A guide to upgrading your current version of SOLIDWORKS. Find out how to back-up previous customizations, eliminate installation obstacles and more. Jun 23, 2013. During the clean uninstall you will go through and delete legacy SOLIDWORKS folders from the installation directory. C: Program Files (x86) Common Files SOLIDWORKS Installation Manager. For example, its OK to delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKS 2012.

With every release, SOLIDWORKS introduces a number of enhancements to help you become more productive. In this article, we will review a selection of drawing enhancements that were released in SOLIDWORKS 2014 through 2016. Most of what is in this article is available from the Help drop-down menu under What’s New. SOLIDWORKS 2014 Reattach Balloons: Balloons, including dangling balloons, can be reattached to another component within the same drawing view. To reattach a balloon, right-click on the balloon, select Reattach and then select what you want to attach the balloon to. Reattaching a dangling dimension. Saving BOM Sort Settings: If you regularly sort your bill of materials (BOM) by the same criteria, you can now save for reuse by selecting “Save current sort settings.” Saving BOM sort settings.

Angular Running Dimension: This is a group of dimensions that are measured from a selected zero position. This tool is similar to ordinate dimensions, which are used for linear dimensions. On the left is the Angular Running Dimension, accessed from the “S” shortcut key.

On the right is the result from this command. Like the Ordinate Dimension tool, there are a number of options for displaying angular running dimensions. Finding Virtual Sharps while Dimensioning: While dimensioning, right-click on the model geometry for which you want to find the intersection and select Find Intersection. Next, select the model geometry that would form the intersection. The Find Intersection tool: The virtual sharp can be seen to the left of the dialogue box. Virtual sharps can also be found in a sketch by using the same procedure used in a drawing.

Attaching Annotations to a Drawing View or a Drawing Sheet: By right-clicking on an annotation and selecting Attach, you can choose to attach an annotation to a view or the drawing sheet. If you are attaching a note to the drawing view, select the view after selecting Attach. The Attach to View option. Out-of-Date Drawing Views: Dimensions and annotations can be added to drawing views that are out of date. This allows you to add dimensions and annotations to drawing views without having to rebuild the drawing, which can be a timesaver for complex or large drawing views. The display of out-of-date drawing views has been changed to make it easy to add dimensions and annotations to drawing views. Replace Model for Drawing Views: Similar to the Replace Model tool found in assemblies, drawing references can be changed for individual drawing views while the drawing is open.

This option is available from the Tools drop-down menu and the Drawing toolbar or by right-clicking on the drawing view. Replace Model dialogue box. Setting Annotations to Display in Upper Case: Annotations can be set to display in upper case. This option can be found in the Property Manager window, which is located in the Text Format section. Text Format is set to use All uppercase. The Shift + F3 keyboard combination can also be used to set annotations to “All uppercase.” Select the annotation you want to change and then press Shift + F3.

“All uppercase” can also be set as a document setting from Tools >Options >Document Properties >Drafting Standard. Here there is an Exclusion list that allows you define what text will not be automatically set to uppercase. All uppercase is set and the Exclusion list is defined. SOLIDWORKS 2015 Drawing Zones: In the sheet format of a drawing, you can define zones in order to identify where drawing views and annotations reside in a drawing. An example would be to identify the zone where a parent view is located.

To define drawing zones, edit the sheet format, right-click on the blank section of the sheet and choose Properties. Next, click on the Zone Parameters tab and define the zone size and margins. Defining zone parameters. Additional zone parameters can be defined from Tools >Options >Document Properties >Drawing Sheets or by clicking on Go to Drawing Sheet Properties. Zone parameters in the Document Properties tab. Zone lines can be shown from the View drop-down menu to make it easier to identify the zone boundaries.

Showing zone lines. Adding zone information to a note is done from the Property Manager by clicking on the Add Zone icon and choosing the required zone information. Zone information that can be added to a note includes column, row and drawing view information. Adding zone information. Zone location labels can be added to detail, section and auxiliary drawing views in order to provide the sheet and zone location of the parent. Location label. To add a location label to a child view, select Insert >Annotations >Location Label, define the location label settings and then select the child view.

Defining location label parameters. To add a location label to a parent view, select Insert >Annotations >Location Label, define the location label settings and then select the section line, detail circle or view arrow. Although location label options can be set for each label individually, general document settings can be set from Tools >Options >Document Properties >Annotations.

The Location Label menu in the Document Properties tab. Center Marks: Additional center marks can be added to existing linear and circular center mark sets by right-clicking on the center mark set and selecting Add to Center Mark Set. Dangling center marks can now be reattached. To reattach a dangling center mark, right-click on the center mark, select Reattach and on the same drawing view, select the replacement geometry.

Decimal Rounding: There are many more options when rounding dimensions, including Round half away from zero, Round half towards zero, Round half to even and Truncate without rounding. Decimal rounding behavior is set from Tools >Options >Document Properties >Units. Decimal rounding.

Angle Dimension Capabilities: There are a number of enhancement to angular dimensions: • Imaginary Lines, which allow you to add an angular dimension between a line and an imaginary horizontal or vertical line. • Remove units with 0 value for deg/min and deg/min/sec, which is used with angular dimensions set to deg/min or deg/min/sec to hide or show zero value dimensions.

This behavior is controlled from Tools >Options >Document Properties >Dimensions >Angle by selecting/deselecting. • Symmetrical Angular Dimensions, which can be added without having to select a center line each time.

This behavior is triggered by pressing and holding the Shift key while dimensioning. Layers: You can choose which layers will be omitted during printed. This is done by clicking on the print icon for the layer in Layers Properties. Setting print option in Layers Properties. Balloon Asterisk: Now when you mouse over a balloon containing an asterisk, a caption will explain the reason for the asterisk—for example, the item has been excluded from the BOM.

Spline Leader: Spline leaders can also be added to a note. This is done from the Property Manager after creating or selecting the note. Setting the spline leader. New Sheet Formats: F Size (ANSI), A0 (BSI) and A0 (GB) have been added. SOLIDWORKS 2016 Foreshortening of Linear Dimensions: Foreshortening of linear dimensions is now possible on any drawing view.

To foreshorten a dimension, right-click on the dimension and select Foreshorten from the display options. The default behavior for foreshortened dimensions can be set in Tools >Options >Document Properties >Dimensions >Linear.

Foreshorten options. Smart Dimensioning for Simple Thread Callouts: Now when the Smart Dimension tool is active, if you select the cosmetic thread of a tapped hole, a simple thread callout is created.

Hatch Patterns: New DIN ISO 128-50 crosshatch patterns have been added to the hatch tool. Model Break View: The 3D Model Break View option can be created in assemblies or parts from Insert >Model Break View or by right-clicking on a part or assembly’s configuration and choosing New Model Break View. Once the model break view has been created, the 3D broken view can be shown in a drawing by selecting “Show in exploded or model break state” under Reference Configuration.

Model Break View in Reference Configuration. The 3D model break view can also be shown by right-clicking on the view and selecting Properties. Displaying model break view. Flag Notes: Flag notes can be created to parametrically cross-reference an area or feature in a drawing to a list of annotations, such as general notes.

To create a flag note, add a note and then in the Formatting toolbar, click Number and apply as many numbers as required. Applying number format. Select the item number to be flagged and select Add to Flag Note Bank.

Adding note to flag note bank. Once flag notes have been added to the flag note bank, you can now create flag note balloons. Start the Balloon command. Check Flag Note Bank in the Property Manager, select the flag note to add and then click to place the flag note.

Adding a flag note balloon. Flag note balloons can be added to existing notes by editing the note, positioning the cursor where you want to place the flag note balloon and then selecting Flag Note Bank in the Property Manager. Custom Property Values: Custom property values can be shared across multiple sheets. This is enabled in Tools >Options >Document Properties >Drawing Sheets.

Select “Use custom property values from this sheet on all sheets” under “Multi-sheet custom properties source.” Applying multi-sheet custom properties. The Sheet number option identifies the parent sheet from which all custom properties are derived.

Automatic Border: This tool allows you to control all aspects of the sheet format. It’s available while editing the sheet format. Right-click on an empty section of the sheet and select Automatic Border. Automatic Border option from the right-click menu.

On the first page, select any items you want deleted from your sheet format. Deleting items from the Automatic Border option.

On the second page, define the sheet formats, zone size, zone formatting, borders and margins. Defining the Automatic Border parameters. On the third page of the Automatic Border option, you can define margin masks, which allow you to hide zone dividers and labels in the margins. Adding margin masks.

In this article, I covered many of the drawing enhancements that have been in added in SOLIDWORKS releases 2014 to 2016. There are many more enhancements and tweaks from 2014 to 2016 as well as from earlier releases that are not covered in this article.

To fully take advantage of new functionality and tweaks to existing functionality, I recommend reviewing the What’s New documents that ship with every release of SOLIDWORKS. These can be accessed from the Help drop-down menu and is available in PDF and HTML formats. Often there are sample SOLIDWORKS files that you can use to learn the new functionality. Your efficiency in using SOLIDWORKS can be greatly enhanced by learning how to use these tools. About the Author. When working in the SOLIDWORKS community, users will often ask or wonder, “How can I tell whether I am getting proficient with the software?” To help with this concern, there is an effective system of testing known as the SOLIDWORKS certification program. One of the most common certifications available is the “Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional” or CSWP.

Two other common levels of certification are the “Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate” or CSWA and the “Certified SOLIDWORKS Expert” or CSWE. By achieving these levels of certification, you can ensure that you (and everyone on your team) are working at a professional or expert level of proficiency within the software. Three examples of certification levels—from left, CSWA, CSWP and CSWE. Shared two lessons learned in the model-based definition (MBD) cultural shift: • Don’t take 2D drawings as the master documents over 3D models anymore. • Don’t treat MBD the same as you would paperless processes. Now, let’s review two typical process shift mistakes made in MBD implementations. One is to try to take on too much at once.

For example, let’s look at the experience of Paul Huang, model-based engineering program leader at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. In 2009, the Red River Army Depot started an MBD project, but bit off more than it could chew. Its first project, the Bradley cross-drive transmission, comprised more than 2,000 parts. Huang that it perhaps hadn’t been a good idea due to the lack of repetition, which would have helped team members learn the process. The Red River Army Depot was not alone.

Many other manufacturers advised against upfront complicated MBD projects too because they could easily frustrate and even deter participation. I’ve personally known several MBD enthusiasts dropping out of the implementation teams due to the initial uphill challenges. Bradley cross-drive transmission. (Image courtesy of Paul Huang.) Instead, MBD proponents such as Huang and Prashant Kulkarni of GE Power and Water advocate for a progressive rollout strategy to help with adoption.

The strategy is designed to help users gain familiarity with tools and accumulate best practices through repetitive use first, followed by larger and trickier projects. Three-step rollout strategy at GE Power and Water.

(Image courtesy of Prashant Kulkarni.) Another common mistake is to skip critical-to-function 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) in the hope that data consumers can query models as needed. This is one of main reasons why MBD is resisted by downstream teams, especially the supply chain. Some suppliers even dismissed the obsession with MBD and dropping 2D drawings as pure laziness” because their clients only provided a 3D native CAD model or 3D PDF with no 3D dimensions, tolerances or 2D drawings. Clients asked them to measure the model when dimensions were needed.

However, in reality, shop floors still need readily available critical-to-function PMI to machine and inspect. Consequently, many suppliers end up having to recreate 2D drawings according to the models in PDF or CAD to fulfill contracts. Therefore, the supply chain sees no benefits while still getting burned: “Maybe our clients saved some time because they skipped 2D drawings and 3D PMI, but the workload was simply shifted to us.” Worse still, if the self-generated 2D drawings by suppliers for various manufacturing activities mismatcha client’s design intention and compromise the quality, the finger-pointing begins: “You didn’t measure the model!” “You didn’t markup dimensions and tolerances for machining!”Going to court wouldn’t be a surprise. To avoid all these messy issues, designers and engineers should try to call out at least the key PMI in models explicitly. Here are the major reasons: • Designer and engineers know best the product use cases, design intentions, important features and technical requirements. Therefore,they should be the authority to convey such critical information in explicit PMI. If these important callouts are absent and left free to other’s interpretations, then misunderstandings and even conflicts are prone to happen.

Let’s remember. It’s in the production team or suppliers’ best interests to interpret and simplify requirements in favor of manufacturing, but not necessarily the ultimate product quality. • Calling out PMI at the design phase is an opportunity not only to communicate, but also to review, verify and improve the design and manufacturability. Skipping this step means missing this opportunity.

• The magnitude of PMI, even that which is merely critical, could be convoluted. If downstream data consumers always have to measure models manually in order to retrieve them on an ad-hoc basis, then it not only takes more time and effort, but also may easily result in oversights because the key information is hidden in models. The consequences include jeopardized quality, a prolonged cycle and increased costs. For example, suppliers may bump up their quotes to compensate the operational overhead and risks. On the other hand, explicit key callouts not only ease the reading of each and every requirement, but also present a complete check list as a visual reminder.

• Model geometries provide dimensions, but not necessarily tolerances. The lack of tolerances obviously is prone to misreading. Factory floors may follow undocumented conventions to machine and inspect, but what if some exceptionally tight tolerance requirements are missed?

The worst case is that even the conventions are unknown, leaving the shop floor clueless. Some companies may define both dimensions and tolerances in sketches or features. If so, we might as well just expose these callouts explicitly in 3D to avoid recreations and repeated manual lookups. • Downstream data consumers may not be able to measure adequately and accurately using the tools in Adobe Reader or other viewers. Table 1 compares the wrong and right usages of the Adobe Reader measuring tool.

Result Wrong Wrong Right Distances Table 1. Wrong and right results using Adobe Reader. By the way, to get the correct result, two buttons must be pressed in advance in Figure 3. Two important settings in Adobe Reader.

Let’s remember, this is just a simple screw. Now imagine a complicated assembly with thousands of parts—such measuring errors are almost inevitable. The point of this example is not to discourage the use of measurement tools but to illustrate that both engineering and manufacturing, both clients and suppliers, have to be extremely careful and well prepared when obtaining critical information on the fly, because the stakes are high and the techniques are tricky. So to avoid the unnecessary complexities, at least at the beginning of an MBD journey, we would be better off annotating explicitly. From the change management perspective, we all know change is hard. Therefore, we would be better off to over-communicate rather than under-communicate during an MBD transition.

The ideal message to all involved should be,“MBD doesn’t take any important information away from me. Rather, it adds another dimension of clarity and functions. My job will actually be easier.” It’s worth noting that when model-based workflows can be fully integrated and automated in the future, explicit callouts may not be so important anymore, because software and machines can seamlessly leverage implicit digital model data in machining, inspection and other procedures.

However, in today’s reality, most infrastructure and manufacturers are not there yet. We reviewed two lessons for the process of implementing MBD: Don’t take too big a bite at first and don’t skip calling out critical PMI. You’re welcome to discuss in the comment area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its.

About the Author. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016 was released almost a year ago, but many of us are still unaware of some handy product and manufacturing information (PMI) enhancements, even several long-awaited additions. In this article, let’s explore three examples and see how they can help.

DimXpert in Assemblies DimXpert was first released in SOLIDWORKS 2007 to automate the 2D detailing of manufacturing features. Then in SOLIDWORKS 2008, it expanded to define 3D PMI on parts in response to the ASME Y standard. In recent years, with the releases of the military-standard 31000A:2013 and the updated ASME Y and ISO standards, the model-based definition (MBD) adoption has grown significantly as explained in a previous article, “.” As a result, the engineering community has shown an increasing demand of DimXpert in assemblies. For example, we may need to install many self-clinching fasteners onto a sheet metal body.

They are usually treated as inseparable parts in one piece and produced with one part number, but technically speaking, they are an assembly. We need to define the sheet metal hole spacing, interfaces and overall size dimensions and tolerances as shown in Figure 1. DimXpert in an assembly to define inseparable parts. Another typical use case is to define assembly features. For instance, in a window set, different parts are first glued onto one mounting frame to make sure all the components are accurately positioned.

Then pin holes are drilled through multiple components so that they are aligned precisely for pins to go through. Therefore, these holes are typically modeled as assembly features and drilled at the assembly procedure, not at the part manufacturing steps. Figure 2 shows an assembly feature, Hole1, being defined. DimXpert in an assembly to define assembly features. By the way, DimXpert in assemblies is not just about adding dimensions. It also carries over all the powerful DimXpert tools from parts to assemblies, such as,, Copy Scheme, and Show Tolerance Status.

Face Edge Selections As introduced by a previous article, “,” DimXpert focuses on defining comprehensive features, rather than simple geometries, to support downstream procedures better. The challenge here is the differences in selection behavior. In 2D drawings, we are used to picking a line or a circle, whereas in MBD, we need to pick features such as planes or hole inner faces. Sometimes, selecting faces could be tricky, especially for small details. We may have to zoom in to make a hole inner face big enough to click on accurately. Or rotate models back and forth to pick two parallel opposing faces. In order to improve the ease of use and facilitate the transition from 2D drawings to MBD, the 2016 release can now recognize a face edge selection and automatically infer the most probable features to define.

This way, we can enjoy the long-awaited benefits of both worlds: the easy selection of edges in 2D drawings and the intelligence of features in MBD. The top example in Figure 3 shows a click on a hole edge. Then DimXpert interprets automatically that we may want to define the hole feature, so it highlights this hole and provides the callout. Similarly, in the bottom example, we just pick an edge and then the two parallel opposing planes are highlighted and the distance in between is provided.

Otherwise, we would have to rotate the model to click on the lower hidden plane highlighted in green outlines. An added benefit is for PMI placements. Because we can now pick edges, DimXpert will try to place the callouts in the same plane as the selected edges. That is, they are not dropped deep down to the bottom of this hole or the bottom edges of the notch opening.

Select face edges to define features. Automatic Coordinate Systems for Datum Reference Frames In geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), datum reference frames are the cornerstones. When we read a GD&T feature control frame, the first thing we need to know is its datum references. Where are datum features A, B or C?

What are their relative priorities? What are the material boundaries? These determine how a part is set up for machining and inspection. Only when a setup is established or the part is placed in a certain way can we make sense of the rest, such as tolerance symbols, zone types, values and modifiers. However, there are several problems. First, datum symbols may not be obvious at first glance. Some may be hidden on a certain view.

Some may be buried in other PMI. There may be so many callouts that our eyes often have a hard time locating two or three key datum symbols as the starting points.

To interpret a control frame, we often have to rotate, zoom or pan a model and comb through various views to find all the relevant datum symbols. Second, once we identify these datum features, we have to remember them and imagine a reference framework with its location and orientation in our mind. This short-term memory can easily be muddied in a busy product definition. Furthermore, these problems are compounded when there are multiple datum reference frames, for instance, ABC, CAB, BDE and so on, which are often used in production.

To solve these problems, the ASME Y14.5:2009 standard proposed using coordinate systems to indicate the locations and orientations of datum reference frames as shown in Figure 4. Coordinate systems per datum reference frames in. To comply with the ASME standard, MBD 2016 added a new feature to create and display coordinate systems per datum reference frames. Just click on a feature control frame and the corresponding coordinate system is presented automatically as shown in Figure 5. Now that the datum features, locations and orientations are just one mouse click away, we don’t have to remember all of them by heart anymore. By the way, this display is on-demand only so that multiple coordinate systems won’t cloud the model viewport all together.

A coordinate system is presented automatically in MBD 2016. We explored three long-awaited PMI enhancements in the MBD 2016 release: DimXpert in assemblies, face edge selections and automatic coordinate systems per datum reference frames. Many of us have been asking for them for years. Now they are available. I hope you find them relevant and helpful too.

To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its. About the Author. In, Elon Musk stressed that for Tesla to hit its ambitious Model 3 delivery deadline in late 2017, “the biggest thing is to design for manufacturing.” Unlike the Model S or Model X, which are “great cars, but super hard to build,” the Model 3 was designed with manufacturability in mind. Design for manufacturing has been a longstanding challenge, not just for Tesla, but in the engineering community overall. From a design standpoint, many manufacturing software applications have been developed to optimize products and address manufacturability issues before mass production.

From the definition and communication perspective, one best practice is to go beyond basic CAD geometries to define manufacturing features directly. CAD geometries are easy to understand. Vertices, lines, curves and faces are typical examples. Manufacturing features are generally CAD geometries or features grouped by manufacturing operations. For example, a counterbored hole may be considered as one manufacturing feature because the large hole, its flat bottom and the small coaxial hole are typically produced together to hold socket cap screws. In other words, manufacturing features are a close depiction and therefore a direct guidance of manufacturing operations, while CAD geometries are often individual resulting elements of these operations.

This is why defining manufacturing features directly is more comprehensive and accurate. It conveys the full picture and allows us to see the forest beyond the trees in order to prevent manufacturability issues. Figure 1 lists 14 manufacturing features predefined in the SOLIDWORKS MBD library. When we select one surface, MBD will try to recognize the possible manufacturing feature sets and ask us what to define besides this surface itself. The most comprehensive one will be set as the default callout. Then, the appropriate constructing product and manufacturing information (PMI) will be provided for the selected manufacturing feature.

Predefined manufacturing features in the SOLIDWORKS MBD library. Let’s walk through several models to explain better. We will use the datasets in, so that you can download them and try out too. For instance, in Figure 2, we can simply pick a hole edge on one of the mounting counterbore holes. Then, MBD will make three inferences behind the scene: • “This edge belongs to an individual hole, so the user may want to define this hole.” • “Wait a second.

This hole is part of a counterbore manufacturing feature, so defining this combination may help the user get closer to the goal.” • “Oh, I see. This counterbore hole is actually one of the six instances in a pattern, so this pattern is the most comprehensive representation of the manufacturing goal to mount this part to another component. Let me present this option as a default selection and ask the user to choose.” Figure 2. A pattern of six counterbore holes is automatically called out by default. This chain of intelligent inferences greatly saves mouse clicks and time because we don’t have to manually pick all the faces one by one to define a pattern. The combined callout will also save the screen space and alleviate crowded PMI displays.

If we have to, we can still break these combined dimensions as explained in the previous article “.” Of course, if we decide to call out one counterbore hole only or just a simple hole, Figure 3 shows more options on the context command bar. The cylinder and hole callouts are identical in this case, but a cylinder can represent a partial cylindrical face to specify a radius, such as the one in Figure 4.

Additional options of a cylinder, a hole and an individual counterbore. Figure 4 shows a slot being recognized as one manufacturing feature. Its key callouts are provided automatically: length, width and radius. Again, we only need to pick a cylinder edge and leave the rest to the software. A slot is called out as a manufacturing feature.

Similarly, if we were to cut this slot into a notch, it would be recognized by the MBD library and provide the notch width and length automatically as shown in Figure 5. A notch is called out as a manufacturing feature.

While we are working on this slot, a useful setting is the Arc Condition. Sometimes, we need to tell quickly how wide a slot is between the tops of two cylindrical faces or how thin a surrounding wall is. In Figure 6, we are using the Max Arc Condition on the Leaders tab on the Dimension properties manager to call out the slot overall width, which in this case is 120 mm. We can also determine the wall thickness on the left, 55 mm, using the Min Arc Condition.

Arc conditions to call out the overall slot width and the wall thickness. In addition to the above library manufacturing features, it’s often necessary to group some seemingly unrelated features together to define surface profile tolerances, surface qualities or painting instructions. Figure 7 illustrates one such example in the NIST dataset. A surface profile tolerance defined to a collection of 17 features. The entire group may not be automatically recognized as a frequent manufacturing feature, so some users assign colors to these surfaces to identify them visually.

However, a more semantic (or software-readable) way is to create a collection of manually picked surfaces and define them together as shown in Figure 8. Of course, in this selection list, constructing manufacturing features such as fillets or hole patterns in the MBD library can be still recognized as one combination to reduce mouse clicks. Once this collection is built, it can be used for PMI definitions such as the profile tolerance in Figure 7. Detailed benefits on the software-readable PMI can be found in a previous article “.” Figure 8. Select features to create a collection. To avoid the situation where we can’t see the forest for the trees, we have the ability to define manufacturing features to guide downstream more directly.

We covered counterbore holes, patterns, slots, notches and manual collections in this article. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its. About the Author. For manufacturers, model-based definition (MBD) can bring tremendous benefits as explained in the previous article “.” However, adopting MBD is a significant cultural shift from the status quo. In, Casey Gorman of pointed out that the biggest challenge of MBD implementation is not the software and not the suppliers, but the internal 2D drawing mindset or culture. Many lessons have been learned in the MBD cultural shift by manufacturers all over the world. In this article, we will share the top mistakes made in MBD implementations along with suggestions to avoid them.

One of the top mistakes is that 2D drawings are still made as the master document. An unidentified SOLIDWORKS customer once raised an inspiring question: all of the investments we have made in the past 20 years in either 2D CAD or 3D CAD have only been to make faster and better 2D drawings at the end of the day. Can we do better than that? This company is not alone. Here is a seemingly obvious but actually complicated question: When there is a conflict between a 3D model and its 2D drawing, which one does your organization take as the master?

According to a SOLIDWORKS customer survey in 2015 (sample size: 486), about two-thirds of responders indicated taking 3D models as the authority over 2D drawings. One-third indicated the opposite. Congratulations to the first group: You have laid a very solid foundation to support MBD. This 3D-oriented culture focuses on the end goal, the products in the 3D world, rather than the common means of 2D drawings. This culture can help liberate manufacturing from the 2D drawing constraints, realizing the full potential of 3D models and streamline processes, because designs are already built into 3D models and it’s more efficient to take the original source as the authority. To the second group, let’s revisit the scenarios where 2D drawings override 3D models and understand why.

Then we’ll gradually establish 3D models as the master in several pilot cases to identify issues, solve them and cultivate a 3D-oriented culture. In, one of the first recommendations is to take 3D models as the master. For example, if the shop floor just redlines the drawings on the fly, rather than notifying the design team to update the model, try to stop that.

A previous blog post, “,” shared more suggestions and examples. Another misunderstanding is to treat MBD as the same as paperless processes. These two concepts are often mixed up in MBD discussions. Does MBD have to be paperless?

Do paperless processes have to be MBD? Let’s clarify here. MBD focuses on the communication style. It’s 3D model-based, not 2D drawing-based. Figure 1 shows several MBD prints that are obviously not paperless. Paperless specifies the communication medium: It’s digital, not paper. Figure 2 shows a computer terminal in a digital factory displaying a 2D drawing.

It’s paperless, but certainly not MBD. Paper prints from a SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDF. A computer terminal displaying a 2D drawing on a shop floor. Why is this clarification important? Because some of us have been scared away from MBD by the concept of “paperless.” For example, we may not have the resources to purchase or maintain digital devices to avoid paper prints.

Singapore Immigration Card Pdf. On a greasy and dusty shop floor, or in an extremely cold field installation site where thick gloves are needed, hard copies are very robust and handy. Or some people may simply prefer reading paper documents rather than viewing digital displays. MBD is already a major undertaking. Going paperless at the same time could be too much to take on and generate too many disruptions. So let’s take one step at a time and keep this in mind: Paperless processes are nice to have for MBD implementations but are not required, especially in the early phases. Even without the heavy upfront investment in digital devices, MBD can still go a long way and add great value in a very cost-effective fashion. With that said, if your organization does have the resources to implement paperless processes, that’s great.

It will certainly help bring MBD to a higher level. For example, Gulfstream Aerospace equipped shop floor engineers with workstations as shown in Figure 3. Gulfstream was the first to achieve a long-held aerospace industry dream: an aircraft developed with a Federal Aviation Administration–certified, fully electronic MBD system. In 2007, the company designed the G650 model entirely using the MBD approach. Later, a good portion of the G650 MBD data was reused in the G500 and G600 models so that Gulfstream was able to design these two new airplanes together and announce both test flights in early 2015.

Has more details. Gulfstream implemented both MBD and paperless processes. (Image courtesy of Dan Ganser.) To recap, 2D drawings generally shouldn’t be used as the master reference in MBD implementations and MBD is not the same as paperless processes.

What cultural shifts are you experiencing in your MBD efforts? You’re welcome to discuss in the comment area below.

To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its. About the Author. A consistent start can ensure predictability in any project. Ensuring that company standards are adhered to will provide this consistency. By ensuring that each CAD station is configured identically, companies can expect that each user will have access to the same document templates, libraries and any custom programs. Project files can also be stored in a central location.

In this article, we will look at different strategies to ensure all users are working within a controlled environment. Designate an Administrator While it may seem easier to allow users to install and update their systems to the best of their knowledge and inclination, this will inevitably lead to a chaotic assortment of system preferences and file locations. By having one or more designated administrator(s), locations of file templates, working directories, file libraries and automated scripts can be distributed and controlled. In order to ensure that this is done consistently, a dedicated administrator must take ownership of this process. Initially, the set-up may require a significant commitment of time, but once complete, the required maintenance time is relatively low. When choosing an administrator, familiarity with the organization’s CAD system, as well as with the design workflow, is an asset. Having the support of a company’s IT department can also facilitate the distribution and accessibility of common files.

Set up File Locations to Point to a Network Drive One of the simplest ways of ensuring consistency is to have common files on a shared network drive. Document templates, component libraries and other company standards can be located on a network drive that all CAD users can access. These network locations can be set to Read Only for all users, except for administrators. Once a network location has been chosen, your CAD software’s options can be configured to point to these locations.

Setting file locations in SOLIDWORKS. Keep in mind that generally, accessing files across a network will be slower than accessing files from a local drive. The difference in performance will be affected by many factors such as network performance and network traffic. Performance difference will be especially noticeable when accessing larger file sets. Copy and Distribute Settings Individually configuring each system can be tedious and will inevitably lead to inconsistency between systems. Capturing settings from a master and distributing these settings to all user computers can help to ensure uniformity and reduce the tedium associated with configuring each system individually.

In, for example, the Copy Settings Wizard will allow the administrator to copy system settings from a master system and distribute these settings to all user computers. Copy settings options in SOLIDWORKS. Using an Installation Image to Standardize System Settings While having the ability to copy and distribute system settings can be a powerful tool, having to do this on every system can be time-consuming.

Preconfiguring an installation file set that already designates file locations can significantly simplify standardization. Many CAD packages offer the ability to create custom installation file sets. In SOLIDWORKS, an administrator can create an administrative image to. Creating a SOLIDWORKS Administrative Image.

Distributing an Administrative Image Once a customized image has been created, the next step is to distribute the image. This can be done in a number of ways. In SOLIDWORKS, administrative images can be distributed through e-mail so that each user can initiate the installation from a centrally located image. In order to run the installation, it may be necessary to set up escalating system permissions for each user. This may not be an option in some organizations.

Alternatively, installation by means of an administrative image may be possible though a Windows Command prompt. Launching Windows CMD. To automate this process further, it may also be possible to run the installation through a batch file. Depending on how the batch file is distributed, escalation of user permissions or manually logging into each user computer as a system administrator may be required.

Installations can also be distributed through the Windows Active Directory. This way, installations can happen silently, without the need to escalate permissions or manually log in as a system administrator. Standardizing Using Data Management Having files located on a network drive may work well in a single-site environment, but having a central location for standard files can present performance challenges in multi-site environments. This can be especially noticeable if sites are situated at great distances from one another.

Performance problems can be exacerbated further if local network performance is poor. A data management system can allow an administrator to define a common location for standard files. Standard files can be cached locally to enable end users to take full advantage of the performance capabilities of their system. Data management systems often allow the synchronization of files between sites. This synchronization can occur at scheduled times, so that files are updated during non-working hours. This means that at worst, users will be accessing files from their local server instead of a server located halfway around the globe. In this article I presented a number of strategies for sharing common files amongst users.

Which methods will suit your organization depends on the size of your company, the resources you have available and the number of sites that need to be synchronized. About the Author.

Understanding how to use design tools efficiently is critical to your career as an engineer. With this tutorial, we will create a simple part that is suitable for manufacturing using the least number of steps. To get you up and running with your first part design, we’re going to be walk through a 10-step process of modeling a lightweight titanium camping mug from scratch.

This model was chosen because of the relative ease with which it can be created. We’ll also touch base on some of the most critical SOLIDWORKS building blocks. Once completed, the model will provide a perfect example of a product design that can either be rendered to communicate the design plan to others, 3D printed to create a physical prototype or used as a reference to create 2D drawings directly in the software, which can be sent off to a manufacturer for a production quote. (1) Create a New Part To get started, open up SOLIDWORKS and create a new part. In the Feature Tree to the left of your workspace, select Front Plane. In the icons above the working area, select View Orientation >Front.

This ensures that you are looking directly at the front of the Front Plane, which is necessary to sketch with accuracy. (2) Draw a Centerline Now that you are looking directly at the Front Plane, head up into the Sketch Toolbar and select Line >Centerline. Once the Centerline tool is selected, place it in the very center of the Front Plane box over the directional red arrows. Follow your mouse directly straight up from the up arrow so that there is a blue dotted guideline, then click just above the Front Plane boundary box. To define the other end of the Centerline, drag your mouse back over the red arrow and click approximately just as far below the Front Plane boundary box as you clicked above it, then press Escape to drop the tool. This Centerline will be used as a point of reference as you move forward with sketching the camping mug profile. (3) Sketch a Camping Mug Profile With the newly created Centerline as your point of reference, select the Line tool again and being sketching the profile of your camping mug’s wall.

The profile is the same as the cross-section of the wall if the mug were to be cut in half. Use this opportunity to be creative with the bottom edges and even the angle of the outer wall. To quickly create a dimensionally accurate outer edge, sketch only one edge of the profile, make sure it is selected, and then use the Offset Entities command to duplicate your sketch. Note the properties of the command in the window to the left, including distance and which side of the original sketch you will be using to create the duplicate entity.

Once you have two parallel lines that represent the inner and outer walls of your camping mug, close off each end of the lines using the line tool so there are no empty gaps between them. When you are finished, confirm that you are done sketching by exiting the sketch in the upper right-hand corner. (4) Revolve the Profile Now that you have completed the profile of your camping mug, it’s time to revolve it 360 degrees to create a watertight vessel. Do this by selecting the outer edge of your profile sketch, then navigate up to the Features toolbar and select the Revolved Boss/Base command. If your sketch was completed in Step 3, the software should have already fired off the Revolve, and you should be left with a yellow cup-like object that follows the outline of your original profile sketch. If for any reason you encounter an error, simply go back to Step 3 and ensure that your profile is complete. (5) Sketch the Handle Profile Now that the main portion of your camping mug is complete, it’s time to add a handle.

Similar to how you sketched the original profile of your mug, you’re going to select the Front Plane from the Feature Tree on the left side of the screen. To ensure that you are working flat on the Front Plane, head up to the View Orientation icon at the top of the workspace and select the Front view. To make sure that your handle isn’t floating in space, you need to ensure that it pierces the outer edge of your mug. To do this, head up to the Display Style icon at the top of the workspace and select Hidden Lines Visible. This will allow you to see both the inner and outer edges of the mug. Using the Line tool found in the Sketch toolbar, create the first point of the handle profile on the inner edge of the mug, which will turn orange when you mouse over it. Bring out your sketch and create a natural handle profile.

Feel free to be creative here and explore other sketching tools such as the Sketch Fillet, which will add a rounded edge to any sharp corners. Finish up by connecting the last point of your sketch on the same inner wall that you started from.

(6) Create a New Plane To build the handle, you’re going to need to create a new point of reference to build from. To do this, you’re going to create a new plane.

In the Feature Tree, select Right Plane, then mouse over the SOLIDWORKS logo in the upper left-hand of the UI until the additional program options (File, Edit, View, etc.) become visible. Navigate over to the Insert menu and locate Reference Geometry >Plane. You now have an additional working plane that is parallel to the existing Right Plane. To align this new plane to your handle profile, move your mouse cursor over to the first point you made when you sketched your handle until the point turns orange, then right-click and press the green check mark in the upper right-hand corner of the workspace. You’ve now created a new working plane on the edge of the camping mug from which to create the body profile of your handle. To make sure that you can distinguish it from the other planes, rename it as “MugEdge.” (7) Sketch a Handle Body Profile Now that you have created the “MugEdge” plane from which you can build your handle body profile, it’s time to make sure that you’re working on it accurately. To do this, head up to View Orientation icon and select Normal To.

This will place your view directly over the MugEdge plane. Now that you’re looking directly at the top of your mug, navigate up to the Sketch toolbar and select Straight Slot >Centerpoint Straight Slot.

This will allow you to build a symmetrical slot from the midpoint. With the Centerpoint Straight Slot tool active, hover your mouse over the first sketch point of your handle until the line turns orange, then click.

Using the guidelines that appear, drag out to the width that you want for your handle––but keep in mind that it doesn’t need to be too wide. Once you have chosen the width you want, click again. Now drag your mouse up or down to repeat this process for the mug’s height. Again, remember to think like a designer and not go overboard with a design that requires too much material or that creates a mug that would be difficult to hold. Once you are satisfied with your design, confirm that you are finished sketching by exiting the sketch in the upper right-hand area of the workspace. (8) Sweep the Handle Body Now that you have a profile and a path for creating your handle, you can run the Swept Boss/Base command to actually make the handle a physical part of your existing mug. Do this by navigating to the Features toolbar and selecting Swept Boss/Base.

In the profile dialog box (blue), select the profile of the handle body that you just created with the Centerpoint Straight Slot tool. Follow this by clicking on the handle profile sketch for the path dialog box (pink). If all of the sketches were completed accurately, the software will automatically create the handle based on this profile and path information, which will be highlighted in yellow. To confirm this process, simply select the green check mark in the upper right-hand corner of the workspace. (9) Adjust the Dimensions or Proportions Now that you have completed the first iteration of your mug design, you have a better understanding of how your earlier design decisions led to the final proportions. If you need to make any changes, simply go back into the Feature Tree and edit a sketch. (10) Add Fillets and Design Details To add the finishing touches, it’s time to go around and refine the sharp edges with a fillet.

Even if you don’t particularly care for a heavy rounded edge aesthetic, it’s important to consider that most objects in the real world that appear to have a straight edge actually have a small fillet on the corner as a natural side effect of the manufacturing process. Again, this is an opportunity to be creative and get your feet wet. Now that you’ve designed a camping mug, it’s time to make a 3D-printed prototype to see how your design translates in the real world, create a rendering to communicate how the mug would look in a particular setting, or create a SOLIDWORKS drawing to send the mug off to a manufacturer and see what is involved with bringing the design into production. About the Author. While most people are aware of the benefits of regular exercise, it’s not always easy for those with leg, foot, back or hip problems to lace up their running shoes or get on the bicycle saddle. Even those who have spent the majority of their lives exercising daily may still find themselves unable to move like they used to. Among others who have found it difficult to maintain physical activity as they’ve gotten older is former Ironman triathlete, Bryan Pate.

Pate, who had a particular fondness for indoor elliptical trainers due to their ability to emulate a running motion without high-impact foot strikes, was frustrated that the workout machines were stationary and thus restricted to indoor gyms. After contacting fellow Ironman athlete and mechanical engineer Brent Teal for a coffee in July 2005, the two hatched out what would soon become the, which they called the world’s first elliptical bicycle. The ElliptiGO has become a useful exercise device for cross trainers and ecovering injured athletes. (Photo: ) Of course, designing an entirely new vehicle concept from scratch is no easy task—especially when it needs to be both fun and safe while also remaining cost-effective to manufacture. While Teal had previous experience using both Pro/ENGINEER and SOLIDWORKS during his career as a mechanical engineer, he turned to to build out the ElliptiGO. Teal decided that using the fully integrated software package would shorten the ElliptiGO’s time-to-market and improve product performance and quality over time while simultaneously reducing manufacturing costs.

Features such as integrated design simulation and visualization capabilities would come in handy, as would the ability to support manufacturing requirements further down the line. While the ability to iterate and test engineering concepts through trial and error directly within the software proved to be invaluable for their time and resources, Teal also made extensive use of the software’s integrated dynamic motion and finite element analysis (FEA) tools. Using the tools, Teal was able to run linear static stress and fatigue studies to identify stress concentrations, which helped them shave weight and material off of their parts while simultaneously reducing manufacturing and testing costs. The resulting final mechanical designs would ultimately provide the basis for expanding the duo’s simple idea that hatched over coffee into a revolutionary product line with four models that have since sold over 16,000 units and counting. “SOLIDWORKS has played a significant role in helping us build out the product offering of the company,” said Teal. “I’ve used SOLIDWORKS design and simulation tools for more than 10 years because the software enabled us to introduce a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind product, and then refine the concept to offer additional models while simultaneously keeping costs down.” Starting at $1,299, the company’s model is both the newest and one of the best examples of how Teal was able to refine the original concept using SOLIDWORKS to create the lightest and most affordable model in the company’s lineup.

Alternatively, the more expensive $3,499 model is a much more robust model made with carbon-fiber arms for discerning riders looking for a light and sturdy elliptical bike for the most demanding riding conditions. Like the rest of the ElliptiGO product line, both models combine the running-like movement used on an elliptical trainer with the functionality of a bicycle.

The result is a design that enables a low-impact exercise workout similar to those found on indoor exercise machines with the added benefit of being able to exercise outdoors on existing jogging and bike paths. For days where the weather might not be ideal for exercising, ElliptiGO models except for the ARC trainer are also compatible with indoor stationary trainers. Adjustable for riders from 4 ft 10 in to 6 ft 10 in tall, the elliptical bikes also feature adjustable stride lengths, which can vary from the shorter 16” length to a longer 25-ft setting that makes the stand up riding experience feel more like running. The ElliptiGO combines elements of running, cycling and the elliptical trainer into an outdoor exercise vehicle (video: ElliptiGO) With proving that low-impact elliptical training can provide the same fitness benefits as running with similar levels of enjoyment, it would seem that Pate and Teal have a winner—and with the aid of SOLIDWORKS, they’ve been able to pass the finish line and keep running.

“As we continue to push elliptical bike development, we need to explore the use of advanced materials and manufacturing processes,” said Teal. “With SOLIDWORKS Premium, we have the tool we need not only to create new designs but also to analyze performance and manufacturability.” The full line of ElliptiGO bikes is distributed through specialty running, cycling and fitness retailers nationwide, on Amazon.com and through the ElliptiGO website. About the Author.

Geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) is a widely-adopted engineering language. Just like any language, however, it takes time and effort to learn and use properly. For example, let’s look at a manufacturer who practically lives by the ASME Y14.5-2009 GD&T standard. At this company, every new engineer must go through one week of Y14.5 training and then apply GD&T to all designs. However, with that level of commitment, the team members, including seasoned engineers, still make mistakes frequently due to lack of knowledge, oversights or fatigue—similar to those typos in an email that we’ve all made. Fortunately, Microsoft Office provides a spelling and grammar check to flag typos for us.

Wouldn’t it be nice if an engineering design tool could help flag GD&T mistakes too? After all, just like other languages, GD&T is structured and has a well-defined set of rules and best practices. Well, this is where a real-time grammar verification such as the one in SOLIDWORKS MBD can assist. To start, note that this checking function only gives warnings. It doesn’t stop a workflow, force us to correct an error or automatically fix the error. We still have the flexibility to ignore it after a careful review.

Therefore, engineers still need to take the control and responsibility. Figures 1 and 3 show where a flag can be raised: • In the graphics area, a feature control frame in error is turned in yellow.

• On the DimXpert tree, the top node of this entire PMI scheme is prefixed with a warning sign and presented in red. • The questionable feature node is prefixed with a warning sign. • The questionable GD&T node is prefixed with a warning sign and presented in red. • A warning message explaining the root cause is displayed in a pop-up bubble when the mouse cursor is over the GD&T node.

• The same warning message is displayed at the bottom of a GD&T definition dialog in Figure 3. A GD&T error is flagged in both the graphic area and the tree nodes. Now, you may wonder: What’s wrong with this position tolerance? The warning message says, “No size tolerances defined for feature Boss5.” Aha! Because this position tolerance contains a maximum material condition (MMC) modifier (M in a circle) to the diameter tolerance zone Φ.020in, it needs to know the boss feature’s overall size tolerances to calculate its MMC. We can fix it easily either by adding the boss size tolerances as shown in Figure 2 or removing this MMC modifier.

The former approach could save cost because it only requires the Φ.020in position tolerance at the MMC, which is Φ.810in, or the biggest boss. At the least material condition, Φ.790in, or the smallest boss, the position tolerance could be as loose as Φ.040in or Φ.010in + Φ.010in + Φ.020in. Therefore, if it meets the functional requirements, Figure 2 would be a more cost-effective recommendation. The added size tolerances for the boss feature corrected the feature control frame. Following the same logic to loosen the tolerance requirements and cut cost, I applied the MMC at the datum features A and C in this feature control frame in Figure 2. The warning is now gone. Can we apply the MMC to the datum feature B?

Let’s give it a try. Figure 3 shows the warning, “A material condition modifier applied to a feature that cannot have size tolerances.” Why? Because the datum feature B is a plane, not a feature of size. It can’t have size tolerances or the MMC at all, so the MMC doesn’t apply here and SOLIDWORKS MBD catches this error. A warning against an incorrect MMC modifier to a datum plane.

As we construct a feature control frame on the Geometric Tolerance dialog in Figure 3, let’s pay attention to the warning messages at the bottom of this dialog as it guides us towards a more robust GD&T creation. The above are just several quick illustrations of the grammar verifications against the MMC modifier. Now let’s go through the key compartments in a feature control frame to review more examples. Symbols There are 14 GD&T symbols, and they are used for specific feature control types.

For example, if we change the position tolerance symbol in Figure 2 to a flatness symbol, the grammar verification will give us a warning as shown in Figure 4, “Boss5 is an invalid feature type for flatness,” because, obviously, it doesn’t make sense to define how flat a cylinder is. An invalid flatness symbol applied to a cylinder. The similar checking is conducted against other symbols. For instance, defining a circularity control symbol to the datum feature B (a flat plane) would be flagged.

Tolerances The next compartment is for tolerances. As we move along, we need to keep in mind not only the validity of an individual compartment, but also its relationships with other compartments. That is, whether this compartment definition makes sense in the context of the entire feature control frame.

Here the grammar checking verifies whether a tolerance number or a tolerance zone is valid. For example, the tolerance needs to be a numeric value in the first place. There are several exceptions of letters such as the CZ in the ISO 1101:2012 standards, but for most cases, tolerances are numbers. Furthermore, the tolerance zone needs to be applicable to the corresponding feature control type. Figure 5 shows an invalid zone type specified for a cylindricity tolerance control. We can fix that by removing the diameter modifier Φ from this compartment.

As a comparison, if we choose a concentricity control type, then the diameter tolerance zone modifier Φ will be needed in this tolerance compartment. Otherwise, the grammar check will throw out an error. An invalid tolerance zone type specified for a cylindricity tolerance. Datum features Datum features are the foundation of GD&T, so there are very extensive checks in MBD against them. First of all, the datum feature needs to be called out before being referenced in a feature control frame. Otherwise, the GD&T dialog will remind us, “Datum X has not been defined.” Of course, we can still proceed here and define the datum feature X later to fix the reference.

In addition, the control type symbol is checked against a datum feature. In Figure 6, although a runout tolerance is valid on this cylinder, it’s invalid in the context of the datum feature A because a feature for a runout tolerance needs to be coaxial with the datum axis. An invalid datum feature framework specified for a runout tolerance.

Besides the manual GD&T definition, the datum features are also checked in the auto dimension scheme as shown in Figure 7. The secondary datum feature shouldn’t be collinear with the primary datum feature. Otherwise, they would generate the same theoretical datum, the hole axis, which would be a duplicate. An invalid secondary datum feature collinear with the primary one.

There are hundreds of rules built into SOLIDWORKS MBD. We can only show very few examples in this article.

Please feel free to check out the product and discuss the grammar verifications in detail in the comment area below. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please watch this video below and visit its. About the Author. The 3D-printed NV-8 (left) and carbon fiber NV-9 (right). (Image courtesy of NTU.) Since 2009, students at the Nanyang Technology University School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) have been designing efficient, economical and ecologically friendly vehicles for entry into the annual with their Nanyang Venture (NV) series of vehicles.

The first incarnation, NV-1, resembled a low-riding recumbent tricycle with spoked wheels. As you will see, thanks to the magic of CAD, the NV vehicles have evolved a lot since 2009! The first iteration, NV-1, in 2009. (Image courtesy of NTU.) The most recent iterations, dubbed NV-8 and NV-9, were designed specifically to be entered into the 2015 Shell Eco-Marathon Asia heat, which was held in 2015 in Manila, Philippines. Both cars were originally designed to be battery-powered with the option to charge from solar panels.

However, due to a last-minute change of regulation by Shell which excluded use of solar power, both cars were switched over to run exclusively on battery power. Each car has a top speed of over 24 mph (40 km/h). Because they’re designed specifically for the Eco Marathon track, the cars are optimized in terms of weight, speed and power tradeoff to allow the car to complete the 7.5-mile (12-km) circuit on a single charge. The NV-8: A First for Singapore NV-8 has created quite a stir in the media, for good reason.

Many of the car’s parts, including the upper body shell (cockpit area), scissor doors and other hardware parts were manufactured using 3D printing. All in all, the car featured over 150 3D-printed components, which were printed mainly on-site with some components printed at the Stratasys office in Singapore. It is Singapore’s first 3D-printed electric car. Designed using, the NV-8’s upper body shell is made from over 100 individual ABS plastic segments, which fit together to make a single component much like a huge three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Stiffeners are printed within the panels in-situ, providing a honeycomb-like interior and adding strength to the structure while keeping weight down. The entire car weighs in at just over 264 lbs (120 kg), making it lighter than most motorcycles. The chassis is made from carbon fiber and contains all of the car’s motors, the individual suspension systems and running gear. The NV-9: Improving Aerodynamics While NV-8 is a radical departure from the evolution of the other NV vehicle lineage, the carbon fiber composite NV-9 bears a much closer resemblance to preceding entries over the years.

The NV-9 in action. (Image courtesy of NTU.) It has a tricycle design, with two wheels at the front and one at the rear for greater stability. The two front wheels also tilt, allowing for more efficient cornering—just like a motorcyclist would lean when rounding a corner. The rear wheel is driven by a 1-kW DC motor. The panoramic canopy is made from clear polycarbonate and is tinted to protect the driver from the sun’s rays when racing at the track. Load-bearing structures are made from aluminum.

In addition to all the cool mechanical innovations, NV-9 also features a computerized image recognition system for increased situational awareness. One thing that stands out even to the casual observer is that NV-9 was designed very much with aerodynamics in mind. The overall shape is that of an aerodynamically efficient teardrop. Additionally, the interior of the vehicle uses NACA ducts, which circulate exterior air around the cabin, to keep the driver cool. NV-9 is incredibly light, weighing in at around 93 lbs (42 kg). Making it weigh only slightly less than its diminutive test driver! Both cars managed to scoop up a cumulative score of six awards for Singapore at last year’s Eco Marathon, a record haul for the university.

NV-8 was also selected by judges at the event to compete with five other teams in the Shell Drivers’ World Championship in London in July 2016. Designing the Vehicles The design of both vehicles took only six months, with a further four months to build and test. This rapid turnaround time was made possible due to the usage of CAD and SOLIDWORKS in particular. Modeling NV-8 in SOLIDWORKS.

(Image courtesy of NTU.) Associate Professor Ng Heong Wah is the supervisor of the NV project. I asked Ng why SOLIDWORKS was the preferred choice for the NV vehicles.

“Students use as it is the default licensed software available to all students at MAE,” remarked Ng. “Most students who come onto the NV projects have experience in other CAD software, but are quick to make the switch to SOLIDWORKS.” In addition to modeling the car components in SOLIDWORKS, the team subjected both the NV-8 and NV-9 designs to flow and stress analysis within. This allowed the students to determine the best shape to minimize drag and weight within allowable stresses respectively.

Even at relatively low speeds of 25 to 30 mph (40 to 50 km), drag force is quadratic (meaning that drag force increases with the square of the velocity), so it helps to have some form of CFD simulation to get a more accurate view of the vehicle aerodynamics before committing to the manufacturing process. NV-8 in Flow Analysis simulation in SOLIDWORKS. This was used to optimize aerodynamics. (Image courtesy of NTU.) The multiple components were mated together within SOLIDWORKS Assembly. Once the assembly was complete, the motion study and animation features were used in order to show that moving components were free from collisions.

NV-9 in SOLIDWORKS assembly mode. Note the carbon fiber composite wheels. (Image courtesy of NTU.) You can see the evolution of all of the Nanyang Venture vehicles at and given the success of the school in previous Eco Marathons, you can be sure that there will be plenty more iterations over the next few years. Image of NV-8, rendered in PhotoView 360. (Image courtesy of NTU.) About the Author. As today’s computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) tools become increasingly more powerful and capable of taking on multiple steps of the collaborative design process, the need for effective communication has never been more vital.

While early-stage designers and engineers use their CAD tools to develop concepts, create or modify these designs and ultimately analyze and optimize them for the manufacturing process, manufacturers use CAM tools to boost their productivity and the quality of the finished product while streamlining communications for each step of the production process. When looking at the entire lifecycle of a product during this process, it becomes clear that much of the information developed at an early stage by designers and engineers can be optimized and leveraged throughout the entire supply chain. Model-based enterprise (MBE) technology is one way to handle this; as a single evolving digital master data set, it contains a 3D model and all of the relevant supporting data information needed throughout a product’s lifecycle. This helps significantly in streamlining how products large and small are being brought to market across multiple stakeholders.

CheckMate for SOLIDWORKS includes functionalities for coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) and soft gauge programming applications (Image courtesy of.) By aiming to assist designers and engineers in bringing better products to market faster and with reduced costs, Origin’s suite of dimensional metrology software aids in translating design intent and manufacturing information to the inspection and manufacturing engineering environment for users. It does this using existing product manufacturing information. Founded in 1992, Origin, a SOLIDWORKS Certified Solution Partner, develops metrology solutions for manufacturing engineers across a multitude of industries, including aerospace, oil and gas, consumer goods and automotive. While the specific needs and benefits of CheckMate for SOLIDWORKS vary greatly between use case scenarios, the suite of applications offers manufacturing engineers a valuable advantage with multiple standout features that can be employed across different MBE applications. CheckMate for SOLIDWORKS is a software solution for reverse engineering and inspecting parts. (Image courtesy of.) Other capabilities of the CheckMate suite include support for coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and soft gauge programming applications.

CheckMate offers users a common language to program CMMs of multiple vendors offline with intelligent coordinate system reporting capabilities and dimensional measurement equipment support. Additionally, CheckMate’s SoftOrient application helps streamline the orientation of CMMs to free-form surfaces or less-than-perfect features on prismatic parts. While CheckMate Programming and SoftOrient lend support to CMM and soft gauge programming applications, Point Cloud Metrology (PCM) offers a bridge between modern scanning technologies—such as laser scanning—and CAD-based metrology and inspection tools for accurate parts.

Based on a pictorial reporting method, PCM automates the process of aligning cloud data to a CAD model while performing a surface compare evaluation with a color gradient map to highlight any resulting deviations. The result is a powerful evaluation tool for making more informed decisions related to process changes and sample sizes. A demonstration of PCM generating a ColorMap from xyz scan data and automatically extracting actuals at predefined surface locations. (Image courtesy of.) For nonconforming parts, the SoftFit Solver simulations highlight the impact of dimensional corrections on a specific area while demonstrating how those changes impact other features of the part—ultimately resulting in a better part and tool design with fewer iterations. Finally, the CheckMate suite makes communicating this information across multiple stakeholders easy, as the fully integrated CheckMate Reporting application generates reports quickly, regardless of the current stage in a process or the task at hand.

With itsinteroperability features, CheckMate Reporting can also generate reports in coordinate systems other than the one in which the part was measured—such as for CAD, tooling, car or ship coordinates. As modern software tools and MBE continue to revolutionize the way data is created and shared, effective and clear communication will be key to successfully driving products through their lifecycle. Through integrating SOLIDWORKS MBD into its CheckMate for SOLIDWORKS suite, Origin promises a useful solution for maintaining communication for manufacturing engineers across the inspection and manufacturing engineering environment. About the Author. We are all very familiar with 2D drawings. They’ve been used for hundreds of years and they still work. Why should we bother with model-based definition (MBD)?

What are the concrete benefits of MBD? Let’s have a look at the top five reasons to use MBD. MBD further automates manufacturing with software-readable product and manufacturing information (PMI) Let’s start with computer aided manufacturing (CAM).

CAM software programs read CAD models to automate numerical control (NC) code generation. The benefits of CAM have been proven and this automation has been widely adopted.

However, there is one problem: Some key requirements, such as tolerances and surface finishes, are typically defined and presented in 2D drawings. In most cases, CAM software cannot read drawings, so manufacturing engineers have to look back and forth between drawings and CAM programs to manually extract and re-enter these requirements. This step not only slows down the process, but also introduces data duplication, human interpretation and re-entry errors. One solution to this problem is to define software-readable PMI directly in 3D models, rather than in 2D drawings. This is exactly the gist of MBD.

This way, CAM software can automatically read and act upon the 3D PMI. This automation avoids human interpretations and data re-entries, which speeds up production and reduces errors. Figure 1 shows reading 3D surface finishes defined in SOLIDWORKS to automate NC programming. CAMWorks reuses defined 3D surface finishes to automate NC programming.

After machining, another example is inspection. Acting upon 3D geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), can automatically program coordinate measuring machine (CMM) paths and soft gauges. Furthermore, CMM sample points or 3D-scanned point clouds can be overlaid and compared with the nominal CAD model. Then, CheckMate automatically generates a quality heat map per the semantic 3D GD&T as shown in Figure 2.

CheckMate automates the CMM programming and generates a quality heat map per 3D GD&T. Along with these two examples in machining and inspection, model-based software-readable PMI can automate many other procedures such as cost analysis, quoting, process planning, robot programming, tolerance stack-up analysis and so on. It’s important to note that none of these automations would matter if they didn’t bring tangible benefits. To prove the quantitative value metrics of MBD, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States conducted a study,. The research team compared drawing-based and model-based approaches side by side in three steps: annotation, machining and inspection. It found that the model-based approach saved over 60 percent of the net hours across various practical test models as shown in Table 1.

The time savings primarily came from the automations powered by the software-readable PMI. Test Case 1 (Full Annotation) 2 (Hybrid Annotation) 3 (Reduced Annotation) Model Approach Drawing MBD Drawing MBD Drawing MBD Net hours 83.1 18.1 60.2 14 37.7 13.5 Chart 2. MBD increases technical communication efficiencies We all live in a 3D world and 3D is intuitive to us. When it comes to technical communications, we have to project 3D objects down to a 2D plane to author a drawing. Then, to interpret it, somebody else has to mentally reconstruct this 2D abstraction up to 3D again.

This is a detour and it becomes excessive when you consider that most designs are built as 3D CAD models anyway. This detour not only requires heavy mental coding and decoding, but also invites ambiguities. For example, look at the simple drawing in Figure 3. Is it a cut or an extrusion? Ambiguity in a simple 2D drawing. We don’t know, so we have to wait for clarifications, or find another view and correlate multiple perspectives to make a judgment.

A simple drawing may be quick to figure out, but if we have to interpret a normal drawing such as in Figure 4, waiting, correlations and judgments are compounded substantially. This can make communication even harder and less efficient.

A normal drawing. These issues impact business bottom lines enormously. For example, in the NIST study in Table 1, three simple and practical test models by Rockwell Collins were sent to two suppliers for machining and inspection.

One took the model-based approach as an experiment and the other took the drawing-based approach as a controlled comparison. The model-based supplier delivered parts in approximately five weeks, but the drawing-based supplier spent approximately eight months, or 27 weeks longer. The root cause was that the drawing-based supplier had to raise 12 questions related to interpreting the product definition from drawings, which led to work stoppages because the job had to be removed from the queue until clarifications were provided. In contrast, the model-based supplier asked no questions during its machining and inspection work. Besides these focused studies, drawing communication issues become even more alarming in today’s manufacturing industry, which has grown exponentially more complicated. For example, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner contains about 2.3 million parts according to Jeff Plant with Boeing commercial airplanes.

These are just final parts. Now let’s consider the engineering changes generated in the decades of product development and sustainment. Regarding a similar aircraft, Bob Deragisch with Parker Aerospace pointed out that one change to a simple manifold created 1,700 changes to other related models and systems. The engineering change order (ECO) drawings would be 100 pages for this single change alone. If all the drawings of an airplane were printed, the package would be even bigger than the airplane, to which Deragisch declared “I can’t do that anymore with drawings!” If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a model is worth a million words because it’s in 3D and we can rotate and query it. The level of complexity in today’s manufacturing demands model-based communication to improve efficiency.

MBD provides a 3D presentation rather than a 2D abstraction. It minimizes the necessary mental coding and decoding and accordingly reduces miscommunication. In addition, dedicated MBD capabilities such as the cross-highlighting from a callout to its corresponding features provides an instant visual confirmation as shown in Figure 5. Cross-highlighting from a 3D callout to corresponding features. Many people believe that the majority of time saved with MBD comes from the avoidance of authoring a 2D drawing.

It may indeed save time by not needing to create 2D drawing, but we need to create certain 3D callouts in models too. While 3D callouts may be faster than 2D callouts thanks to the feature-based 3D PMI automations as illustrated in, the real saving comes from the data consumption side, rather than the authoring side. The reason is simple: The data, either in drawings or MBD, is created only once, but is consumed many times by many stakeholders. There are many consumption points across an organization and its supply chain, customer base and partner network throughout the entire product lifecycle, making consumption-side savings much larger than authoring-side savings.

MBD improves product quality Much like model-based manufacturing automation, MBD can lead to significant quality improvements. Although the NIST report quoted the net hours and the total delivery time in a side-by-side comparison between drawing-based and model-based approaches, it turned out that time was not the full story. There were also major quality differences between drawing-based and model-based approaches.

Figure 6 shows an unintended through-hole and a misshaped groove. An unintended through-hole and a misshaped groove in the drawing-based part. The unintended hole scrapped the entire part because there was no cost-effective way to fill it up and make it blind again. The root cause was that the drawing sent to the supplier missed a hole depth callout as shown in Figure 7. The hole depth callout was missing in the drawing. Without the depth, a hole defaults to a through-cut in drawings.

How did this error slip through the cracks? By simply looking at the drawing in Figure 7, the machinist and even the inspector instinctively interpreted it as a through-cut. It didn’t even occur to them that this could be a blind one because there was no way to tell visually. As a comparison, the model-based supplier caught this issue because it used the model as the authority in numerical code (NC) programming. In Figure 6, notice the surrounding seal groove on the drawing-based part on the right-hand side didn’t match the original design.

This may not be a major issue, but does demonstrate another quality discrepancy due to the drawing-based approach. This type of issue prolongs the cycle time and erodes a manufacturer’s margin and can also compromise customer satisfaction. Some may argue that these quality issues were the result of mismatching between 3D models and 2D drawings. If the drawings had matched the models perfectly, these issues would have been prevented. Ideally, that would be true—but in reality, we all know that these discrepancies happen all the time. According to some manufacturers, up to 60 percent of 2D drawings don’t match 3D designs. The problem has more to do with years of drawings maintenance than initial creation.

Shop floors could redline a paper drawing on the fly without notifying the design team, or a designer could update a 3D model but forget to update its drawings—especially in 2D PDF or paper formats. The link between models and drawings are broken, intentionally or unintentionally. Rather than creating perfectly matched drawings separate from the models, why can’t we put them together?

Why can’t we bypass drawings and put 3D PMI into models directly in one document? MBD establishes manufacturing competitive advantages For this reason, more and more organizations and manufacturers are moving toward the MBD approach.

In the public sector, the Department of Defense (DoD) in the United States released the Military Standard 31000 revision A in 2013 to specifically define the requirements and best practices for its supply chain. In the private sector, General Electric (GE) named model-based manufacturing as one of the four pillars in its factory initiative, along with automation powered by sensors and the Industrial Internet of Things, process prototyping and informatics. It isn’t just North America, either. The Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association, or, is the governing body of the Japan Industrial Standards (JIS), or equivalent of ASME standards in the U.S. In 2014, JEITA members paid special visits to manufacturers and software vendors across Europe and the U.S. To learn about MBD developments.

A JIS standard for MBD is currently in the works. These driving forces from the top of the global supply chain are generating strong ripple effects in the manufacturing industry. In order to be eligible in bids, stay competitive, win contracts and move up in the supplier tiers, manufacturers have to catch up and plan ahead. For example, Figure 8 shows growing percentages of SOLIDWORKS customers using or planning to use MBD. In many cases, small- to medium-sized machine shops have moved to MBD at the request of clients. Growing percentages of SOLIDWORKS customers using or planning to use MBD (Survey sample sizes: 700 in 2009 and 524 in 2015). MBD unleashes the power of emerging technologies We are living in an exciting age for manufacturing.

Emerging technologies, such as 3D printing, big data analysis, sensors, artificial intelligence and connected machines, are pushing manufacturing forward every day. There have been many initiatives around the globe, such as Industrial Internet of Things in the United States, Industry 4.0 in Germany and Made in China 2025. MBD holds the potential to unleash the power of these emerging technologies and facilitate these initiatives. For example, 3D printing a part is very easy today with a 3D CAD model, but is unfeasible with 2D drawings. In addition, after printing, the part needs to be inspected according to its dimensioning and tolerancing requirements. Typically, these callouts are conveyed in 2D drawings. Since the design, printing and finished products are all in 3D already, it’s much more useful to avoid generating and maintaining a separate 2D drawing solely for inspection purposes by instead putting PMI directly into the 3D models.

Tolerance analysis is another example. Traditionally, all the tolerances are defined and locked in 2D drawings. Engineers have to visually read and manually re-enter the tolerances from drawings into a spreadsheet to calculate. But with the MBD approach, the digital semantic tolerances are liberated and analyzed by software applications automatically. Even better, the actual downstream as-built quality and cost data can be mined and correlated back with the upstream as-designed tolerances to optimize designs. The in Figure 9 illustrated them as the production feedback loop and the design feedback loop. The closed-loop analysis can reveal meaningful and actionable insights to cut costs while improving quality.

The cost and quality goals may sound conflicting, but the reality is most tolerances are overly conservative. We all would love to loosen them to increase pass rates, but don’t necessarily have the clarity to pinpoint where to loosen without compromising the quality, so end up with tolerance overkills just to be safe. The closed-loop tolerance analysis powered by MBD can provide that much needed clarity. The GE ”Brilliant” Factory initiative. (Image courtesy of.) Although these are the five biggest reasons to use MBD, there are also other benefits to consider, such as reduced paperwork, streamlined processes, workforce hiring/training and job satisfaction. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its.

About the Author. In, we walked through a common 2D drawing hole callout case and explained some tips and tricks in SOLIDWORKS MBD. We touched upon how manufacturing specifications can be created and organized intuitively, intelligently and efficiently. Now with these initial hands-on experiences, I hope you are more interested in model-based definition (MBD) in general. Now let’s take a step back and review how to set up for MBD so that you can make the best use of it.

Installing SOLIDWORKS MBD is very straightforward as an integrated part of a standard SOLIDWORKS installation. One heads-up here is that the software requires its own serial number, which can be entered on the installation dialog in Figure 1. Enter the dedicated SOLIDWORKS MBD serial number on the installation dialog.

One frequently discussed topic is about licensing. First of all, this product provides both standalone and network license options. The standalone license option is simple. It ties one seat of MBD to one seat of SOLIDWORKS. The network license option allows MBD seats to be shared by a larger group of users.

In other words, the MBD licenses can be checked in and out based on the actual needs. It’s worth noting that this licensing mechanism is designed to prevent unintentional usages. MBD functionalities don’t load by default when the software starts.

An MBD license is only checked out of the license pool at the first click of an MBD command. We can also reserve a certain number of licenses for a white list of frequent users or a black list of unintended users. To make network licenses float even more easily, SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016 added a button on the Add-Ins command bar as shown in Figure 2. We can now load and unload MBD network licenses during a session without having to close it. Load or unload network licenses. Once the initial setup of installation and licensing is done, this product is ready to use.

To make it more accessible, the software comes with its own command ribbon bar. We can show it by right-clicking on a ribbon tab and left-clicking on the MBD line as illustrated in Figure 3. At the bottom of this window, let’s click on an MBD view management tool, 3D Views, so that we can capture and switch between different visual bookmarks quickly. More details on 3D Views can be found in. Enable the SOLIDWORKS MBD command bar. Besides the command bar at the top, another way for quick access is to add several frequently used MBD commands to the shortcut toolbar, such as Location Dimension, Size Dimension, Datum and Geometric Tolerance. This way, anywhere inside the window, we can just press the “S” key on the keyboard and the common commands will show up right at the mouse cursor tip.

This shortcut can save lots of mouse travel and is well loved by many users. Figure 4 shows the Customize dialog where we can just drag a command from the left to this shortcut toolbar. Add frequently used MBD commands to the shortcut toolbar. Now that several user interface settings are tuned, let’s look deeper into the product functionalities. To begin with, we can create 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) such as dimensions and tolerances using a tool called DimXpert.

As early as 2008, the company released DimXpert to comply with the ASME Y standard. This 3D PMI tool is specialized to define the manufacturing features of a model, rather than edges, curves or vertices, which are results of manufacturing features.

This approach can help improve efficiency. Shared several examples of DimXpert’s automatic model-based manufacturing applications.

It also has built-in support for major geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) standards. The next step is PMI presentations and organizations. A best practice to prepare more predictable 3D PDF publishing results is to uncheck the “Always display text at the same size” box as seen in Figure 5. We can find this dialog by right-clicking on the Annotations folder in the DimXpert feature tree. Then click on the Details command at the top. Uncheck the “Always display text at the same size” box. Here is why it’s recommended to uncheck this box: If this option is on, all the PMI texts stay at the same size, regardless of zooming factors.

However, it hides the true text scale, which is usually revealed in published 3D PDF documents in Adobe Reader, which doesn’t have this capability. By unchecking this box, we can see the real text scale right away inside the software and adjust accordingly in the drop-down list above this check box. Then, the 3D PDF in Adobe Reader will show the text scale consistently with the display. Here is another best practice for use with Adobe Reader. Sometimes, a published 3D PDF may display annotations backwards at a default orientation, which is hard to read as shown in Figure 6. Backward annotations at a default orientation in Adobe Reader. This is because SOLIDWORKS automatically flips dimension text directions as we rotate a model, so that an annotation string always reads from left to right regardless of the rotation.

This is useful, but also hides the actual text directions when a 3D View is captured. These actual directions will be exposed in Adobe Reader. Therefore, in certain views in Adobe Reader, some annotation may appear to be backwards.

To produce more predictable and professional 3D PDF default displays, let’s activate an annotation view to review the true text directions and adjust the display. Be sure to avoid over-rotating from the front to the back. Be sure to keep the model in the same general viewing direction to avoid triggering the automatic flipping before capturing a 3D View. With this setup, the published 3D PDF results will stay away from backward 3D PMI.

After the PMI definition and organization steps, we can customize 3D PDF templates, also called themes, using the built-in editor. To create and organize templates better, let’s create our own template folders in addition to the predefined installation folder.

Figure 7 shows the System Options tab and the file locations in order to edit the 3D PDF Themes folders. We need to scroll down to the bottom to find the 3D PDF Themes option.

Edit the 3D PDF template folders. Once the folders are added, they will become available in the template editor. Then, the templates in these folders can be chosen to guide 3D PDF publishing. This article shared several quick best practices and reminders to set up SOLIDWORKS for MBD, including 1) dedicated serial numbers for installation, 2) network licensing, 3) PMI display settings to optimize 3D PDF outputs and 4) 3D PDF template folders. Your comments are welcome below.

To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its. About the Author. If you aren’t familiar with, the first thing to understand is that the specificity and quality of its products go hand in hand. Entangled with that specificity and quality is the depth and breadth of OPEN MIND’s great engineering software products. To get to know the company, the first thing you should be aware of is that OPEN MIND produces CAD/CAM software as well as postprocessors for the design and manufacture of complex molds and parts. The company offers 2D solutions packed with features for milling standard parts and software for five-axis simultaneous machining, among other products. HyperMILL for SOLIDWORKS OPEN MIND has an integrated CAM solution that you may find useful for high-performance engineering as well as tool and mold manufacturing and design.

The central idea behind making a product like is to empower users to transform their CAD designs into numerical control (NC) code for machining without leaving SOLIDWORKS and worrying about interoperability issues or any other hiccups a user can experience transferring design data to third-party CAM software. In the and parts of this guide, we worked on the hole callouts in Figure 1, such as the internal and external diameters, the custom text orientations, the distances from intersection planes, the datum attachment styles, the hole selections and the polar dimensions. 2D drawing of a simplified bearing housing. When creating the polar coordinates of the flange hole pattern in the second part of the guide, we used the SOLIDWORKS Auto Dimension Scheme. To pick the primary, secondary and tertiary datum reference features one by one, we had to move the mouse cursor back and forth between the model in the graphics area and the left-hand property manager. That could result in pretty time-consuming mouse travels.

Luckily, we have several handy time savers here, but they may not be very discoverable, hence not well-known yet. After picking the first datum feature, rather than going back to the property manager to switch to the second datum input box and then return to the model for another pick, we can simply right-click right there without any mouse cursor movement. One click not only accepts the first datum selection, but also switches the focus to the second datum input box as shown in Figure 2. You may notice a small blue Enter key icon on the right mouse button in Figure 2 indicating this shortcut. As long as the mouse cursor is over this feature, the bottom Plane 7 in this case, this right-click acceptance button is available.

Simply put, we can just left-click on a feature to pick it, right-click to accept it and move on to the next feature without any mouse travel. Accept a datum selection with a right-click. What if we have moved our mouse cursor away from the first datum feature? We can still accept the datum selection using an in-context menu command as shown in Figure 3. Of course, the OK button on this in-context menu can execute the Auto Dimension Scheme on the spot.

Accept a datum selection via an in-context menu command. To continue the flange hole pattern definition, let’s further specify the position tolerance as shown in Figure 1. It’s pretty straightforward to define a geometric tolerance, but one trick here is to directly drop a feature control frame onto an existing callout so that they are correctly oriented and concisely combined as shown in Figure 4. There is a presentation issue in this new combination. We will fix it later. Drop a feature control frame to a callout directly.

You may notice there are some basic dimensions on the right-hand view that we haven’t touched yet. There are several reasons: • In geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) terms, basic dimensions define the theoretically ideal locations and sizes of features. Therefore, they don’t specify tolerance zones and generally are surrounded in box borders. Actually, 3D CAD models are theoretical and implicitly convey the feature locations and sizes already.

If necessary, simple model queries can provide these dimensions. So explicit basic dimensions in the model-based definition (MBD) approach are less important than in 2D drawings. They repeat existing information just for quick visual readings. • Beyond visual readings, many software programs such as those involved in computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and coordinate measuring machines (CMM) can read 3D CAD models directly to automate numeric control (NC) code generation. So the implicit basic dimensions in the model are digitally consumed seamlessly, which further alleviates the need for explicit ones. However, in order to ease the transition to the MBD processes, sometimes we need to accommodate 2D drawing conventions, even if they may not be very relevant in the MBD approach any more.

Explicit basic dimensions are one example. Sometimes, the data consumers may still need, or like, to see these callouts on digital drawings or hard copy printouts. SOLIDWORKS MBD provides many automatic ways so that we don’t have to annotate each one manually.

For example, we can right-click on the position tolerance in the DimXpert tree and select the “Recreate basic dim” command on its in-context menu as shown in Figure 5. One click will create all the constructive basic dimensions for this hole position geometric tolerance automatically. This command is pretty powerful, but also not very discoverable. I hope you find it helpful. As illustrated in of the guide, to save some space, we can align the dimension text with the dimension line using the Custom Text Position options on the Leaders tab of the property manager.

Now, with several quick placement adjustments, these callouts are presented clearly in Figure 5. Recreate basic dimensions automatically. We can create these only for selected feature control frames using this command, or we may choose to apply this creation for all feature control frames automatically if this is a company or personal preference. Figure 6 shows a Document Property setting under DimXpert >Geometric Tolerance. By checking the box “Create basic dimensions,” we are enabling this automatic creation for this entire document.

There are also Chain and Baseline styles for us to choose. A document setting to create basic dimension. Besides the above automatic creations, SOLIDWORKS MBD provides a dedicated Basic Dimension button on its command bar.

So we can create all the basic dimensions in Figure 5 manually, too. It’s more flexible, but takes more time. Now that we have created all the callouts in the 3D model following the 2D drawing in Figure 1, it’s time to review and tie up several loose ends we left earlier. Norm Crawford with pointed out that the position tolerance attached to the combined counterbore callout is confusing.

Is it controlling the bigger diameter, Φ.264±.005 in., or the smaller one, Φ.134±.005 in? The actual mounting feature is the smaller holes. So let’s be more specific here by breaking this combination as shown in Figure 7.

Now the result in Figure 8 is much clearer visually. Break the callout dimension combination. A position tolerance is attached to the correct callout. I should also mention that once the combination is broken, the position tolerance is automatically attached to the correct mounting hole callout. That is because SOLIDWORKS MBD automatically associates the feature control frame with the correct feature in Figure 4. If you remember, we just dropped it to the combined callout.

We didn’t even pick a feature there. Common engineering experiences tell us what really matters in a counterbore is the actual mounting hole. The top flat is mostly just to accommodate a bolt head. This kind of experience has been built in to the software to structure more intelligent definitions. It may seem trivial visually, but in streamlined MBD processes, this semantic association and data structure make significant differences in the 3D PMI consumption for downstream manufacturing software.

Are two examples here: they can read the intelligent 3D PMI by SOLIDWORKS MBD to further automate the production. We finished this case study in Figure 1 and also improved the callouts in the 3D model.

We covered many useful-but-not-well-known tips and tricks such as the datum selection acceptance in the Auto Dimension Scheme, dropping a feature control frame to a callout directly and the “Recreate basic dim” command for a position tolerance. Your comments are welcome below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementation, please visit its. About the Author. Two of the many components that outfit the Outdoor Group’s Elite Bows. (Image courtesy of the Outdoor Group.) Finally, because of SOLIDWORKS’ strong like MasterCAM, designers don’t have to wait for machinists or tooling engineers to come back to them with the bad news that their part is either impossible to manufacture or just too expensive to build.

Now, engineers can use tools built into SOLIDWORKS to validate whether a design can be made. By laying down tool paths and configuring feed and speeds, engineers can gain insight into the manufacturability of their ideas. Not only can that insight help designers; it can also aid the end user as well. “The combination of SOLIDWORKS and MasterCAM enables us to take advantage of a totally automated manufacturing environment,” said design engineer Dan Kelly.

“We’ve reduced our manufacturing setup times by 50 percent and improved the quality of our machined parts, both in terms of industrial design and ergonomics.” Manufacturing Certainty Can Buoy Product Promises Aside from being able to reduce production times and cut manufacturing costs through the use of CAD and CAM tools, the Outdoor Group has also realized another benefit of digital manufacturing. Because of its extensive use of digital simulation tools, the Outdoor Group has been able to extend a fully transferable, lifetime warranty to its customers for its products. “With software we can validate and even optimize design performance,” Derus said. “By using simulation to prototype and refine our bow designs, we simply make a better bow. Elite bows are designed for reliability, which is why we can offer our no-questions-asked lifetime warranty.” Building a technically sophisticated piece of machinery has always been a difficult prospect.

In fact, if something is technically sophisticated, there’s a good chance that it’s going to take some clever engineering and design to make that system work properly. Fortunately for designers today, they don’t have to spend the millennia that their forebears did to make progress. Today, engineers and designers have sophisticated CAD, CAM and simulation tools that allow deep insight into a design’s flaws and strengths before a real-world object is ever produced.

That saves valuable time, plain and simple. Because of digital manufacturing, technological innovation in all manner of products can be accelerated. That’s not only better for bow-and-arrow makers, it’s better for humanity as a whole and it will likely set an entirely new pace for innovation.

About the Author. Whatever you choose to call it, the electric guitar was arguably the most important step in the long evolutionary path of the guitar, which archeologists claim dates back 4,000 years to the Mesopotamian tanbur instrument. But since the first electric guitar was revealed to the public in 1931 by inventor George Beauchamp, very little has changed.

With the further popularization (and physical standardization) of the instrument by companies such as Gibson and Fender, you would be forgiven for thinking that innovation in this area ceased at some point in the early 1960s. One Lithuanian designer and his band of merry men hope to change all that by combining SOLIDWORKS CAD modeling, modern hardware features and traditional luthier practices to produce a gitbox that is truly worthy of the 21st century. Lava Drop was created two years ago by industrial designer and guitarist Rapolas Gražys, who wanted to make an ergonomic guitar that enhanced playability while reducing weight. As explained by Gražys at the conference, traditional electric guitars don’t particularly allow for playability for higher notes at the bridge end of the neck, due to poorly shaped cutaway sections (the horns on the guitar). The problem is that the cutaways just aren’t cut away enough. And as for the weight, some electric guitars weigh north of 18 lbs. If you are standing on stage for hours at a time, that can become tiresome.

The Lava guitars weigh in at a manageable 6.6 lbs. At the slimmest point, the Lava Drop’s range measures just 12 mm, which gives you some idea of where the instrument saves on weight. The Lava Drop X guitar. (Image courtesy of Lava.) Traditional electric guitars also feature frets along the fingerboard. Frets do have an advantage in the sense that the notes are perfectly divided up along the neck, making it easier to hit the correct note each and every time—but that practical advantage is also a tonal disadvantage.

Due to the division of the frets, a standard fretted guitar is only capable of playing tones and semitones. This is fine for most western music types, but what of eastern-influenced music, which makes use of microtones? Gražys decided to remove the frets, allowing for a greater range of tonality. Also, fretless necks are easier on the fingertips. Fretless guitars are generally uncommon in the world (compared to fretless bass guitars) and tend to exist as modified standard guitars—however, in these cases, the frets are removed with pliers. And so, the Lava Drop range of guitars was born.

They got their name from the flowing form exhibited by lava drops, a form which is mirrored in the ergonomic shape of the new instruments. There are currently three variants of the Lava Drop guitar, which I will describe later.

Building Lava Drops First, let’s have a look at the design and manufacturing process. The basic silhouette of the guitar was modeled in SOLIDWORKS (see image below), and static loading simulations were performed on one of the thinnest part of the neck to ensure that it was strong enough to withstand breakage. According to Gražys, the design’s basic silhouette was created in just 20 hours with SOLIDWORKS, which is pretty nifty. Modeling the Lava in SOLIDWORKS. After the silhouette was modeled, the CAD file was sent to a 5-axis CNC router to cut out the main body.

The main body was cut from a piece of maple, glued together. For the prototype, the same piece of maple was used to create a separate bolt on the neck for the guitar. Due to the separate neck, the prototype was found to have poor sustain and resonance, so a new instrument was created from a single solid piece of wood—that is, the neck and body are cut from a single, uninterrupted piece, with no joining required.

This design feature has been adopted into all new variants of the Lava guitar series. Next, the body was removed from the router and hand finished by the luthier in the team to give it flowing and fluid curves. Manufacturing the prototype.

(Image courtesy of Lava.) The neck was finished professionally by hand to produce nice organic curves and the groove was cut and drilled to install the truss rod (a steel rod that runs along the length of the neck). The fingerboard was then glued onto the neck and the headstock hardware and tuning heads were added. Next, the guitar body was coated with tung oil or acrylic to provide a tough but natural-looking finish. After the shape and the finish were complete, the electronic and mechanical hardware was added, including pickups, circuitry, pots, a jack plug input and knobs. As mentioned previously, the Lava Drop is available in three different models, the Lava Drop +, Lava Drop – and Lava Drop X (as seen in the picture below). Each guitar is as unique as the grain of the piece of wood it’s cut from, ensuring the instrument is one-of-a-kind and impossible to copy or plagiarize. The Lava range.

Lava Drop + This model is the 24-fretted version and is made from a single piece of American/European maple wood together with ebony fingerboard. In terms of hardware, it features a Schaller tremolo bridge and two Lace Alumitone split-coil humbuckers (allowing for five-pickup tone combinations) and apparently creates rich, bright tones suited to rock, blues, country and funk. Lava Drop – This is the fretless version and is handcrafted from one piece of dark sapele wood with an ebony fingerboard.

This guitar has the same hardware as the Lava Drop +, but due to the lack of frets, it’s better suited to jazz, world music and slide guitar styles. Lava Drop X As a guitarist and synth player, this version is of most interest to me personally. It has a laser-controlled MIDI controller, which means that it can connect to a computer or synth and musicians can control whatever synth or tonal parameters that they’ve programmed into the synth—purely by waving their hands around in thin air (similar to a theremin)! In terms of physical hardware, it is manufactured from a single piece of merbau wood (used in shipbuilding), has aircraft-grade aluminum trim and has actual hardened volcanic lava embedded as fingerboard inlays (fret markers). Again, this is a fretted version, with 24 frets.

It features a Lace Deathbucker split-coil bridge pickup, a standard jack output and an XLR output. For MIDI usage, the Lava Drop X can be hooked up to any software sequencer package (such as Ableton, Cubase, etc.) via a custom interface box. Traditional luthier handiwork.

Final Thoughts As you can see, SOLIDWORKS has been a useful tool in the creation of the Lava Drop range—and there are many other ways you can utilize the software for designing instruments. On the SOLIDWORKS blog shows how you can use simulation to analyze the frequency of tensioned guitar strings. After all, a guitar string is effectively just a beam that is fixed at both ends, and as we know, SOLIDWORKS simulation is pretty good at beams. This shows how you can model a tuning head using SOLIDWORKS 2015. There are a whole bunch of other videos on YouTube showing tips and tricks for those wishing to design a guitar of their own. Personally, I would love to see someone model the entire guitar with tensioned strings and perform simulations on the neck. There can be over 200 lbs of tension across the strings on a guitar neck, which is why most guitars contain a truss rod!

The Lava Drop range is now available through a, which Gražys hopes will spread the word of his beautiful creations. So feel free to click the link and show some support. Download Bharat Ek Khoj Episode 35 on this page.

And maybe you too can own one of these unique instruments. About the Author.

Some tools work with parts, while others are used in assemblies and still others are general tools that work with all document types, including drawings. There are also tools that are geared toward specific industries. Many of these tools are available in SOLIDWORKS Standard, Professional and Premium levels.

Different levels offer different tools. In this article, I will discuss many of the most commonly used tools and provide a description of each tool. The majority of these tools are available from the Evaluate tab of the SOLIDWORKS Command Manager.

Some of these tools must first be activated by enabling the add-in. There are tools for checking manufacturability, cost, conformance to company standards and even environmental impact in your design: • DFMXpress can be used to check the manufacturability of a design.

This tool ships with all levels of SOLIDWORKS. • Costing, available in Professional, allows users to instantly get an estimate of the cost of a design—and it offers feedback on which features are most expensive so users can quickly redesign the part to reduce the cost. • Design Checker is available with Professional and Premium levels. Design Checker allows users to create checks to ensure that designs meet company standards. This tool can also make corrections when a check fails. • Sustainability can help users evaluate the environmental impact of a design.

Sustainability Xpress ships with all levels of the software and works only with parts. Sustainability is available with Premium and will work with parts and assemblies. There are industry-specific tools for those that work in the mold, plastics or forging industries. With the exception of Plastics, the following tools ship with all versions of the software: • Draft Analysis, Undercut Analysis, Parting Line Analysis and Thickness Analysis can identify problems in parts or tooling. • Deviation Analysis, Curvature and Zebra Stripes can show flaws on the faces of a design. • Check and Geometry Analysis can find flaws in model imported geometry. Import Diagnostics can detect and fix faulty faces and gaps that can cause issues later in a design and prevent the user from being able to create a 3D solid model.

• Compare Documents allows users to compare two separate models, assemblies and drawings and identifies any differences between them. This is useful when it’s necessary to identify changes quickly in a newer version of a file. • Plastics adds additional tools and capabilities for those working in the plastics industry. Plastics is only available as a separately purchased item. Many tools are specific to assemblies. Unless noted, these tools are available with all levels of the software: • Tolerance Stack-up is available with Professional and Premium levels and can prevent manufacturing errors resulting from tolerance stack-up issues.

• Interference Detection will identify interference between components. Coincident faces can be listed as interfering, which can be useful in preventing excessive wear. A selection of parts or an entire assembly can be analyzed and interference in subassemblies can be ignored. • Clearance Verification checks the gap between parts. • Collision Detection allows users to check if moving parts collide. Run Interference Detection before Collision Detection, as interference between the selected components will prevent Collision Detection from finding a solution. As with Interference Detection, a selection of parts or an entire assembly can be analyzed.

Collision Detection is available in the Move option menu. • Hole Alignment checks for misaligned holes. The “Hole center deviation” sets the maximum deviation that will be evaluated.

Holes that exceed this deviation will be ignored, as will aligned holes. • Physical Dynamics, like Collision Detection, is available from the Move menu. As components are manually moved, collisions between components are captured and the mates for those components are evaluated to determine how the components should move.

The result is realistic motion within an assembly. • Motion is similar to Physical Dynamics, except that the motion is defined manually. While not actually an analysis tool, this tool can help users understand the intended motion of an assembly. Motion studies are available near the bottom of the window.

• Assembly Visualization allows users to rank parts by mass and quantity, as well as other user-definable criteria. This tool provides a graphical representation of the ranking. • Top-down design is not so much a tool as a modeling practice. By creating parts in the context of an assembly, users can capture important relations between these parts. This will allow changes in one part to automatically change other related parts.

SOLIDWORKS also includes a number of general tools. Unless noted, these tools are available with all levels of the software: • The Measure tool allows users to measure distances between faces, edges and vertices. It can also provide the area, perimeter, radius and diameter of a selection(s). • The Mass Properties tool calculates model properties, such as mass, density, volume and moment of inertia. These values are calculated using the design’s geometry as well as the materials. • The Center of Mass tool will, as the name implies, identify your design’s center of mass. • The Sensors feature will provide real-time warnings if a criterion is exceeded.

The criteria available include simulation data, mass properties, dimensions, component interference, measured values, proximity of components and costing data. • Design Study can be used with simulation parameters, Sensors, or user-defined global variables to help optimize a design. Once the criteria for the Design Study are defined, the designer modifies the design until all the criteria are met.

Like a Motion Study, a Design Study is available in the pane near the bottom of the window. • Symmetry Analysis evaluates part or assembly symmetry about a selected plane. There are also tools available in the Simulation group of tools: • Simulation is used to predict how a design will perform under loading. The purpose is to determine if a component will fail under a defined load.

A design can be optimized using targets such as maximum stress, maximum deviation and factor of safety. Simulation tools are available at the following four levels: ο Simulation Xpress is available at all levels of the software, but is limited to single body parts and linear materials. Ο Premium includes linear analysis for both parts and assemblies as well as multi-body parts.

This level of Simulation also gives the designer greater control over simulation parameters such as the type of load, restraints and mesh density. Ο Simulation Standard adds fatigue analysis, which allows users to estimate the life expectancy of a product. This level of Simulation is only available as a separately purchased item. Ο Simulation Professional adds optimization, frequency, buckling, thermal and drop test analysis. This level of Simulation is only available as a separately purchased item.

Ο Simulation Premium adds the ability to run an analysis on nonlinear materials and is also only available as a separately purchased item. There are additional distinctions between the different levels of Simulation. SOLIDWORKS provides a that lists these differences. • Simulation Flow evaluates fluid flow as well as heat transfer. FloXpress is available with all levels of the software and the full version of Flow is available as a separately purchased item.

Electronic Cooling and an HVAC module are also available. Again, SOLIDWORKS provides a that lists the capabilities of the different Flow offerings. With all of the tools SOLIDWORKS offers to evaluate your design, design errors no longer need to be responsible for manufacturing errors. About the Author.