The SolidWorks Blog

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 3 General Session Video #sww12

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 3 General Session Update #sww12

Today is the last day of SolidWorks World 2012, and it's been great so far. Everyone had a great time at last night's block party. Today kicked off with Mark Schneider announcing the winners of this year's Model Mania contest. Congratulations to Neil Custard of SolidWorksTips.com for winning the user division, and to Mike Spens of GoEngineer for winning the reseller division.

That led straight into What's New for SolidWorks 2013. This year the team came up with a sort of "Back to the Future" theme, featuring SolidWorks founder Jon Hirschtick. Some of the enhancements that got the most enthusiastic response were previous release interoperability, variable pattern instances and the ability to insert multiple parts. Be on the lookout for these when SolidWorks 2013 goes into beta later this summer.

We then announced this year's top-ten list, which was brought to us by students from Assabet Valley Technical High School, and reads like this:

1. Start using more CPU cores

2. Mass properties should include the option to automatically put a point at the center of gravity

3. Don't delete your children, dangle them instead

4. Address "shaded with edges bleed through" issue

5. Reduce the bounding box of drawing views to visible components only

6. Ability to control a plane's front & back side orientation

7. Dimensions should stay where you place them

8. Escape key should immediately return control of the interface

9. Add "lock rotation" option to cylindrical mates

10. Add a "thread creation wizard"

Marie Planchard then introduced us to French customer Aldebaran Robotics, which is doing some amazing work, including using robots for therapeutic purposes. They talked about the evolution of Aldebaran Robotics, the SolidWorks skill sets of the company’s designers and how founder Bruno Maisonnier forged his professional path through technology and education.

Bruno also detailed how robotics can perform therapy for the disabled in a way that humans can’t. The secret is the way that robots interact and respond to patient needs and communication—a true illustration of the influence of technology.

And before closing out the day, Bertrand Sicot returned to announce the date and location of next year's SolidWorks World, which will be in Orlando, Florida from January 20 – 23, 2013.

That's it for this year. Thanks for following along, and check back in later for the video.

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 2 General Session Video #sww12

As promised, here's footage from today's session.

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 2 General Session Update #sww12

We kicked the day off with a recap of Monday night's final CSWP party on the USS Midway, followed by Richard Doyle handing out awards for the SolidWorks User Group Network.

According to Richard, 2011 was another really good year for SolidWorks User Groups with another 21 local chapters joining the network.  SolidWorks User Groups are now in 44 U.S states, 5 Canadian provinces, and 27 other countries around the world.  From Los Angeles California to Tangerang City Indonesia, the SolidWorks User Group Network extends to all corners of the world.

The award for the User Group of the Year went to the New Hampshire SolidWorks User Group, managed by Cindy Berend, John Blutt and Hoang Bao.

Rachel York of the Tech Valley SolidWorks User Group won the User Group Leader of the Year award.

And SolidWorks forum MVP Charles Culp won the Michelle Pillers SWUGN Community Award for achievement in the SolidWorks community above and beyond the call of duty. Congratulations to all of the winners.

We then had two special guests join us on stage. First, the Howe brothers, Mike and Geoff, (of Black Ops Brothers fame) came up and told the story of how they started their design careers at eight years old: with a four-foot-tall, handcrafted cabin in their backyard, built to top their friends’ forts. And this began their design philosophy of making everything they build bigger and badder, culminating in the Ripsaw. Ripsaw is a developmental light tank that can hit 60 mph in four seconds, and the brothers described design challenges resulting from the weight, size and speed of the vehicle, which they took on one by one until the design was perfected.

Howe & Howe’s latest project, a hydraulic arm designed for firefighters, was designed and rendered in SolidWorks in a single day. The project went from idea to fabrication in just nine days, proving that with the right approach, design can move incredibly quickly.

The key takeaways from the Howe brothers: solve problems one at a time and remember that design is about opportunity.

Next Ben Kaufman from Quirky gave us all a lesson in collaborative design. Ben pointed out that invention is a trait inherent to all people—even a reflex—rather than a learned skill, and one that we all need to nurture.  Quirky has chosen to nurture it through collaboration, and invites people to submit ideas for community feedback. Each week, two inventors are crowned to bring their product to fruition, and Quirky also introduces two new products to the market each week. This methodical, sustainable approach to building a pipeline of consumer products has paid off for Quirky, the inventors it supports and the members of the Quirky community, through Quirky’s unique business model.

Ben’s bottom line is that invention should be accessible, and collaboration is changing the face of design forever. Since community is such an important part of SolidWorks and the design process, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

That's it for today. Check back later for footage.

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 1 General Session Video #sww12

Earlier today, I promised you general session video. So here it is!

SolidWorks World 2012 - Day 1 General Session Update #sww12

The first general session of SolidWorks World 2012 ended just a little while ago, and there’s a lot to talk about. We should have some video for you a little later this afternoon, but for now, here’s a quick recap of what went on here in San Diego this morning.

CEO Bertrand Sicot was introduced by a Nao robot from Aldebaran, and started out talking about the size of the SolidWorks community, which has reached 1.7 million members. To put that into perspective, if all of those users formed a new city, it would be the 5^th largest in U.S.—larger than Philadelphia. If all 1.7M users formed a new country, it would rank #150 in size out of 235 countries existing today. That’s a lot of people.

Bertrand went on to talk about how everyone in the SolidWorks community is united by the concept of design, with product design being a constant in all aspects f our lives. He used Dan Herzberg as an example. If you don’t know Dan, he learned SolidWorks at WPI, interned at SolidWorks in 2009, and is now professional engineer and SolidWorks user group leader in Virginia.

Last year, Dan had surgery to replace a defective valve in his heart. Before the surgery, Dan learned that the valve being implanted in his body was made by On-X Life Technologies, a new SolidWorks customer. Most people with artificial heart valves spend the rest of their lives taking blood thinning medication. But the team at On-X has paid a lot of attention to the way the blood flows, and they believe their unique design will reduce or completely eliminate the need for blood thinners in the near future. Today marks six months since Dan’s surgery, and he joined us in the audience.This is an amazing example of one user’s life being saved by another user’s design.

Shortly after, the first guest of the day came out to talk—Mike Rowe from Discovery’s Dirty Jobs. Mike talked about the growing skills gap in the US, and focused heavily on the need for education in trades. Stay tuned for a special interview with Mike later today.

Bertrand came back to talk about the role if innovation at SolidWorks, highlighting the R&D team and the ways that they remain focused on SolidWorks’ core principle of focusing on the end user. He also announced that we recently reached a new milestone of 50,000 Certified SolidWorks Associates, Professionals and Experts.

We were also joined by Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles, as well as Dr. Maia Hoeberechts from NEPTUNE Canada. NEPTUNE is the world’s first underwater observatory network.  It includes more than 130 instruments and 400 sensors in the northern Pacific, linked by over 500 miles of cable—all connected to the Internet and constantly collecting data. This data is available freely to a community of researchers around the world, twenty-four hours a day. The public can also take part and make discoveries, and this combination of professional and hobbyist research is leading to new insights about the ways in which our oceans work.

The session ended with a keynote presentation from Tony Fadell, considered by some to be “the father of the iPod.” Tony talked about the early days of designing the iPod and arguments with Steve Jobs over Windows compatibilty, and also focused heavily on the challenges of managing a global 100-person start-up. He also talked about the process of founding his new company, Nest, and how they went about designing and selling the world's first learning thermostat.

Well, that’s it for today. Check back later for the Mike Rowe interview and session video. See you tomorrow!

SolidWorks in 2012 – The CEO’s perspective

The first general session of SolidWorks World 2012 just ended a little while ago, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts with those of you who could not attend.

The SolidWorks community has grown a lot in the past year. In 2011 we added 15,939 new customers & 250,000+ new users, for a total of 1.7 million. To put that in perspective, if all 1.7 million SolidWorks users formed a new city, it would be the fifth largest in the United States–larger than Philadelphia. And by SolidWorks World 2013, I expect that number will be at (or above) 2 million.

I also learned recently that more than 50,000 of you have been certified through our CSWA, CSWP and CSWE programs. This is an amazing achievement, and it goes to show that SolidWorks skills are valued by employers throughout the world. So if you are using SolidWorks today, you are in good company.

SolidWorks was founded on a very simple idea—to put the power of 3D solid modeling on every engineer’s desktop. From the very first days of SolidWorks, we have focused on you, our customers. And eighteen years later, we’re still as focused on the customer experience as we were then. We have shown the world that we can build a successful business while still treating our employees, customers, resellers, and partners with dignity and respect. But we know that our products are not perfect. They can always be better. We can always be better.

Last September, we announced the 20^th release of SolidWorks with our 2012 update. This release is a little bit unique, because we really focused on improving the core business processes that affect you on a daily basis. For example, SolidWorks 2012 marks the first time you can calculate and compare material costs early in the design process, directly in the software. This new Design Costing feature is already helping companies hit their manufacturing cost targets by providing automatic, real-time manufacturing cost estimates during the initial design phase. Some of you are already reporting that you can now create more accurate quotes as much as 80% faster than you did before.

We also introduced something we call Large Design Review, which lets you review your designs quickly and easily, no matter how big they are. And we added a lot of updates we call delighters, which are little changes that often have big impacts. These include an improved equation editor, as well as an easier way to place balloons in your drawings.

At SolidWorks, we’re committed to providing you with the tools you need to design products that change the world, and help you be more successful while you do it. We also remain committed to our core design principles. We want to help you solve complicated engineering problems easily, without introducing any unnecessary complications. It’s our hallmark – we call it making things “SolidWorks simple.”

As many of you know, the R&D team is hard at work building a new 21^st century CAD platform. It’s my responsibility as CEO to ensure we have a strategy for taking advantage of new trends, technologies and processing power that will benefit you. You’ve probably heard us say that over 90% of the new features in every version of SolidWorks are the direct result of customer requests, and that remains true.

So on behalf of the entire SolidWorks team, I would like to thank all of you for being a part of the SolidWorks community. Our connection to the community is what keeps us excited. It’s what fires the passion we all feel when we come to work every day. And it’s also what keeps us grounded, making sure we’re always asking “are we doing the right things for our users?” Thank you again.

You Can’t Prototype This: The Power of Mechatronic Design

Yesterday I took the family to the airport for their semiannual flight back to the UK to visit friends and family.  And as I watched the luggage go down the conveyor belt I started to wonder what went on behind those black plastic doors.  Now we’ve all heard of stories where you fly to Madrid but your luggage ends up in Beijing, but have you ever thought of what happens in such an automated system?  From a systems point of view, it’s just one giant mechatronic sorting machine, but from a design point of view it’s a machine that you cannot prototype.  It’s a one-off--it’s large and expensive, and any issues you have with it could well only turn up at the time of installation.

If you have a one-off design the importance and impact of design analysis and verification becomes even greater.  The cost of redesign is huge at the time of installation, but the delay in putting your product into service can also have a dramatic impact on cost.  So thinking back to my baggage sorting machine at the airport, how would I design and test this inside SolidWorks?  Well as I said the sorting machine is a mechatronic design where the mechanical, control and electrical aspects of design are closely coupled.  If one aspect of the mechatronic design doesn’t work then the machine fails, you need to test each aspect of the design before you build. 

Let’s consider the small conveyor system below.  A product, in this case a pallet with two engine cylinder blocks, moves down one conveyor and then is lifted onto the second shorter conveyor (the image showing the end of the simulation).  We can build this simple behavior with Event Based Motion (the lower part of the image).  In event based motion analysis, sensors trigger action in the same way that a light beam or micro switch sensor would in the real world, allowing the designer to try different sensor locations. Once the sensor locations are set routing can then be used to layout the cable runs thoughout the conveyor.

 

But what about the controls design?  Well, as a result of the event based approach, one of the outputs is a Gant chart of the event interactions (bottom right of the image).  This is the first part of the controls design, but you can go so much further by using either Motion Analyzer from Rockwell Automation or LabView from National Instruments.  These partner products allow you to control your machine using virtual controls software so you can create a true virtual prototype of your machine.

Just as important as the motion verification is the stress analysis--you want to make sure that your machine can withstand the operational loads.  So with the event based motion analysis calculated, you can transfer the motion loads to structural simulation and evaluate stresses and displacements to ensure that there is an adequate factor of safety. If the factor of safety is too high, then parts can be redesigned, the motion analysis re-run and the stresses re-calculated.  SolidWorks Simulation can then go one step further and calculate the expected service life of the components, helping the design team set the correct maintenance schedule.

With SolidWorks and its partners a true mechatronic design approach is possible.  The three aspects of modern machine design, mechanical, electrical and controls, are brought together inside of SolidWorks allowing a holistic approach to machine design.  When you cannot prototype, developing a true lifelike virtual design is central to minimizing the risk of design.  Simulation gives the designer information to make better design decisions, and ultimately better products.

The Hot Rod Baby Buggy is finished--watch the final episode today.

I know a lot of you have been following the latest project from Jeremy Luchini and the Let's Go Design team. You'll all be excited to know that the baby buggy is finally finished, and the final episode is now available. Rather than give away any surprises, I suggest you just click through and watch yourself. Congrats to Jeremy and the team!

Ultimate Igloos and Cool Engineering

Last year, a former colleague at SolidWorks built himself an igloo, and my children deemed it ‘totally awesome’ and demanded one. I never managed to finish that particular project, but the thought of building an igloo has never really gone away, and with the cold weather we are (finally) having in New England right now, it’s got me thinking about it again.  More specifically as I have two small children, it’s got me thinking of igloo structural safety.  The last thing I want is an igloo I build collapsing on the neighborhood kids.  So can SolidWorks help me design a safe igloo??

The classic igloo is a tessellated dome created from packed snow blocks, and it stays up because its internal forces are in balance with the external loads.  If we keep things simple and ignore any wind loading, the only load is the snow blocks self-weight and the frictional force between the block resisting the blocks wanting to push apart and collapse the dome.

The geometry, with its 4 meter diameter and 20cm wall thickness, is relatively simple to analyze. But because friction plays such a big part in keeping the structure together, this will have to be a non-linear analysis.  Capturing the material behavior of snow blocks is a bigger challenge, and a trawl of the Internet suggests that using a either Drucker Prager material model, or if the strain rates are low, a simple brittle failure model.  As the igloo loading is static, we can use the simpler material model of a with the yield point at the stress at which dry packed snow will fail. 

As I first want to get a safe dome design, I am not considering the entrance to the igloo initially.  This means I can use the SolidWorks Simulation 2D simplification tool and run this problem as an axisymmetric analysis.  The advantage of 2D simplification is that the problem solves very quickly with no loss of accuracy.

 

The initial results look promising, but there is a small region of possible failure between the first two blocks of the wall, so we need a design change.  We need thicker walls, but if we uniformly increased the wall thickness, there would be greater weight bearing down, giving rise to greater load.  So let’s consider a new design with a tapered wall thickness. A nice feature of 2D simplification is that the results can be viewed in 3D which makes it easy to explain the results

 

The new design has a maximum stress well below the snow block failure stress.  Our basic dome structure is ‘safe,’ so let’s consider the entrance.  Adding the entrance invalidates the assumptions behind the 2d simplification, so a 3D analysis has to be carried out using symmetry to reduce the computational load.  The run time increases, reminding me how useful 2D simplification is for a lot of problems, but eventually we get our solution.  Now there are two ‘hot spots’ where the stress looks to be too high, but I am not overly concerned about then because they occur at sharp intersections and they can easily be smoothed out by a judicious addition of some extra snow.

I now have a safe igloo design--all I need is the snow to build it.