Is RoHS compliance important to your company?

I was reading a recent article in Machine Design titled ‘Do your CAD designs comply with RoHS?’.

The article begins:
‘Beginning July 1, 2006, the Restriction of use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive mandates certain hazardous substances be significantly reduced in all electrical and electronic equipment destined for the European Union.
One challenge facing designers and product-development groups is the job of identifying compliant and noncompliant CAD parts and assemblies. …’

I thought about how the use of the SolidWorks material library combined with the Design Checker could help. (Design Checker was introduced as a new add-in in 2006 to SolidWorks Office Professional and Premium)

The process is easy:
use the material library to assign material to a part
use the Design Checker and Build Check, select the part icon then select material
select all the RoHS complaint materials from the list
Save the check to a common area with a meaningful name (like RoHS-Compliant)
When you are ready to check a design, run the design check to ensure that the material is complaint.
I encourage you to take a further look at the new Design Checker add-in which was recently featured in the latest issue of SolidWorks Express.