The visit to SolidWorks headquarters in Concord, MA has been very eventful. This has been on busy trip. The schedule has been full from each early morning to evening. The SolidWorks bloggers definitely have a lot of material to work from in the up coming months. There is a lot of detail on already available information, as well as a ton of info about what’s to come soon. One thing that is coming up that SolidWorks Corp is very proud is Sustainability and SustainabilityXpress. There’s also a lot of exciting improvements to SolidWorks 2010 that make it worth a look when it comes out. More to come, including “secret” photos of the SolidWorks operations. 😉 For now, I’m heading out to my long flight back home.
Lexington, MA
Lexington is a small community just outside of Boston on your way to Concord in Massachusetts. It’s one of those places visitors may not expect to find themselves when coming to this grand state. It has a quaint downtown with simple flare. SolidWorks Corp (aka DS SolidWorks Corporation) has invited many of the SolidWorks bloggers to this locale for what looks to be an all-you-can-eat buffet of their product offerings in the Concord headquarters, with glimpses of what is to come for SolidWorks 2010. This is my first visit to Concord, MA and to the SolidWorks Corp headquarters. There’s a few returnees to the headquarters in our group of attendees. Every attendee has been a SolidWorks Corp guest to press events in the past. This event is technically not a press event (being just for SolidWorks bloggers); it is my first time I am a guest of SolidWorks Corp at an event outside of SolidWorks World. I’m a excited about that and the prospect of being able to see the SolidWorks Corp headquarters.
It’s All Over!
When “All Over” is applied to a Profile of a Surface, it pretty much defines the entire shape of a part in every direction.
ASME Y14.5M-2009 has been out for a little while now (after almost a year’s delay). There are significant improvements and clarifications. One addition in particular caught my attention, the ALL OVER symbol. When applied to a Profile of a Surface, it pretty much defines the entire shape of a part in every direction (not just ALL AROUND which applies to the profile of a surface along a particular plane).
The symbol is either a double circle at the vertex of the associated bent leader, or the words ALL OVER placed immediately below the feature control frame.
The symbol indicates that a profile tolerance or other specification shall apply all over the three-dimensional profile of a part. It is applied as “unless otherwise specified” to allow for other existing dimensions and tolerances to take precedence.
The advantage of using this symbol is that it provides control of surfaces over an entire part without regard to part orientation, thus allowing us to directly reference the CAD model as basic and fully controlled, while still detailing critical dimensions and tolerances. This may help companies better parts where they rely on the CAD model to provide complete specification. In fact, where a CAD model is declared basic, companies may be able to effectively place the Profile of a Surface FCF with the ALL OVER symbol right into their drawing title blocks along side other tolerancing information.
June SW Legion Contest analysis (Part 3) – No July Contest
There will be no July SW Legion contest. I’m planning on something a bit bigger for August and September, so for now, I’ll take a month’s break from contests. June SW Legion Contest was very successful. As promised, I’m going to discuss some of the variety of entries. There are many ways to approach modelling in SolidWorks. This the June SW Legion Contest is proof of that.
One of the more interesting scalene ellipsoid model entries was technically not a solid model. Rather, it was a Surface-Loft, with three sketches (each with an ellipse in the proper proportions), by Ian Vivero. This was the most functional of all scalene entries because it effectively used equations to drive the shape with one dimension value.
Of the scalene submissions, Matt Lombard’s was the simplest, with one Loft and one cleaver 3D sketch. The problem is that I was not able to confirm its scaleneness. The shape did not fall exactly along ellipses in all three directions. This entry relied on the default SolidWorks choices for a lofted shape. It was very close, however.
Two entries used exactly the same methodology: a simple revolve of a half circle that was then scaled in the appropriate proportions in X, Y and Z directions. Very simple and cleaver. These submittees were Cam Shute and Gary Liptrot.
Another cleaver entry that also had only three elements was by Arash Erfanian (unofficial winner who earned a CSWSP-FEA test). This entry was one Sweep feature with one 2D sketch and one 3D sketch.
Other entries that were equally cleaver, but with more elements. This included one entry that used another method with Surface-Loft and mirror features.
Two entries relied of the fact that I did not word my contest properly. True to my word the one legitimate entry does represent the official winner of the contest, Sandeep Pawar (who chose a CSWP test as the prize).
Enhancement Request
So, I am teaching the students how to reuse pre-existing data in SolidWorks. The project is using a Truarc – E-Clip retaining ring. Cool stuff – Toolbox has the Truarc catalog to just drag and drop. Toolbox Pull-down has the groove generator with the intelligence to select the correct groove size/feature for the Truarc E-Clip by having the user just select the shaft surface. Awesome stuff right? That is until you realize that the dimensions, relations and tolerances have to be applied manually. All the information is there so why doesn’t SolidWorks just dump the info in.Here is the best part, up until that point the students think I am God handing out the solution that they could have used the semester previous. “Oh man! We could have used this on 4 project last semester” Then we DEFINE the groove. “Why would I want to use this tool?” That is the outstanding question of the year! Why have an incomplete tool. It ends up being 3 times the work to define the groove than if you just did the revolved cut. No matter if your company is model centric or still uses drawings the size/location dimensions and tolerances still need to be there. Please jump on this bandwagon and complete the enhancement request to finish this tool. In theory it is a huge time saver and could potentially help designers and engineers from making mistakes about o-ring and retaining part numbers, sizes, dimensions and tolerances. –Chris MacCormack
Methodology in making solid models (a discussion)
According to some of my sources (who shall remain nameless), there was a time when SolidWorks Corp thought about making a something like a best modelling practices guide for SolidWorks users. The idea of best practices is something of which I’ve been critical. The main reason is that every situation, environment, company and industry is different, with different needs. Even the same tools in SolidWorks are be used in completely different ways to achieve desired results.
An example of this can be sheet metal functionality. Sheet metal models may be created in one way for a company that makes cabinet chassis and be used completely differently at a company that makes furniture. Heck, even within just one industry, different methods may be employed for different scenarios.
Each company should develop their own standard or set of standards. Depending on the environment and type of modelling, these may be rigid, they may be very general, or somewhere in-between.  Set rules can apply to the models and assemblies. Rules may even vary from project to project, depending on business needs. Even non-design considerations come in to play when setting up standards. Network setup, computing power, PDM/PLM/ERP programs, etc can impact methodology.
All of these variables make it impossible to establish best practices for all of SolidWorks users. This is likely why SolidWorks Corp has seemingly dropped the idea of providing set best practices advice.