Posts Tagged ‘Tips and Tricks’

Too Many Edges

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Working with tangent edges can cause the graphic area to get a little confusing. You have a bunch of edges on your model and maybe you don’t know what they are. You can always turn “Shaded with Edges” off but if you’re like me, I like to see the model edges. Well here’s an option that you might not know about; Part/Assembly tangent edge display.
This option allows you to show, set as phantom, or remove tangent edges. This helps “clean-up” your graphics area.
Go to “Tools>Options>System Options>Display/Selection>Part/Assembly tangent edge display” to turn the option on.
Settings

Go from this:Visible To this:Removed

Josh Spencer

Josh Spencer
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

A Way to Stay in the Middle

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Oreo cookies, grilled cheese, and jelly donuts. What do these things have in common besides tasting great? They all have stuff in the middle. You may have some designs where you need geometry between 2 faces. SolidWorks has a feature that you might not know about. It’s the Mid Surface feature. What it does is create a surface between 2 faces. The surface will move if the two faces move. It is located under Insert>Surface>Mid Surface.

With the surface in the middle, you can thicken it and make it a solid.
This helps build in some “Design Intent” and intelligence into your model.

Josh Spencer

Josh Spencer
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

eDrawings…3 Useful Tricks

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Here are some great tips when using eDrawings.

1. Open any SolidWorks assembly inside of eDrawings and press the “E” key.
The assembly explodes without an exploded configuration. You can rotate the assembly and measure it.
Press the “E” key again and watch it collapse.

2. Something else you can do in eDrawings is hiding components in the assembly. If you Right Click on any component, you have the option to hide it. This will allow you to see inside the assembly. Right Click again and you can show all hidden components. You can also make individual components transparent. You do the same thing that you did to hide components but choose to change the transparency.

3. Here’s one more trick. If you Right Click on a component in your assembly, you can choose “New Part Document”. This will create a new part inside of eDrawings. This is great if you only got the assembly from your customer but you need see the individual files.

Give these a try and let me know what you think.

Josh Spencer

Josh Spencer
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Attention Greater Cincinnati

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Tuesday, April 20 is the Greater Cincinnati SolidWorks User Group meeting. The meeting starts at 5:30 and is hosted by Balluf Inc.
For more information: Click Here for the link to the GCSWUG page.

I hope to see you there.

Josh Spencer

Josh Spencer
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Want to be more Flexible?

Monday, April 12th, 2010

I know you’re all good SolidWorks user and use sub-assemblies all the time…right?  Sub-assemblies improve performance because SolidWorks doesn’t need to solve all the mates of the sub-assemblies.  The less top-level mates the better you will be.

Well let’s say you need to show some motion of a sub-assembly but you get the message that it is fully defined.

Cannot move

You can make the sub-assembly behave like a top level assembly.  You will need to RMB on the sub-assembly and choose Properties.  The Component Properties window will open up and in the bottom right corner, there is an option to “Solve as…”.  You will want to choose “Flexible”.

 

Enjoy your new “flexibility”.

Josh Spencer

Josh Spencer
Application Engineer
3DVision Technologies

Quick Tips for Less Painful Motion Analysis…

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

I was working on a Motion issue today and thought I would share a few tips that help me set up a Motion Analysis:

Mate all components into their initial position.
Components are expected to move (obviously!!!!) so generally, you want to be able to drag the assembly (in SolidWorks) through the motion you expect to achieve in SW Motion. Once this is done, add a couple of extra mates to lock the assembly into its desired initial position. These can be suppressed within the Motion analysis but they are always there so you can get back to where you started.

Position the model in the graphics window as you would like it to appear in you Motion analysis.
I typically position the assembly as I would like to see it and then create a specific view just for Motion. To create a new view, hit the spacebar to bring up the Orientation View list and select New View which is in the upper left hand corner.

Do these two things before creating the Motion study. It can be tricky to move components or get the appropriate view after the Analysis is created so doing a little pre-analysis footwork can save some headaches.

Start with a simplified version of your assembly.
If dealing with a complex assembly, it can be tough to wrap your head around everything necessary to get everything set up properly within Motion. When possible, I will suppress components, get the partial assembly to run properly, and then reintroduce components. This isn’t always possible but can be very helpful when it is.

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff
CAE Support Engineer
3DVision Technologies

How to Correct a Singular Matrix Error Message

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Here is an error message that I get on a fairly regular basis on the support line:

pic1

This is a pretty simple problem to solve. This error means that the model is not sufficiently restrained to allow the solver to reach a solution. This could be caused either by a lack of restraints or incorrect contact conditions. To trouble shoot this, right click on the study name and select Properties. In the solver box, there will be an option that says “Use soft spring to stabilize model”.

pic2

This option artificially stabilizes the model by attaching a soft spring element to every node in the model. This stabilizes the model just enough to allow the solver to come up with a solution. Re-run the analysis after activating the soft spring option. You will probably get a large displacement error message. Click No. Clicking Yes will activate the large displacement flag which will apply the load in small steps. This is not what we are going for here. We just want to see where the model is inadequately restrained.

pic3

Once the solver finishes, animate the results by right clicking on one of the result plots and selecting Animate. This should show you what is happening with the model. You may see movement that you would not expect. All degrees of freedom need to be restrained, even if motion is not expected in a given direction. Add the additional restraints or contact conditions then re-run the analysis. Once the analysis is behaving as expected, make sure you deactivate the soft spring option. The soft spring elements can slightly affect your stress results so always deactivate the soft spring option before trusting your results.

Seth Bischoff

Seth Bischoff
CAE Support Engineer
3DVision Technologies