Archive for November, 2007 « SolidWorks Reseller Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana

Archive for November, 2007

COSMOSWorks Post-Processing Options – Part I

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Design Check Plot

The Design Check plot is a very useful tool for verifying the integrity of your design. COSMOSWorks provides a simple three step wizard for setting up a design check plot. The wizard interface guides the user through multiple options. Some of the available options are:

– Select entire assembly or specific components / bodies for FOS estimation

– Multiple failure criteria to select from including:

o Max von Mises Stress
o Max Shear Stress (Tresca)
o Mohr-Coulomb Stress
o Max Normal Stress

Search “Design Check” in COSMOS help for a complete description of each failure criterion and when each should be used.

– Multiple stress units. (The user can pick between N/m², psi, kgf/cm², and N/mm² (MPa))

- Selection of property used to define stress limit including:

o Yield strength
o Ultimate strength
o User defined value

- Ability to enter stress limit multiplication factor. (Similar to a safety factor, this will multiply the stress values by this user specified value before calculating the design check results.)

There are also multiple result options available:

- Factor of safety distribution plot
- Non-dimensional stress distribution plot
- Areas below factor of safety plot

The factor of safety distribution plot is the standard factor of safety plot that everyone is accustomed to. The model is color coded based on the factor of safety at various locations. The non-dimensional stress distribution plot is basically the inverse of the factor of safety plot. For example, if the max von Mises criterion is used, the non-dimensional stress is the von Mises stress at a specific location divided by the yield strength of the material. If you enter a multiplication factor in Step 2 this factor will be applied to the stress before calculating the non-dimensional stress. The last option allows the user to specify a factor of safety. The plot will display all areas below the specified factor of safety in red.

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff
CAE Support Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in COSMOSWorks, Tips & Tricks, Training | No Comments »

Six Steps to Analysis

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Anyone who has taken Vikram’s COSMOS Designer training class knows that he talks about the six steps to analysis. This entry is a quick review of the six steps to setting up an analysis in COSMOS.

The six steps are:

Study Definition
Material Definition
Loads / Restraints
Meshing
Run Analysis
Post-processing

I will summarize these steps and point out some common stumbling blocks of each step.

Study Definition

Study definition is a very important step to analysis that is often overlooked. Taking the time to understand the system before attempting to set up the analysis can save time and frustration in the long run. Make a list of the loads that should be applied to the model. Understand what restrains every degree of freedom. If the model is an assembly, understand how components interact. Identify the model components that you expect to make contact. Please click here for more information regarding identifying loads.

This is also a good time to determine if the model can be simplified. Are there any unnecessary components in the model? Are there any features that can be removed / suppressed to make the model simpler? There are numerous considerations when simplifying a model. Please look forward to a future entry focused on modeling for analysis.

Material Definition

There are multiple methods to apply material to a model. Material properties applied in SolidWorks can be imported to the analysis. Material properties can be applied from COSMOS or SolidWorks material libraries. Custom materials can be defined and custom material libraries can be created. Make sure to double check units and orders of magnitude when creating a custom material.

Loads / Restraints

This is where the observations made in the study definition step are applied to the model. Be sure to:

- Restrict all rigid body modes (translation in the X, Y, and Z and rotation about the X, Y, and Z).

- Apply forces / restraints to the appropriate entities (should it be on a face or an edge?)

- Enter the proper load amount. Remember, COSMOS applies force on a per entity basis.

- Remember to divide force loads (not pressure loads) when modeling symmetry conditions.

- For shell meshing, make sure loads / restraints are applied to entities that are a part of the shell.

- Apply appropriate contact conditions between components.

Mesh

Always attempt to mesh the model using the default mesh size first. If this fails, DO NOT DRAG THE MESH SIZE DRAG BAR TO FINE! This will significantly extend the run time of the analysis. If the mesh fails on the default mesh size, try the following:

- Check Failure Diagnostics for suggestions and to find trouble spots.

- Use the Check tool, located in the Tool menu, to check for small faces and short edges.

- Before decreasing the mesh size, attempt to refine the tolerance. I usually revise it by one or two orders of magnitude (go from .5 to .05 or .005 for example)

- Apply mesh controls to trouble areas such as short edges or small faces. Use split lines to isolate areas of interest.

- If a certain part has numerous trouble spots such as short edges or small faces, apply component level mesh control to that part.

Run Analysis

A couple of common error messages encountered while running an analysis are listed below along with the reason for the error message and how to correct them.

Restraint transfer failed
This is usually caused when a load or restraint is applied to a very small face or feature. The best way to correct this is to apply mesh controls to the small face or feature that the load or restraint is applied to or decrease the mesh tolerance. If this error occurs on a shell mesh, make sure that the load or restraint is applied to a face or edge that is part of the shell.

Large displacement warning
This warning appears when the solver detects large displacements in the model. The solver asks if the analysis should be rerun with the large displacement flag activated. This happens for two reasons:

- The applied forces are sufficient to actually cause a large deflection in the model. In this case a non-linear solver is required to solve this problem.

- All rigid body modes are not properly restrained.

Either way, do not re-run the model with the large displacement box activated. Investigate what is happening. Animate the displacement plot on Automatic scale to see how the model is deflecting. If one of the rigid body modes needs to be restrained, correct the problem and re-run the analysis. If you are legitimately getting large deflections in the model, you may want to re-run the analysis with the large displacement flag. Be forewarned that running an analysis with the large displacement flag will take significantly longer.

Remember:
Don’t accept the first solution that runs. Refine the mesh in the high stress areas and work toward convergence.

Post-processing

As you can see in the list below, there are numerous post-processing options.

- Stress, strain, displacement, and deformation plots

- Design insight plots

- Design check plots

- List stress, displacement, strain

- List resultant forces

- List Pin/Bolt/Bearing Force

Be sure to animate the displacement model to make sure that the model behaves as anticipated. Check the deformation scale of plot. Adjust the loads, restraints, and contact conditions accordingly and rerun the model. Please look forward to a future entry focusing on post-processing options.

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff
CAE Support Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in COSMOSWorks, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

Introducing the Shortcut Toolbar in SolidWorks 2008

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

If you haven’t taken a look at the new Shortcut Toolbar in SolidWorks 2008, you should. The Shortcut Toolbar is a pre-assigned hotkey of “s” (Yeah, I was already using “s” for [Insert\Sketch] too. So now my Shortcut Toolbar hotkey is “b”…feel free to copy me if you like). When you hit your hotkey to activate the Shortcut Toolbar, it pops up wherever the cursor is on the screen. The Shortcut Toolbar allows you to place commonly used commands in one area that is immediately accessible. Any customization to this toolbar is based on your current environment. Not just Part, Assembly, or Drawings (as with your current toolbars and command manager) but, it can have one set of commands while in Edit Part mode, and another set of commands when in Edit Sketch mode. So, what does this mean?

You can have a specific set of commands at your finger tips based on what part of the design process you are in.
You can take the time to customize one highly flexible toolbar, instead of customizing a bunch of toolbars and your command manager
Most importantly, you don’t have to waste all that energy to move your mouse. There is a fine line between lazy and efficient…and the Shortcut Toolbar helps you toe that line all day.

So, how do you customize the Shortcut Toolbar so you can be really lazy? (I meant, efficient) When the Shortcut Toolbar is activated by your hotkey, simply right-click on it and select “Customize”.

Shortcut Toolbar

This will take you into the familiar customize dialog where you can drag commands onto the Shortcut Toolbar. Remember to do this not only for Parts, Assemblies, and Drawings but in edit part mode, edit sketch mode, etc. It takes a little effort to set up…but think of how much less effort you will need to use to find your commonly used commands when you are done.

Loren Welch
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD, SolidWorks, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

Customizing SolidWorks for Weldment Design

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

There are a few simple things you can do, as a user, to help facilitate your weldment designs. This can range anywhere from creating templates, to customizing toolbars, to writing macros. Taking a few minutes to customize SolidWorks, can save you hours upon hours of design time in the future.

If you design weldments on a regular basis, you should have weldment specific templates and your SolidWorks interface should have the weldment design tools easily accessible. Weldment specific templates should be set up for parts [.prtdot]. Along with your standard template settings (dimensioning standard, units, font size, etc) you should also create the weldment feature in your Feature Manager tree by selecting the “Weldment” icon in your Weldments toolbar. This will allow you to set up default properties that you would like to appear in your cut lists. The “Weldment” feature represents a holding file for any properties you would like to have added to your cut list other than the ones SolidWorks generates automatically [SolidWorks automatically creates and populates length, cut angles, description and unit of measure]. By right-clicking on the “Weldment” feature you can add any additional properties you would need downstream in your cut list on your weldment drawing [.slddrw]. A lot of people use this to add things like cost, weight, etc. for each cut list item. When all of your settings and properties are to your liking, you simply save the file as a SolidWorks part template [File!Save As!Save as Type!Part Templates(*.prtdot)]. This will save your template into your default templates directory.

When you are working in the weldment environment in SolidWorks, it is useful to customize your Weldments toolbar to have all the tools you use frequently. Adding simple things like the Pattern/Mirror fly-out icon, 3D Sketch, Extrude Boss, Extrude Cut and the Reference Geometry fly-out can save you time. Adding these additional icons can be done through [Tools!Customize!Commands tab] where you simply drag the icon you choose onto the Weldments toolbar. Also, in SolidWorks 2008, you can really customize your “Smart Toolbar” [default hotkey “s”] to have your weldment specific tools accessible.

One of the most important customizations you can do is to create custom profiles for your structural members. Out of the box, SolidWorks has a few basic structural shapes to choose from. Starting with SolidWorks 2007, you are able to download a complete library of standard shapes right through the SolidWorks Task Pane [SolidWorks Content\Weldments]. Once downloaded, you simply extract the profiles into your default weldment profiles location. If you are creating your own custom profiles for things like aluminum extrusions, lumber, etc. there are some key things you need to keep in mind: insertion points, properties, and save location. Your custom profiles can have multiple insertion points. By default, your profile will be positioned by the profile sketches origin. Any other point that exists in the sketch can also be used to locate the profile when inserted into a weldment model (this includes entity end points and sketched points). A good rule of thumb for this is, the more location points the better (adding points to mid-points of lines, and construction lines is very useful). When saving this as a new profile, you need to actually save the sketch as a library feature (.sldlfp) in the default SolidWorks Weldment profile directory. Make sure you follow the folder structure of [Standard\Type\Size] when saving the custom profile so that it is recognized by SolidWorks. Any “Description” custom property that is saved in the file will automatically populate the Description fields in the cut list folder in the model and the cut list table on the drawing.

Loren Welch
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD, SolidWorks, Tips & Tricks | 2 Comments »

Can Windows SharePoint be used as your SolidWorks PDM?

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 has been out for nearly a year now. It certainly adds a lot of collaboration tools over WSS 2.0. I think that just the simple fact that 3.0 now supports blogs and wikis makes WSS a nice design collaboration tool. With all these new collaboration tools now included, can it replace PDMWorks Enterprise?

There certainly is a lot of overlap between WSS and PDMWorks Enterprise. Both products allow you to check in and out documents, have a nice easy to use interface and provide file version control; but to date neither product can truly replace the other. Bottom line: WSS is great product but it is not an engineering tool. It is very weak as a CAD document manager -especially for SolidWorks files.

Just a few quick examples:

No toolbox support
No configuration support
No automatic part numbering for SolidWorks generated parts (mirrored parts and assemblies)
No automatic SolidWorks parent/child relationships. WSS knows nothing of assemblies -this means the BOM need to be manually calculated.
No automatic parent/child relationships also means finding where a part is used or what an assembly contains is a manual process.
With PDMWorks Entperise you can check in and out documents while they are opened in your assemblies. WSS makes this a manual process.
WSS does not have an integrated SolidWorks interface.
With WSS you work on the files over the network – you lose the speed you get working on your local hard disk as you get with Enterprise.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD, PDM | 7 Comments »

Use eDrawings as your ECN document

Monday, November 12th, 2007

I’ve seen a lot of different strategies for ECN documentation. – Word, pdfs and Excel are most typical. The problem is that often times it can be difficult to describe where in the part/assembly you want the change made.

Have you considered using an eDrawing as your ECN document? With eDrawings you can point right at the location you want to make the change, add a comment balloon then if you need to be even more verbose in the description field you can type to your heart’s content!

With eDrawings you can spend less time producing the ECN document and be more assured your readers know exactly what the ECN is supposed to accomplish.

Jeff Sweeney

Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

Posted in SolidWorks, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

COSMOS Licensing Changes in 2008 – Part II of II

Friday, November 9th, 2007

NETWORK LICENSING FOR 2008

COSMOS network licensing changed significantly in 2008. Some of the changes include:

- COSMOS network products will now utilize new serial numbers similar to SolidWorks SNL serial numbers
- Combined license files can now contain SolidWorks and COSMOS licensing
- There will no longer be separate license managing tools for SolidWorks and COSMOS
- COSMOS now supports the license borrowing that was previously available with SolidWorks

In this entry, I will expound on these changes and how they affect COSMOS network licensing in 2008.

New License Files

Previously, two separate license files on two separate license servers were needed to handle SolidWorks and COSMOS network licensing. License files can now contain licensing for SolidWorks and COSMOS products. Customers should go to www.solidworks.com/COSMOS-SN to request serial numbers and license files. At this time the customer will also be provided with additional information regarding the changes to network licensing as well as network installation instructions. The new license file is in a .TXT format instead of the former .dat file format.

If the customer’s SolidWorks and COSMOS entitlement ends on the same date, then the customer can receive a combined license file every year. The customer can pay a prorated fee to sync the SolidWorks and COSMOS entitlement dates. If the entitlement dates are not synced, the customer will receive two separate license files.

New License Administrator Tool

There is now one license administrator tool for SolidWorks and COMOS in 2008. It will contain either a combined SolidWorks and COSMOS license file or two separate license files.

COSMOS License Borrowing

The new license administrator allows for COSMOS licenses to be borrowed similar to the current SolidWorks arrangement. A customer can now borrow a COSMOS license from their network and use it off the network. This will reduce the available licenses available on the network until the license is returned. For more information on license borrowing click here.

License Utilization order change

The new license administrator allows change in order of license utilization. If the network contains multiple seats with different entitlements, this allows the customer to specify the order in which the licenses are distributed. For example, let us consider a network containing one seat of COSMOSWorks Designer and one seat of COSMOS Advanced Professional. This tool allows the customer to specify which license will be checked out first for each user. This order is set up in the SolidNetWork License Administrator Tool on the client machine. The order can be different for each user.

New Serial Numbers

New COSMOS network serial numbers will be similar to network serial numbers for SolidWorks. For a network license, there will be a “1” in the third position. The serial number will be required for installing COSMOS products. It will also be used for downloading software updates from the COSMOS website, www.cosmosm.com. Just as before, there will be no separate serial number for the COSMOS portion of SolidWorks Office Premium.

As you can see, there have been significant changes to COSMOS network licensing in 2008. The new License Administrator Tool should streamline SolidWorks and COSMOS licensing. License borrowing for COSMOS gives users a new flexibility that was previously enjoyed only by their SolidWorks counterparts. If you have any questions regarding the licensing changes for 2008, please send them to support@3dvision.com

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff

CAE Support Engineer

3DVision Technologies

Posted in COSMOSWorks, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

COSMOS Licensing Changes for 2008 – Part I of II

Monday, November 5th, 2007

STANDALONE LICENSING FOR 2008

Just as in 2007, COSMOS utilizes two licensing schemes in 2008, network and standalone licensing. This entry will focus on the standalone licensing changes for 2008.

Standalone licensing in 2008 is based on Product Activation (similar to Microsoft OS licensing). This means that the software is licensed over the internet using a new 24 digit serial number. Product Activation was phased in during service pack 3 of SolidWorks 2007. A 2007 (or prior) COSMOS standalone user can fill out the license request form at www.cosmosm.com and receive their new 24-digit serial number. This can then be used to activate the software. The software can be activated either at the time of installation, or the first time the software is used.

Each standalone license allows for two activations, one for office and one for home. One new benefit of Product Activation is the simplicity of moving your license to a new machine. The Transfer Licenses tool allows the customer to quickly move their activation to a new machine. (NOTE: As of now, COSMOS has not imposed any restrictions on the number of times or the frequency that a license can be transferred.) The license should be transferred before any uninstall/re-install or before attempting to activate the license on a new machine.

To use the Transfer Licenses tool:

Select Transfer Licenses in the Help menu.

This will pop up the Transfer Licenses dialog box.

Select the appropriate license from the pull down menu. Select “next” and the selected license will be transferred back to the SolidWorks License Website.

Important: When transferring multiple licenses, the SolidWorks license should be transferred last! Otherwise, you will not have access to the Transfer Licenses tool.

To activate a COSMOS license on a new machine, open SolidWorks, select Activate Licenses in the Help menu, and enter the appropriate 24-digit serial number.

For more information on Product Activation go to www.solidworks.com/productactivation.

Benefits of Product Activation:

Low-hassle, simplified licensing scheme (No more license files!)

A consistent process for licensing SolidWorks and COSMOS

A more secure licensing structure that deters unauthorized use with minimal effect on the paying customer

Ease of License Transfer using the new Transfer License tool.

Please tune in next time when I will be discussing network licensing changes for COSMOS 2008.

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff
CAE Support Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in COSMOSWorks, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

SolidWorks Hardware

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

“What hardware do you recommend to get the most out of SolidWorks?” This is a question that I am asked at least a few times a week, and to be honest it is a hard one to answer because “it depends.”

It depends on quite a few variables such as:

-What is the complexity of the CAD data that you will be working with?

-Are you looking for a stationary or mobile workstation platform?

-Are you tied down to a specific brand due to purchasing departments or company standards?

-What is your budget?

These, as well as numerous other questions, all come into consideration when choosing the best hardware for you. Before we jump into some recommendations, I want to share a story that Jeff Sweeney, another Applications Engineer handling our PDM Enterprise and DriveWorks accounts out of Columbus, OH told me today:

“Yesterday I attended the Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Show in Dayton, OH. I was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a most beautiful specimen in front of me:

(2) XEON Quad Core X5355 2.66 GHz w/ 8MB Cache CPU

8 GB DDR2 667 MHz ECC FB Memory (4 x 2GB)

(6) 73 GB SAS Drives 15k RPM (RAID 0)

Windows XP 32 Professional

Keyboard, mouse and two 22” LCD monitors

All weighing in at just a little more than $6,000!

She wasn’t a server; she was designed to be a SolidWorks Workstation! Dual quads…eight CPUs and 8 GB RAM. <sigh>

However, I had the opportunity to do some informal benchmarking and it didn’t perform a whole lot better than my M90 laptop.”

Why did this machine not surpass his obviously high expectations? Let’s break down the key hardware components directly contributing to SolidWorks performance:

Processor

This machine was definitely well equipped in this category. Will these 8 cores all running at 2.66GHz equate to insane SolidWorks processing performance? Well, “it depends.” Some commands in SolidWorks take advantage of all these processors at the same time, and some don’t. Cosmos solvers, PhotoWorks rendering engines, SolidWorks drawing view creation, as well as many other specific SolidWorks commands do take advantage of multiple, simultaneous processing. Other commands and functions only utilize a single core at a time though, so the benefits over a single processor will not be realized in all situations.

RAM

Again in the RAM category, this machine seems to be well equipped. The problem here is not the RAM but the operating system that is addressing this RAM. Windows XP in the 32bit flavor is only able to access 4GB of RAM. The additional RAM is not taken advantage of, and using the out of the box settings, XP will only let a specific application access 2GB of RAM, reserving 2GB for Windows functions. There is the ability to enable a 3Gb switch that will allow an application (such as SolidWorks) to take advantage of 3Gb instead of the default 2Gb as mentioned. Details can be found at Microsoft.

So what could have been set up differently to better suit this PC’s hardware? The operating system should have been Windows XPx64. The key difference is that this 64-bit version can use more system memory (128Gb of RAM.)

Storage

This machine has a RAID 0 configuration managing multiple, fast, SCSI hard drives. This set up should provide very fast performance, but is it practical? Well, “it depends.” Do you work on files saved on a network? If so, then this added storage performance will be felt minimally. If you do work locally, how are you backing up your data? RAID 0 provides no data replication, so if a single drive fails, all data is typically lost. Having 6 drives in RAID 0 seems excessive and begging for failure.

So there are quite a few aspects of this above mentioned machine that crippled its performance, validating Jeff Sweeney’s (standing at 5’6”) often stated sentiment that “size does not matter.”

Some other notable areas of hardware interest that should be considered are video card and optical drive. SolidWorks 2008 has taken the user interface and Real View graphics to the next level. Make sure that your video card of choice is up to the task. Video card and driver testing can be found on the SolidWorks web site. The installation media of choice for SolidWorks and CosmosWorks 2008 will be DVD, so make sure that you have this drive option specified.

So, obviously there is a lot that goes into choosing the right hardware. Please do your research and feel free to contact one of the highly skilled specialists at 3D Vision Technologies for further information and recommendations.

Daniel Graham

Daniel Graham
Applications Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD | No Comments »