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Archive for September, 2008

By now, many of you have probably been playing with the new PhotoView  rendering application for a while, enjoying its ease of use, and creating all kinds of cool photo realistic images with it, haven’t you?  Well, how about sharing  what you think about it with SolidWorks?  By filling out a small survey, you can  let them know not only how you like it, but also what you would like to see in future versions of the product. So, go ahead and fill out the survey today. It’s only eleven questions!  And, when you are done with it, you can take a look at the gallery of cool images created by the PhotoView Community.

Ever since Kenneth mentioned the “missing part” about the vacuum chamber, I’ve received a few emails from people requesting the video, so, by popular demand, here it is. In this video, Kenneth is showing us a few very interesting things he did with weldments, including, of course, the vacuum chamber and the use of 3D sketches in weldments too.  Hope you find it useful!

I got inspiration for this little tip from a question sent to me while I was in Barcelona, last week.  It wasn’t until now that I got a chance to take a look at it and send a reply, so I hope it wasn’t too late for the person that asked the question. Anyway, this person had a simple assembly in which a couple of pneumatic cylinders were mounted on two identical pillars (one on the left and one on the right),  and they were mated to and pushing one side of a flat component that was mated to both pillars on its other side, like a hinge. The whole assembly reminded me of the slats and flaps in an airplane’s wing.  As I said before, the assembly was a very simple one, all concentric and coincident mates, nothing out of the ordinary. However, for some strange reason, it was full of errors!  The feature manager looked like a little Christmas tree and many of the mates had warnings or couldn’t find solutions at all…. But there was really nothing wrong with those mates! 

The assembly contained a couple of flexible subassemblies, one for each cylinder, so I decided to take a look at them.  When opened in their own windows, the subassemblies worked just fine, no errors, nothing was over defining them. So, what was wrong?  I tried recreating the assembly from scratch, mating each component one by one, and it all worked fine until the moment I added (and mated) the second cylinder to the mix… I tried with the subassemblies as rigid, instead of flexible, just in case, but the same happened…  Hmmm… But why? Both cylinders were identical! In the end, I came up with what I think may be the solution. Let me explain.

First of all, I didn’t want to post this person’s assembly here, just in case it was part of some private project, so I created another very similar example, only using a couple of rods as a subassembly, instead of the pneumatic cylinder. Notice how the assembly is full or errors, despite being so simple. And “What’s wrong?” doesn’t give me much information either.  It would seem like most of my mates are over defining the assembly or can’t find a solution, just because.

Perhaps this will give away the answer that I came up with, but I do have to mention that the mates in this person’s subassembly included a Limit Distance mate to prevent the piston from popping out of the cylinder when the assembly was in motion.  In order to recreate that in my subassembly, I added a Limit Angle mate between the two rods. When all components are put together, this limit angle mate should not only limit the movement of those two rods respective to one another, but it should also determine how much the flap can rotate around the hinged side.

So, did you figure it out yet? Yes? No? Well, something changed for the better when I suppressed the Limit Distance mate in one of the cylinders. Suddenly, after rebuilding the parent assembly, all the errors in all the mates were gone, just like that! A similar thing happened in my assembly.   

In my assembly, I suppressed the Limit Angle mate in only one of the subassemblies. It was OK to leave it in the other subassembly, though.

So, I have this theory that it was precisely the Limit mate that was over defining the assembly, not because there is anything wrong with the mate, since it works great in the subassembly by itself, but because when all the mates get solved in the parent assembly, having the limit mate in both subassemblies (same ones that are mated to both sides of the flap) is almost the same as applying it twice to the same components. In fact, I did a little experiment eliminating the subassemblies and applying a limit mate directly between the flap and each pillar. I was able to apply one limit mate on one side, but when I tried to apply the second one, I got a warning that it would over define the assembly.

So, what do you think? Is my theory right or wrong? Has this ever happened to you?

Just as I promised before, here is the video of Kenneth Barrentine’s presentation on weldments, from the last Tri-Valley SWUG meeting. I hope you find it useful. I haven’t ventured into weldments myself. So far, I’ve only used the weldment symbols in drawings, but I can’t deny they sound really interesting.

I had a great time in Spain, but it’s always good to be home. This little trip also served the purpose of a “walk-in-your-shoes” experiment for my husband and me, since it’s usually him who gets to travel the world. I’m glad to report that the experiment was a big success. I was empowered by a deeper understanding and respect for my husband and all the travel that his job requires, and well, my husband tried to take care of everything, but the house was a real mess when I arrived, just like I hoped… err… I mean… My husband also gained deeper understanding and respect for me.  Yes, let’s go with that one… Hmmm, you know, this reminds me a bit of something that was said during the presentations on Thursday. I’m not exactly sure, but I think it was Jeff Ray who mentioned that SolidWorks was trying their best to understand the deepest needs of their clients by spending time (as much time as needed) with the client and observing every single detail of their everyday activities (at least as much as they are allowed to observe, anyway), not just talking about SolidWorks products in some meeting room. I guess this is similar to walking in your shoes to see how it’s really like being you. Most of the time, this is the only real way to gain the insight you need to truly understand what the other is going through and what would make their life or work easier. Since companies can’t really trade places with their customers, spending time with them is the next best thing, I guess.

Anyway, I realized that I didn’t say much about the hands-on session at IQS Engineering School, and that was one of my favorite parts of the event, so here goes a little more detail about it.

As I mentioned before, on Friday morning they took us to IQS Engineering School for a brief presentation and a hands-on session using SW2009. IQS is a prestigious private university in Barcelona that has recently adopted SolidWorks as part of their curriculum.

It was really interesting to see how in very little time they were already making the best of SolidWorks, using it to teach the students the fundamentals of Fluid Dynamics and Design of Mechanisms, for instance. Also interesting is the fact that IQS, being a private institution, doesn’t receive any money from government, so it must rely on the money from tuition and the income generated from its collaboration with the local industry. Why is this important? Well, it is because it means that whatever tools they teach their students, these tools must be in sync with what the industry is currently using and/or demanding, in order for the students (and the university as a service provider for the industry) to remain competitive, and apparently there is great demand for SolidWorks skills in Barcelona at the moment.

After the presentation, we moved to one of the classrooms for the hands-on session where we were each given the opportunity to use SW2009, while following along a series of “what’s new?” tutorials  demoed by Fielder Hiss, Rich Allen, Mark Schnieder and other SW folks, that were always more than glad to give us a hand whenever we got stuck.

This was interesting, to say the least. I think one of the biggest challenges faced by our instructors was the fact that the SW skills of the participants were all over the spectrum, ranging from the confused first time user to the expert, and then those of us in various stages in between. I sat next to a journalist whose name I don’t remember and who, at first glance, seemed to have it all under control.  As I was following along the first tutorial on speed packs, I took a quick look to my right and saw that he was busy flipping the model and changing appearances, instead. Later on he confessed to being completely lost and, after some assistance, he was able to catch up with the rest of the group.

Al Dean was sitting a couple of chairs from where I was and I could see that he was just doing his own thing, just exploring what else was in the software and having fun with it, not really following along the tutorials. I saw him playing a bit with the plastics tutorials, as well as with 3DVIA. He was not lost at all, just following his own way, but I think that’s OK too, because the idea of these sessions is also to provide the journalists with the opportunity of experiencing the software, not just to tell them what’s new, if they had no idea what was in the software to begin with. With that idea in mind, I think the hands-on session went really well and accomplished the goal.  For me, it meant a great opportunity to learn a few things I didn’t know, since I had the chance to ask a few questions that came to mind while following along the tutorials on speed pack and SolidWorks Simulation. I think I only have a couple of suggestions for the next hands-on session: the first one is please, get a bigger screen for the presenter, or somehow better resolution for the projection, since it was really hard to see what was going on, and  the second one is please, give the instructor a microphone…  OK, this may be just me going deaf or having trouble processing sounds, but it was really hard to listen to his instructions from where I was. All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience, and one that brought back memories of my own years in college.

And now I leave you with a nice picture of the SolidWorks bloggers for your collection. In the back, from left to right, Matt Lombard, Devon Sowell, Josh Mings, Jason Raak. In the front, from left to right, Mike Puckett, Brian McElyea, and yours truly.