @ 3.4GHz
• 8GB RAM
• OS and assembly storage on the same 7200RPM hard drive

Configuration

• SolidWorks options set to defaults
• Files are stored locally
• Several Add-Ins are turned on
• Operating system visual settings are set to default

Modeling methods

• Image quality set optimally
• High level of detail in some components
• Large number of top level mates
• Assembly is fully resolved

With our environment configured as above our benchmark ran in 4:43:44. Most of the comparisons that follow in our blog articles will be compared to this Typical machine.

In the subsequent articles in this series we are going to explore each test that we did. We will put the tests in no particular order with the exception of we will be posting all of our hardware tests followed by modeling tests. We will finish with 2 optimal configurations to see what the effect can be when you combine all of the 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 Free SolidWorks from Performance Constraints and links to each with their release date are listed below:

• FSWPC-13-#1 Introduction (3/19/13)
• FSWPC-13-#2 RAM (3/21/13)
• FSWPC-13-#3 Processor Cores (3/26/13)
• FSWPC-13-#4 Processor Cores for Simulation and PhotoView360 (3/28/13)
• FSWPC-13-#5 Processor Clock Speed (4/2/13)
• FSWPC-13-#6 Hard Drives (4/4/13)
• FSWPC-13-#7a Graphics Cards-SolidWorks Functionality (4/9/13)
• FSWPC-13-#7b Graphics Cards-Hardware Comparison (4/11/13)
• FSWPC-13-#7c Graphics Cards-Model Complexity (4/16/13)
• FSWPC-13-#8 Files stored in an older version (4/18/13)
• FSWPC-13-#9 OS Visual and User Settings (4/23/13)
• FSWPC-13-#10 SolidWorks Options (4/25/13)
• FSWPC-13-#11 SolidWorks Image Quality (4/30/13)
• FSWPC-13-#12 SolidWorks RealView Graphics (5/2/13)
• FSWPC-13-#13 SolidWorks  Level of Detail (5/7/13)
• FSWPC-13-#14 SolidWorks Mates and Flexible Subassemblies (5/9/13)
• FSWPC-13-#15 SolidWorks Defeature (5/14/13)
• FSWPC-13-#16 SolidWorks Envelope (5/16/13)
• FSWPC-13-#17 SolidWorks Large Design Review (5/21/13)
• FSWPC-13-#18 SolidWorks SpeedPak (5/23/13)
• FSWPC-13-#19 SolidWorks Save as Part (5/28/13)
• FSWPC-13-#20 SolidWorks Large Assembly Mode (5/30/13)
• FSWPC-13-#21 Optimal Configuration and Conclusion (6/4/13)

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

Want to try out SolidWorks? You can request a free SolidWorks trial on our website.

Want to see how SolidWorks can help you win new business and get to market faster? Request a  SolidWorks demo today.

SolidWorks Dismissed Warning and Error Messages

One call that we get on a regular basis on the support line is a question of "I used to get this warning message when I did.... and now thing are not happening the way they did before--why?" More often than not we find the answer in the SolidWorks System Options in the Messages/Errors/Warnings, as this is where dismissed error messages go when we check the box on a dialog that say "Don't Show Again." While there are cases where this is a good thing more often than not we forget that we dismissed the message and find ourselves trying to find it again.

It is important to know what the messages mean and what the consequence is when we check the box for Don't show again. For example warning below come up when we open an assembly and SolidWorks cannot find a part or assembly file in the location it was once in or if the name changed. If we choose the option of Suppress and Don't show again then for all other files we open that cannot find a referenced file then they will automatically be suppressed.

There are also other things that can happen when we check the option for Don't show again. For example if we set an option to Prompt and then when we are prompted and check the Don't show again box the System Option will change according what we set when we are prompted.

The last messages to watch out for are the ones that apply to a specific assembly or session of SolidWorks meaning that on the next file you open or the next time you close and restart SolidWorks you will be prompted once again for the same thing we were once before.

A good rule is to set yourself a reminder to go in once a month and check your system options to make sure that there is nothing that has been dismissed and that all of your settings are set to where you want them to be.

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

Be sure to check out the SolidWorks Support FAQ every month for more answers to common questions--directly from the SolidWorks support team.

Customizing SolidWorks Flyout Toolbars

The other day while watching a video on some of the new SolidWorks 2013 features, I noticed that one of the Flyout Toolbars for Annotations had a command for Cosmetic Threads that I did not have in my Flyouts, so I set about going to find out how to make the same change. I looked in all of the standard places first, Help, Knowledge Base, etc. and found no real straight forward answer. So I resorted to my other bag of tricks, below is what I found and I think I will add this to my other collection of Redneck Workarounds.

So here is what we started with first we Customize the S key to add the Annotation Flyout Toolbar.

We can see that when we look at the Annotations Flyout that there is no Cosmetic Thread.

To get our Cosmetic Thread we will again go back to Customize, show the Annotation toolbar and add the Cosmetic Thread to the toolbar.

 Now we go back to our S key and you will see that we now have our Cosmetic Thread.

Note the location in the Flyout and it is the same location that we dropped the command into the toolbar in the earlier Customize.

We have tested this with several other Flyout Toolbars and we were able to add and or reorder buttons to several other toolbars with the same steps listed above.

Good Luck and I hope this helps in customizing SolidWorks. You can learn more about SolidWorks 2013 on the website (no registration required).

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

Increasing Performance in SolidWorks Patterns

I had a customer send me a file recently because they were having issues with the performance of their part file that had several pattern features in it. When you look at the file from the surface you do not see anything out of the ordinary but our Feature Statistics they tell a different story of a 108 second rebuild time and Linear Pattern8 & 9 taking a majority of that 108 seconds. Also if you try to edit one of these patterns you are met with a long wait time to Edit Feature or to check OK even if no changes have been made to the feature.

So the questions is what can we do to decrease the edit and rebuild time of these features. We can start with the Geometry Pattern option in each of the pattern features. The Geometry Pattern option allows SolidWorks to pattern features while not solving the end condition of those patterned features. This option was not applicable for this part so there was no benefit in using this option for our part.

Our next option is to look at the part in a different way and to do that we need to look at each group of features that needs to be patterned as its own solid body. So with some simple changes to uncheck the Merge Result option on some features and to be selective as to which bodies merge with each other in other features we are able to set out file up so that we can pattern Bodies vs. Features.

  
You can see the results below as we deleted the 2 problem patterns and replaced them with pattern features that utilized bodies and not features. This cut our rebuild time from 108 seconds to 12 seconds.

 

The only item we had to add after the patterns was a Combine of all the solid bodies and if you are going to do any modifications to the patterns you can easily use the Roll Back Bar to go above the combine.

Note: If we had not added the Combine feature our rebuild time would on been .75 seconds.

Enjoy

Josh Altergott

CATI Support Manager

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

SolidWorks' Hidden Document Properties

Most all of us who use SolidWorks know that for each document whether it is a Part, Assembly or Drawing that we can modify the Document Properties for each of these files. In the Document Properties we can change items such as the Units, Drafting Standard, Font Size and a laundry list of other items. If we want to go a step further and have the same settings for each new file we create then we can change the settings for a new file and save that out as a template.

Knowing all of this the question becomes; how do I change the settings for items that are not in the Document Properties such as my default bend radius of a sheet metal part or a sketch fillet or the standard length of my first extrude feature?

The answer is a lot simpler than most would think and all we need to use is a function that a lot of users do not notice or take for granted and that is SolidWorks remembers your last input for many items.

So for our example today I am going to start a simple sheet metal part and using the Base Flange Feature we can see what the defaults are.

I then change the values to my "standard" and I changed almost all of the values to demonstrate what can and what cannot be changed for our template.

Next I set a material for my part and I delete all items from the Feature Tree and save the file as a Part Template.

Now the next time I create a new part, I use my new template. You can see that our parts Material, Thickness, Bend Radius as well as our Bend Allowance all carried over. While our Extrusion Length and Custom Auto Relief did not. There are lots of other hidden document properties out there that can be applied to your templates and all of them will help you in speeding up the design process.

 

For you as users I ask that you post all of the other hidden document properties as you find them as comments to this article for others to use as well.

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

The Importance of Material Properties in Analysis with SolidWorks Simulation

Have you ever considered the importance of Material Properties to your Finite Element solution? What about the accuracy of the data provided by material vendors? As Designers and Engineers, we are used to dealing with tolerances. We usually provide default tolerances on our drawing title block. We may add tolerances to some of the model dimensions. For the really bold and daring – or wise and experienced – you might even add Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing to your designs. Do you ever see tolerances on material property data sheets? In my experience, the answer is somewhere between rarely and never, with never in the lead.

Let’s consider a material from the Simulation material database. Alloy Steel has the following properties (numbers rounded):
Young’s Modulus – 30 x 10^6 psi; Poisson’s Ratio – 0.28; Mass Density – 0.278 lb / in^3; Yield Strength – 90 ksi

What will happen to the Finite Element solution if one material property varies? I’m going to start with a simple model in tension and apply Alloy Steel as the material using the default property values. Then I will change Poisson’s Ratio and re-run the study several times in order to compare the displacement and stress results. Recall that Poisson’s Ratio is a measure of the lateral strain to longitudinal strain for a material, or E_lat / E_long (pretend the E’s are Greek epsilon’s). Poisson’s Ratio is relevant to the linear elastic portion of the stress-strain curve and is unitless. One thing to note, if you do not define Poisson’s Ratio for a material, Simulation will assume that Poisson’s Ratio is equal to zero. There is a pop-up warning, too, just in case you forget to enter a value. Note that if you do not have Poisson’s Ratio for a material, 0.3 is a good initial estimate. But definitely exercise all of your options to find out the correct value for your design materials.

For a ½” square bar, 4” long, I have fixed one end and applied a 10ksi force at the opposite end, putting the bar in tension. After running the analysis with default material properties, I set a baseline with Trend Tracker. After creating several custom Alloy Steel materials, varying Poisson’s Ratio from 0.0 to 0.5, I re-run the analysis with each custom material. Trend Tracker will record the details for maximum displacement and stress in the model.

As you can see from the chart, the Von Mises Stress results vary approximately 16 ksi and the displacement results vary 0.00006 inches. As percentages, this is a 28% variation in stress and a 1.2% variation in displacement. I don’t think most of us would be concerned with 1.2% variation in our models, but 28% is an entirely different matter! I did, however, choose the model with this purpose in mind. The high stresses are at the fixed end at the sharp corner – something most Engineers would avoid in their designs. Now that a 28% variation has your attention, let’s look at a more practical model.

This is a simple bracket, a modification of a part in the SolidWorks Essentials manual. I’ve applied a fixed boundary condition to the bolt holes in the base and a normal force to the counter bore face. I’ve repeated the rest of the analysis, just like the square tensile bar, including using Trend Tracker and varying Poisson’s ration from 0 to 0.5.

For this “practical” model, the Von Mises Stress results vary approximately 4,300 psi and the displacement results vary 0.0006 inches. The percent variation in this model is 5.8% for stress and 6.6% for displacement. If you’re designing for a large Factor of Safety, less than 6% variation in your stress results is not significant. Using SolidWorks Simulation, however, most of us are designing for the lowest acceptable Factor of Safety in order to save the maximum amount of money possible on material costs. In this scenario, a 6% variation can be significant!

So the next time you’re analyzing that awesome design, consider reviewing the sensitivity of your analysis by varying a material property or two. Now you’re armed with powerful information you can share in your next design review. Material property variations from your vendors are no longer an issue! Now go make your products better with SolidWorks Simulation!

***

Bill Reuss is a CAE Specialist at 3DVision Technologies, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations across Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.  He is a regular contributor to 3DVision Technologies' Blog where you will find new ideas to improve your productivity with SolidWorks Simulation.

SolidWorks Indent: One Tool with Unlimited Uses

One of the SolidWorks tools that I think gets overlooked for the unlimited number of possible uses is the Indent feature. Below are 3 different examples of how I have found that the tool can be used on an everyday basis to help speed up what could take hours of modeling otherwise.

Packaging

Taking a product that you have designed or a customer part and creating a blister pack for that part is something that can be frustrating if you are trying to use tools such as Offset Surface and making sure that you have selected every single face only to find that you missed something along the way or even worse when a change to the model happens and what should be a 5 min fix can take you half the day to create the new package.

For this example we:

1. Took an Assembly and saved it as a Part file, then inserted it into a new Part file.

2. Added the necessary features to simplify the overall shape and make sure there were no under cuts or negative draft.

3. Next we added a Planar Surface that matched the size of the package we wanted to create.

4. Indent was used to "wrap" the surface around our part, note you can add a clearance around the part if needed.

5. Our last step was to add a thickness to our surface.

Note: Move Copy Body was used to move the parts away from each other for illustration purposes.

Fitting parts to parts

For this example we created our housing based upon purchased PCB which we inserted as a Part into our Housing Part and to create an exact fit for our PCB we extruded several mounting bosses up through our PCB. We then use the Indent tool with the Cut option turned on to remove the material where the Housing and PCB "interfere". 

 
Indent Faces have been colored in yellow for illustration purposes.

Tooling Fixtures and Assembly Fixtures

Similar to our first example we inserted a Part into a Part and added the necessary features for clearance and proper fit into our tooling block. We then built our tooling block and used the Indent feature once again using the Cut option to remove material from our tooling block. Lastly we finished up by adding some holes for screws and a slot for the flash drives to be easily removed from the tool.

    Indent Faces have been colored in yellow for illustration purposes.

For a copy of all files used for this article, please download the attached file.

Download Indent_Example_Files_4-18-12

Thanks for reading,

Josh Altergott, Support Manager

Computer Aided Technology

***

Josh Altergott is Support Manager at Computer Aided Technology, a SolidWorks Value Added Reseller with locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. He is a regular contributor to the CATI Tech Notes blog.

Green Design Contest in Full Swing

Thanks to all those of you who have participated in our Green Design Contest so far! I'm dying to preview your entries, but I'm going to wait until the formal judging starts on July 1st to check them all out at once.

And just a reminder of some of the prizes you could win...

   

I want to respond to a few general questions that have come up.

 

Do I have to be the primary account holder of my SolidWorks license?

No, not at all. We're just asking for an "authorized SolidWorks license" to verify that you have a real license and to confirm that your license is appropriate for the category you've entered (Commercial or Educational).  

Can we enter as a team?

Each person should enter her or his own design. Else, how else would we know whom to give the prizes to?? Feel free to work together, of course, as long as each person enters on their own.

Can I add padding to the chair? It looks awfully uncomfortable.

Our "client", Sir Richard Doylson, wants the chair made from a single material, so make it as comfortable as you can with that constraint. They're designed to sit in for about 20 minutes as you wait for a plane, remember, not sit for a full day working in an office. And I'm sure just about any design would be more comfortable than the industrial steel plate that we gave you in the starter model.

I want to make this out of <insert your favorite Super Sustainable Material here>, but I can't find that in the standard SolidWorks material database.

You have to have the correct material properties to run Sustainability and Simulation analyses. For SimulationXpress, that means having the appropriate mechanical properties, whether that's a standard or custom material; for SustainabilityXpress, that means setting or linking to a standard SolidWorks material's LCA data.

If you're using SolidWorks 2011, you can run the simulation with a custom material (as long as you provide the mechanical properties), and then link this custom material to an appropriate standard material's Sustainability data. For example, if you want to use everyone's favorite woody perennial evergreen grass in your design, you can create a custom material called "Bamboo", find the properties online to run SimulationXpress, and then link its Sustainability data to an appropriate material, such as another wood to run SustainabilityXpress (right-click on the Material, "Edit Material", then in the Sustainability field, click "Select..." and choose the wood).

If you are using SolidWorks 2010, you can run the simulation using your custom material, and then run Sustainability using an appropriately-similar standard material. In either case, be sure to explain what you did and why in your 250-word summary.

Can I use recycled materials?

SolidWorks Sustainability currently includes the typical trade mix of recycled content in each material (where such data is available), but you can't adjust this amount higher. So if you'd like to indicate a higher recycled percentage or a novel source for your material, just describe this in the 250-word description that you'll submit. Want to be able to adjust this recycled content value in Sustainability in your real designs? Submit an enhancement request, and if we hear that from enough people, we'll start working on it!

Do I have to start with your starter model?

No, of course not. That's just intended to spark your imagination to think, "man, I could do way better than this." Feel free to start your own model from scratch, and submit this new design as long as it meets the criteria.

Can I enter more than one design?

Of course, just submit a separate entry for each.

What sort of entries do you have so far?

Currently it's mostly Commercial entrants, with a few Resellers sprinkled in. About half of the submissions are from the US, with the remainder coming from countries such as India, Austria and the Philippines. So far we have received very few student entries... students, where are you?! We want to invite two of you to show off your green designs at SolidWorks World 2012!

How long do I have again?

Until June 30th. Just a few more weeks...

Feel free to ask any more questions here, and I'll answer as best I can. Good luck everyone, and I look forward to seeing your innovative green design ideas!

What do you want to see in future versions of SolidWorks? It's time to vote!

Every year we let our customers vote on what they want to see in future versions of SolidWorks software, and then announce the top-ten most requested things at SolidWorks World. Last year we rolled out a new brainstorm tool to help with the voting, and we're bringing it back again this year.

So if you have a SolidWorks customer portal account, just click on this link here to get started. You can submit ideas and vote others up or down. And as always, the winners will be announced on Wednesday at SolidWorks World 2010 in Anaheim.