Reduce Product Weight with SOLIDWORKS Simulation Optimization

Reducing product weight and improving performance are key goals in most design projects to minimize costs and differentiate your products. SOLIDWORKS design optimization allows you to quickly size your design to meet performance needs without using excessive amounts of material.

Let’s take a look at this cantilevered platform below. In this example, our goal is to find the optimum beam sizes to minimize weight, yet not deflect excessively.

SOLIDWORKS Simulation allows you to vary design aspects such as the geometry, as well as the simulation parameters, to quickly evaluate different variations that still meet your design goals. While optimizing for different aspects such as weight, you can use sensors to monitor and ensure performance goals, such as deflection or factor of safety, are met.

As seen below, the optimum result is determined after evaluating the performance of all the bounding variations.

The results are very easy to interact with and understand. The optimum simulation configuration is highlighted in green. Any iteration that did not meet the performance goals is highlighted in red.

The computed goals and performance requirements are summarized at the bottom of the table, so that you can clearly understand the effects of each iteration.

You can even review the simulation results for any of the design iterations to see changes in the response of the structure. Design optimization in SOLIDWORKS Simulation takes the leg work out of trying to minimize product weight and shows you how to quickly find the best design to meet your needs.

As you can see, the SOLIDWORKS Simulation optimization tool gives you real time data to help you find the optimum weight settings for a design, minimizing production costs without sacrificing quality.

Interested in learning more? Learn how new functionality in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2017 brings improved usability and flexible access to users. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the Alignex Blog to stay up to date on the world of SOLIDWORKS.

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Alignex, Inc.

Alignex, Inc. is the premier provider of SOLIDWORKS software and partner products to the mechanical engineering industry in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Illinois. With more than 25 years of technical experience, Alignex offers consulting services, training and support for SOLIDWORKS as well as support for partner products. For more information, visit alignex.com.