News Archives - Page 33 of 52 - SolidWorks Legion

Staying Connected to all things SWW10

There’s already a lot of buzz being built about SolidWorks World 2010 (SWW10), even with it being months away. To help readers keep track of the goings-on, SoildWorks website has a pipe that feeds articles from many of the SolidWorks related blogs. Not every article fed into the pipe is going to be about SolidWorks World 2010 right now, but a lot of them are about it already (such as the article you are reading right now).

Additionally, on that same webpage resides a Twitter fed pipe for all tweets labelled with the hatch #SWW10 or #SWW2010. Since the SolidWorks World 2010 hatch is used, it’s a sure bet that the tweets fed into the pipe are about SWW10 in some fashion or another. There aren’t many tweets just yet, but as we get closer to the conference, this will change drastically as more comments and planning are discussed.

In addition to this, I’ve set up the Twitter pipe on SolidWorks Legion, which will remain visible in the upper right menu until some time after SWW10 concludes in January 2010. *Update, I’ve removed the Twitter feed from my sidebar due to slow load times. Please see my Twitter feed page.*

SolidWorks 2010: Mouse Gestures

SolidWorks Corp has been working hard to improve the user experience. SolidWorks 2010 has examples have several innovative interface additions. The one addition that is sure to get a lot of attention is Mouse Gestures.

Mouse Gestures is a simple a menu scheme that is controlled by the RMB and a gesture (or short movement) of the mouse. When the RMB is clicked and held briefly in addition to a very slight movement of the mouse, a wheel menu appears around the cursor location.

Simply continue to hold the RMB down and move the cursor over the desired command. Without any further action, that command will execute and the menu wheel will disappear. If the RMB is released before a selection is made, the menu wheel is cancelled without any command executed.

If the traditional RMB is desired instead of the menu wheel, simply give the RMB a quick click (same as it ever was) without a mouse movement.

As with the “S” key shortcut menu scheme, Mouse Gestures menu wheel is customizable and context sensitive. The user is allowed 4 or 8 gestures with four different menus for each of the major modes: Part, Assembly, Drawing and Sketch. These are customized under a new tab in the good ol’ Tools>Customize… window.

Here are the eight gesture choices that can be assigned to particular commands:

Mouse Gestures is suprizingly easy to use. It’s intuitive when it is activated intentionally. However, I have found myself activating it unintentionally once in awhile. This may result in the surprize command being executed before I even know what hit me. So, for now and for me, Mouse Gesturing will be limited to View Modify functions. I certainly won’t be placing the Quit in my menu wheel. That said, the usual result of the accidental activation is just that the user will see the menu wheel briefly ghost in and out before any command is executed.

Mouse Gestures is a great new tool that looks to be a major time saver for frequently used commands. I’m looking forward to having a bit of fun playing with Mouse Gestures and customizing its functions until I find just the right combination of commands for each mode.

SolidWorks 2010 Usability: Attach Annotations to Dimensions

There are a ton of subtle improvements in SolidWorks 2010 to improve its usability. Many of these improvements might seem small now, but once one is reliant on the new functionality, it will seem like we’ve always had it this way. Attaching annotations to dimensions is now easier with expanded capability. Here’s a couple of examples showing-off these new capabilities.

Drop Annotation Notes into Dimensions

It is now possible to drag an annotation note and drop it onto a dimension, to become apart of that dimension callout. First, LMB click and hold on the annotation note.

Select annotation text

Then, simply drag that annotation note on top of the dimension.

Selected text becomes apart of dimension

The result is that the text from the annotation note is now included within the text of the dimension. One limitation is that the dimension field still does not support borders around selected text.

Attach Annotations to Dimensions

Other types of annotation that can be attached to dimensions include GD&T feature control frames, datum feature symbols and surface finish symbols.

Annotations attach in more ways to dimensions

Annotations and their leaders may now be attached directly to extension lines.
GD&T annotations now may be dropped right into a dimension callout and then detached with the use of the handles in the upper left corner.
Annotations may now be moved around extension lines, and more easily moved from one attachment to another.

Plastic failure causes (brief overview)

There are many causes for failure in plastic parts. These can cause a variety of problems too. Here are some common root causes:

part was originally designed to be made from metal.
part may have design flaws due to stress concentrations and creep.
chemical interactions; in fact, even when a plastic may not be affected by a chemical under low stress, it may be susceptible in higher stress scenarios (environmental stress cracking or ESC).
poor decisions when utilizing material substitution and additives.
manufacturing process, or lack of control thereof.

With all of these common causes for the failure of plastic parts, one might wonder how does one maneuver the design and process mine field. It is important to traverse these issues since a failure in plastic parts can cause lose of valuable time, materials, customers, and can even lead to litigation. One important tool a company can use to combat and prevent such failure is making sure the engineering education of employees is up to the task for designing plastic parts and/or their molds. It is also important to seek out experienced processors who have the knowledge base required for successful part making. Of course, even when everything is done right, problems may still arise. This is where experience in process and design can be the difference between quickly correcting issues or getting stuck without any support.

Source: Fighting Failure in Plastics by Michael Tolinski – Plastics Engineering July/August 2009

Jeff Ray and CATIA/SolidWorks translator

Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks Jeff Ray recently commented about SolidWorks/CATIA relationship in an interview with Ralph Grabowski (seemingly misquoted by Deelip Meneze in his article):

Customers are fed up with not being able to share data between Catia and SolidWorks.

Grabowski then predicts, “at some point, a translator will be delivered.” But this apparently is not a comment made by Jeff Ray himself.

Lunch with Jeff Ray In the discussion that Jeff Ray had with the bloggers at the Blogger Event in early August, there was a hint that a translator between SolidWorks and CATIA isn’t good enough. Does this mean that SolidWorks needs to be able to natively use CATIA files (and vice versa)? Is something really coming that will address this long standing issue?

Meneze, in his article commenting on the Grabowski interview, goes on to list several reasons why making a translator between SolidWorks and CATIA is doable right now. Meneze does this in the context of his statement,

Dassault Systems has made laughing stock out of SolidWorks and its customers.

This was followed up by Matt Lombard who proposed,

This is of course a business decision, not a technical decision, ratcheting customers toward Catia rather than toward SolidWorks. Just like the version incompatibility ratchet.

Well, I’m not sure these are entirely accurate statements. I’m under the impression that Dassault Systemes is aware they are losing business because their two major 3D CAD applications do not fully communicate. Some large customers (who will not be mentioned here…but there’s a clue here) have standardized with CATIA for the high level 3D CAD work, but continue to use a list of other 3D CAD applications that does not include SolidWorks. One likely reason is that SolidWorks cannot use CATIA files, where their competitors can, as Lombard rightfully points out in his article. So, Jeff Ray is right. Something has to be done to correct this issue. Thank you to Grabowski for stirring the pot.

Ya’no, if Microsoft ran their business like this, we’d still see Lotus 1-2-3, Word Perfect, and Netscape lining the shelves at the local computer store. Why as Dassault Systemes allowed this gaping hole in their product line to exist for so long?

SolidWorks 2010 More speed tests (Tune-up III)

So, I set out to make really bad use of Delete Face and Surface-Fill features. This would be a completely outside the box type of screwing around that might not be expected, just to see if I can maximize the contrast between speed improvements from SolidWorks 2009 to SolidWorks 2010.

The motor-casing model that comes in the Samples folder of SolidWorks 2009 seems to tax SolidWorks a bit as is, all without any fancy features. In SW 2009, I used the Delete Face feature to remove all of the internal walls in the main casing. This was followed up with horrible Surface-Fill to patch the hole. (Please take note of the rather unnecessarily wavy Surface-Fill results.) After saving and Rebuilding twice, I checked the model’s Statistics. The image below represents one of the better Rebuild (CTRL-Q) results I was able to achieve in SW 2009. No surprizes. Surface-Fill is on top and Delete Face is near the top.

Next, in SolidWorks 2010, I opened that very same file. After saving in SW 2010 format, I closed the file and reopened it, then checked the Rebuild results there. Strange…. I didn’t notice much of a difference. This was starting to look a bit like my previous round of tests on another model (See the previous article in this series). To check this further, another test needed to be done.

I deleted the Delete Face and Surface-Fill features and recreated them from scratch in within SW 2010. Three things happened. First, I was able to more quickly access both the Surface-Fill and Delete Face commands. Second, SolidWorks made a much more logical choice in how to form the Surface-Fill feature. Note how smooth it is versus the same feature created in the same fashion within SW 2009 (predictable results when creating features is another area where SW 2010 has improved). Third, look at what happened to the Delete Face Rebuild times!

Surface-Fill time reduced from 5.13s to 3.16s. Delete Face time reduced from 0.63s to 0.09s! It may be that the Surface-Fill time is more a factor of the simpler form than improvements in the underlying code. However, since the software did make a more logical choice in the formation of the Surface-Fill, this still kinda counts. Either way, the big news is the time savings on Delete Face!

Who really cares?!

OK, OK, now the question from many comes up, “I’ve never use Delete Face; who cares about it!?” In fact, in my test here, the difference in Rebuild times is entirely traced back to the Surface-Fill and Delete Face features. No other Rebuild improvements are witnessed in any of the more common features. So where does this leave individuals whose focus is on machine or sheet metal parts, where Delete Face would generally be very bad practice? Well, as mentioned in the previous article, other areas have also been improved.

Improvements to multibody parts and related commands, Weldment cutlist updates, and equation performance have been reported by SolidWorks Corp. Other areas may have also been improved, but I have yet to get confirmation of those. The funny thing is that performance improvements aren’t really covered in the SolidWorks 2010 What’s New file!

In the What’s New file, I only found information about selecting a large number of entities within a sketch to create blocks as being “much faster”, and that Copy and Paste within Sketch mode is faster. Nothing else readily comes up! So, why does it seem that SolidWorks Corp is letting one of the more significant improvements in SolidWorks 2010 go under-reported (practically by word of mouth)? I only found out about these improvements because the faster times for Delete Face was briefly demonstrated at the recent Blogger Event at SolidWorks HQ in Concord, MA.

The cynical side of me might say they’ve made no big announcement because they don’t want to make a big deal about how slow SolidWorks has been in the past. However, the devil’s advocate might say that they’ve made so many improvements, they may not have a collected list of those items even now (as the case may actually be), and certainly didn’t have that list when the What’s New file was released. Either way, it is almost fun trying to find the speed improvements, like an Easter Egg hunt (pun intended…and if you understand why that is a pun, you are truly a geek).