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Archive for August, 2009

Just as I promised before, here’s a bit more of what’s new in SolidWorks 2010. This time, let me tell you about some improvements that have been made to the user interface for the Simulation products. Simulation Xpress got some of the biggest changes.

I must confess I hadn’t checked any of this out until after I heard about it while visiting DS SolidWorks offices in Massachusetts a few weeks ago.  What we’re going to see now is that the workflow of the user interface in Simulation Xpress has been changed so that it works just like the rest of the Simulation products. So now you’ll see that when you go to the Simulation Xpress Analysis Wizard it starts in a task pane, just like regular Simulation advisor does too, and you’re going to find that it goes through a lot of the same steps as the core Simulation advisor does. Notice also the links available, such as this one over here about free online training on SolidWorks Simulation Fundamentals.  If you click on it, it will take you to a website where you can access free online training opportunities on Simulation Xpress.

The task pane on the wizard works a bit like an index that tells us where we are and what we need to do. It sort of walks us through the whole process and also goes adding checkmarks next to those steps that have already been completed.  Furthermore, when we hover over the hyperlinks included in the task pane, we get visual examples and additional information that applies to each of these steps specifically. For instance, in this image you can see the kind of visual information I get about fixtures.

In this other one you can see one of the many examples of forces that are provided. These are actually very nice animations, by the way, but of course you can’t appreciate that in the screenshot.

Notice how the user interface looks exactly the same as the one in regular Simulation.

 One thing that has been added with this new release and that wasn’t available in Simulation Xpress before is the ability to change mesh density from coarse to fine. It’s a global mesh density, though, no localized mesh control.

After running the Simulation, results will begin to be provided right away, using the same solver Simulation does, and once it’s finished the wizard will ask if this is the way you were expecting your part to deform. If it’s not what you were expecting, you can always go back to change fixtures or loads that were previously added. 

If, however, this is what you were expecting, it will go ahead and create a Simulation Study that you can then take right into the core Simulation product. This is also something new in this release, and the main idea behind allowing you to do this is to provide consistency for those users that may be working inside a team where part of the engineers may not have Simulation while others do, as well as make life easier for those users that perhaps started out with the SolidWorks Standard version and could be thinking of upgrading to SolidWorks Premium, for instance.  They will no longer feel like they have to re-learn how to do simulation, because it will look, feel and work just the same way.

Although the optimization process is not precisely something new, notice once more the change in the user interface.  After viewing results, as usual, the wizard will ask if we desire to optimize the model. Notice how the new changes in the user interface make it easier to keep track of what we’re doing and our goals in this optimization process. In this example, we have the variable to optimize (one of the dimensions in the part), minimum and maximum values for that variable, our constraint (maximum stress value), and our goal which is to minimize the part’s overall mass.

After a few iterations, we obtain an optimum value for our dimension according to our goals and constraints. In Simulation Xpress we can’t however, see the values of all the other different iterations, only the optimum.

But these are not the only changes in the user interface. Simulation (not Xpress) also got a few ones of its own. For instance, check out what happens when you hover over in the graphics area; you get instant feedback on loads and fixtures as you hover over these items. And not only that, but also by simply double clicking on their icons, you can now easily edit loads and fixtures as needed.

Other small improvements are, for instance, when presenting results; it now shows them in floating decimal notation by default, instead of scientific. This is sort of a response to the struggle many users seemed to have with that kind of scientific notation. Plus, you can now use comma separators! I know, not a big deal, but all those zeros can be confusing.

All throughout Simulation you’ll see that you’ll now be able to edit the definition of several similar items at the same time, like this group of bolt connectors, for instance. All you have to do is Shift + Select them all and then right click and choose Edit Definition, then make the changes you need to do and they will apply to all the bolt connectors in the list you selected. That simple!

In Simulation, the advisor now goes a lot deeper than before while walking you through the process, asking better questions than before and providing several examples and visual aids.

Little enhancements, perhaps, but they help improve the user’s work experience and that’s what this is all about.

Stay tuned, more to come soon! And make sure to check out all the other SolidWorks blogs, as well as SolidWorks brand new website, to find out about all that you’ve been missing if you haven’t been Beta testing this year.

A very cool product we heard about while at SolidWorks headquarters in Concord was what is called Sustainability Xpress, which will be included in every seat of SolidWorks 2010. To talk to us about it we had Jeremy Regnerus and Rich Chin, who was virtually present via remote conference.

It’s easy to see that the folks at SolidWorks are really excited about the introduction of this product, perhaps because sustainable design is becoming very important these days and specially with the automobile industry. Most everybody out there is now trying to “go green” some way or another, and even when not every single user may think they can take advantage of this new tool, SolidWorks knows there are quite a few users out there that can greatly benefit from it right now. So the way they went into this new venture was by partnering with PE International, which is the leader in sustainable design and have been implementing products and collecting data from different regions in the world for over twenty years. The idea was to take the knowledge and information provided by PE International and integrate it into SolidWorks in a way that was extremely easy to use for everyone. Jeremy compared this to the way it was when COSMOS Xpress first came out, extremely simple, extremely easy to use and completely integrated inside SolidWorks.

Jeremy pointed out that most of the time, engineers and designers don’t have any idea of how their designs can make a difference on the environment. They don’t know the real impact that adding or removing a feature, or choosing a different material or manufacturing process can actually have, so they are trying to make all of that obvious through the use of Sustainability Xpress.  And they are not just talking about making sure if the product is recyclable or not, which is what most of us usually associate with “green design”, but they are actually looking beyond that through a process they call lifecycle assessment, that actually takes into consideration everything that goes on from the extraction of any materials needed, transportation, pre-processing, manufacturing processes involved, consumer life cycle of the product and how it is going to be recycled or disposed off at the end of its useful life. This assessment is also different depending on where in the world it’s taking place, since different countries look at recycling and manufacturing processes in different ways.  

So, when assessing the impact that your design has on the environment, Sustainability Xpress is actually looking at the following four areas:

·         Carbon emissions:  A measure of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions

·         Energy consumption: A measure of non-renewable energy sources associated with the part’s  entire lifecycle

·         Air Acidification: This is a measure of the amount of Sulfur Dioxide that is produced during the part’s lifecycle and that will impact the environment by increasing the acidity of rain water, thus making land and water toxic for plants and animals

·         Water  Eutrophication: This  measures the impact of the process in which an excess of nutrients such as Nitrogen and Phosphorous are released into the water as waste, causing an overabundance of algae which depletes the water from oxygen,  making it unsuitable to sustain vegetable or animal life

Jeremy showed us an example of how Sustainability Xpress would help us create a better design for a part that is commonly used inside a computer. The part can be made as sheet metal or plastic, and the decision over the kind of material and process to use, as well as where in the world the part will be manufactured and consumed can make a big difference, since different countries use different sources of energy to power the manufacturing processes and not all countries are big about recycling. All this information has already been collected and organized by PE International and is presented in a very simple way when using Sustainability Xpress in SolidWorks 2010. Basically, all you need to do is tell SolidWorks your selection for material, manufacturing process and where your part will be manufactured and used, then you’ll obtain information about the impact of your design in the environment (carbon emissions, energy consumption, air and water pollution) based on your choices. In these two images you can see how the information on environmental impact (the pie charts at the  bottom) changes as you input information for your choice of material, manufacturing process, region of the world where it will be manufactured, as well as information about  transportation and use.

 

A very cool tool included with Sustainability Xpress is the Find Similar material, which allows you to find materials with mechanical properties that are similar to your first choice and compare the impact that manufacturing your part in any of these other materials would have on the environment.  As Rich Chin pointed out, something even cooler about this tool is that it can help create some awareness and curiosity among engineers and designers as they experiment with it and discover the ways their design choices impact the environment for good or for worse. The first image below shows the process of choosing the mechanical properties for comparison and the second image shows the list of similar materials that were found. As we select each of these similar materials, Sustainability Xpress will show how each of them impacts the environment as compared to the original one. Notice at the bottom of the second image that the material highlighted has a negative impact on Air and Water.

 

 

Once you are done doing your lifecycle assessment, you can then share your results with others by producing a word document that contains an image of your design and all the information on material, processes, and environmental impact that was provided by Sustainability Xpress. The coolest thing about this is that (coming soon) you will also be able to access a website where you can get information about these results in ways that are easier to visualize and understand, like comparing the results of carbon emissions generated during the lifecycle of the product to what the equivalent would be to driving a certain number of miles in an American car, a European car, etc.

So far, PE International has collected data for those countries and regions of the world that use their products or services for sustainable design; information is still missing for a few other regions of the word, such as South America, Africa and Australia, so you are not going to find any information about them in Sustainability Xpress, but they hope that as more users take advantage of their products and become aware of sustainable design, more information will be collected in the future.  This is a huge effort, actually, if you think about it, but SolidWorks hopes they can keep their users regularly updated if any new information on processes or materials is added to the database.  So far, however, Sustainability Xpress doesn’t support custom materials, only those available in SolidWorks list of materials, which, by the way, has been expanded in 2010 and is supposed to also be linked to Simulation, so now it will all be integrated together nicely.

While Sustainability Xpress will be available in every seat of SolidWorks 2010, they are expecting to launch Sustainability as a standalone product in the fall. This is SolidWorks Sustainability for those that are really serious about it!  Just as with the simulation products, there are things that you can’t do in Xpress that you will be able to do with the standalone version. For instance, Sustainability Xpress supports only parts; the standalone version will support assemblies and configurations, allowing you to make comparisons between different designs, as well as iterations in order to find the optimum one. 

And just in case all this information wasn’t enough for you, you can always go directly to PE International, since they are experts in sustainability and they not only create cutting edge software products for sustainable design (check out SoFi and GaBi), but they also provide individual assessment to companies of all kinds, such as Bayer, Siemens, Toyota, and Volkswagen, among many others, and will be glad to assist you one on one.  

So, go ahead, check out Sustainability Xpress in SolidWorks 2010 and see for yourself if this is something you can use to improve your designs and make a positive difference for the environment while you’re at it.

While at Concord we were treated to a hands-on session where we got to try out some of the new functionality that will be available in this new release.  Most of us had already been exploring it through the Beta testing program, but this was our chance to ask questions about it and satisfy our curiosity.  This is a big release and it was impossible to cover everything in so very little time, so we covered many of the release highlights, instead.

Jeremy Regnerus was facilitating this session for us and before starting he told us a bit about the three areas they focused as goals while working on this release:

·         Improving work experience

·         Reliability, performance, predictability and depth of functionality

·         Working smarter and faster

He pointed out to us that most of the improvements made in these areas are not always going to be so obviously shown to the user in the way of new buttons or check boxes, but it’s the kind of stuff that goes on behind the scenes and that makes the software more stable, reliable and predictable, and it’s actually 30% of the whole development. As an example he showed us a situation he called “Flipping Mates”, where all he was trying to do was to apply a mate between two components of an assembly. He did this first in 2009 and then in 2010. For 2009, as soon as the two faces are selected for mating, all other components in the assembly move around in unpredictable ways.

SolidWorks 2010 has fixed this situation and made adding mates a more predictable task, as you can appreciate in this second image.  Even if the alignment is flipped, the two components move by themselves and no other component is flipped or moved around like before.

Another example of these “behind the scenes” improvements is the fact that the rebuild time has been reduced by making improvements to sluggish, heavy features, such as Delete Face. He showed us an example of a file that used this particular feature extensively and that went from 16 seconds for rebuild time in 2009 to only 3.42 seconds in 2010. This may not sound like much to some because this wasn’t such a big part, but if you do the math for a bigger, more complex one, this is indeed a big improvement. Unfortunately, Jeremy didn’t have with him the list of the features that have been “put on a diet”, as if to say.

One more example of improvements was in the Extend Surface feature that now does a much better job than it used to in 2009. Take a look at the following images. Notice the first one, which was done in 2009, looks distorted where the edges meet, while the one made in 2010 looks perfectly smooth.

As an example of an improvement in the area of work experience, Jeremy pointed out that the installation process for SolidWorks 2010 is now easier and simpler than ever; the options are easier to find, what and where is installed is easier to find and choose, plus, if you don’t have any custom stuff in your SolidWorks installation directory, it actually goes and deletes the whole thing for you.

Jeremy also mentioned that probably for SP.0 there would be a new kind of online help available right inside SolidWorks. Unfortunately, he couldn’t show it to us because it’s not live yet, so it’s not available at the moment, but it promises to be something huge.  This online help refers to online resources, not to actual people interacting with the user, and is optional, so you will always be able to choose between online help or local help. One of the biggest reasons they came up with this is that every time they improve and update their help files, the way to make them available to the users is through the service packs, but not everybody remembers to say that they also need to update the help files when they update a service pack, because most everybody is in a hurry to download those files and get done. With online help there won’t be a need to wait for a service pack anymore; if anything changes and they need to update the help files, the user will have this new information available immediately.  With online help they can also update to different languages as needed. It’s much more flexible and it opens a lot of possibilities for what they can do in the future with online resources.

One more of these improvements you don’t always notice right away is the fact that they are trying to make every property manager inside SolidWorks to look, feel and work pretty much the same, in order to make the experience for the user a lot easier. The idea behind this is that if you know how to work one tool, you can pretty much work your way through any other tool in the software. This is probably going to be a big deal especially for new users!

The list of “behind the scenes” improvements goes on and on. Next Jeremy showed how now in 2010 they have added the ability to turn add-ins  on and off kind of on demand, as needed, while working on the files.  He showed us an example where someone may be trying to use direct editing on an imported part without knowing that they need to have FeatureWorks turn on in the add-in list.  With FeatureWorks turned off, if we click on a face, for instance, and try to edit this feature, we’ll see a message from FeatureWorks pop up asking if we want to recognize child features in this face. What is really happening behind the scenes is that SolidWorks is turning on FeatureWorks for us, so we can add features to this part and use direct editing on it. This is supposed to make life easier and expose a lot of functionality to new users that may not normally see it.

Oh, and by the way, did you just notice what I said? Did you notice that FeatureWorks was asking if we wanted to recognize child features on that face? Yes, that’s right; FeatureWorks is now smarter and able to recognize child features, as well as a handful of new other features that it couldn’t recognize before.

And the Move Face feature has also been improved as a more refined way to do direct editing. When using Move Face you’ll notice that you have the Triad and ruler, and you can kind of estimate where you want to locate it or you can take advantage of the property manager that you also have in SolidWorks 2010 and enter more precise values for the new location of that face. This provides the users with freedom and flexibility, but also with the fine tuning ability that they are asking for. The other great thing about using Move Face is that after you’ve use it to modify your part, it is added as a feature in the tree, so you can go back and edit it, delete or suppress it as needed.

These are only a few of the improvements and new functionality you’ll find in SolidWorks 2010. Stay tuned for more posts about other more obvious improvements and perhaps even a bit more of the “behind the scenes” ones too!

 

 

While at Concord, MA, I had the pleasure of chatting for a while with Certification Specialist Mike Pucket, who is also a friend of mine.  This wasn’t planned to be an interview or anything remotely similar, by the way, just a friendly chat over lunch. However,  I must admit I didn’t miss the chance to ask him a few questions about the certification process, since it’s a common concern among those that read my blog, and that’s how I learned that the SolidWorks certification process, the CSWP-CORE test to be more precise, is about to go through a major transformation that will make it more meaningful to users in search for a way to demonstrate their proficiency with the software, as well as for employers in search for a reliable tool to make sure they’re hiring the right guy/gal for the job.

As it was mentioned in the past by some other blogger and even some people in the forums, up until now you could’ve probably solved the CSWP test using any other 3Dmodeling software.  This is because the features needed to model the parts and assemblies in the test were simple features non-exclusive of SolidWorks and all you had to do was to model them correctly according to the instructions provided and produce the right value for the mass properties of the part or  assembly in question. But if you can do this with any other software then it doesn’t seem as very meaningful as a measure of your SolidWorks skills, does it? That’s precisely what some people have been pointing out over and over in the past.

Well, it’s all about to change! The CSWP test as you knew it is about to be replaced with a new and improved version that, I believe, will prove to be more meaningful as a measure of your SolidWorks skills than the previous one. 

Among the changes introduced to the test you’ll find that now you will be asked to download SolidWorks files during the test and make some modifications to them, always according to instructions. This is why now you’ll need to be running SolidWorks 2008 SP3.1 or higher, otherwise you won’t be able to open the files.  You’ll also find that the images and instructions provided with each question are now clearer and include more details, as well as several orthogonal views of the part or assembly, to help you avoid any confusion.  These images, for instance, were taken from the sample exam document for the new test.  Don’t worry; this sample test will be available soon once the new test has been officially released.

I’ve been told by Mike and Certification Specialist Avelino Rochino, that the test has been completely redesigned, with all new questions that will require from the user a deeper level of understanding of the different tools available in SolidWorks, thus making the test more relevant than ever before. Now, please, don’t be scared! This doesn’t mean that the test has been made more difficult or even impossible to pass; it’s just been revised and transformed to make it a better measure of your skills with SolidWorks. As a matter of fact, you’ll even be given more time to complete it!

The new test can be taken as a non-segmented test that will now be three hours and forty minutes long, or in three segments of forty to ninety minutes long each. The advantage of the new segmented format is that if you fail any of the segments, you would only need to repeat that one segment.  The scores you obtain in any of the segments you do pass are kept for you, and once you pass all three segments you will receive your CSWP certification.  You will also be able to take each segment as many times as you would need to for free.  However, there is a waiting period of 30 days between reattempts of any one segment.  So, for example, if you fail Segment 1, you can take Segments 2 and 3 right away but you would need to wait 30 days to attempt to take Segment 1 again.

Here is a listing of the new segments and basically what will be covered on each.  
 
Segment 1: (90 Minutes)

 
 
•         Create a part from scratch

•         Use dimension links and equations to aid in modeling

•         Use of equations to relate dimensions

•         Update of parameters and dimension sizes

•         Mass property analysis

•         Modification of geometry on initial part to create a more complex part.  

 

Segment 2: (40 Minutes)

 

•         Creating configurations from other configurations

•         Changing configurations

•         Mass properties

•         Changing features of a part that is given to you

 

Segment 3: (80 Minutes)

 

•         Creating an assembly

•         Adding parts to an assembly

•         Doing collision detection when moving a part in an assembly

•         Mates

•         Replacing a part with another part in the assembly

•         Creating a coordinate system

•         Using a coordinate system to do mass properties analysis

 

The new test will be officially released very soon.  Although neither Mike nor Avelino mentioned anything about it, I’m hoping that SolidWorks will come up with some sort of promotion to give users coupons, discounts or a free try to the new test.  

I wanted to write this before the fact and publish it Saturday evening or Sunday morning. At least, that was the plan, but of course thanks to Murphy things don’t usually go according to plan, so…

Anyway, by the time you read this I’ll be somewhere in Colorado… maybe further along on the way to Kansas, who knows…  In case you haven’t figured it out just yet, I’m taking some time off and going with my family on a road trip to visit relatives in Ohio. Why by road? Well, because we’re glutton for punishment, because we used a big chunk of our airline miles for previous trips, and because, believe it or not, we really do love to drive and sightsee.  Oh, and did I mention that we’re bringing our dog along?

I brought my laptop along to try and do some writing in my quiet time and check email every now and then, but I won’t really be posting. Sorry!

See you back in a couple of weeks! Enjoy your summer or what’s left of it!