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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Hey there everyone! I’m very excited because just today I received my copy of  the new self-study guide  “Creating Animations with SolidWorks”. I had been looking forward to this book for quite a long time now, not only because it promises to be at least ten times better and more thorough than its predecessor, “Self-Study Guide to SolidWorks MotionManager 2008″, which I also own, but also for my very own selfish reasons.

You see,  some time ago, I published a post about some problems I ran into while trying to animate the movement of an arbor press. Back then, I tried a few things that didn’t seem to work and I even wondered about the possibility of a bug in the software. Jim Boland, who has worked as a contractor preparing training materials and books for SolidWorks on this particular topic, took interest in my problem and left me a few comments about it. He also asked if it was OK with me to use the model of the arbor press for one of the examples in the book. I said yes and, well… Long story short: I’ve been dying to read the example that the model was used for. Of course, I want to read the whole book too, but I can’t deny that’s the first thing I searched for as soon as I got the book out of its packaging.  The model was used in Chapter 10, as a case study that illustrates different methods to do an animation, as opposed to just one “right way” to do it.

The whole book looks great and I’m eager to get started!  I’ll tell you more about it as I go through it, or you can check it out and order it with your VAR or at Rob Rodriguez blog.

Oops! I almost forgot that SolidWorks also has an online store now and you can order directly from them! The link to the book at the store is: http://store.solidworks.com/cgi-bin/SolidWorks/PMT1051-ENG.html   (Thanks Matt!).

Hi everyone! I’ve been keeping a close eye on the site statistics, to try and figure out if my latest “experiment” had any future at all. I’m happy to see that several people  have already downloaded the pdf file and examples on easy surfacing techniques that I put up  a few days ago. I haven’t heard any feedback from those that downloaded, but I  hope they did find the information useful! 

In the past, several readers had already asked me if I could provide more detail than that allowed by a blog post’s size and format. Many people have been asking for step-by-step procedures and formal tutorials with example files included. I had shied away from attempting that approach, however, because I didn’t want to seem pompous, you know, like I was pretending to be what I’m not: and expert telling others what to do or how to do it right.  I am no expert! Then again, if you think about it, nobody can really claim to be an expert in anything. We are all learning here and whoever thinks he/she knows everything there is to know is foolishly wasting away a great opportunity for growth.

Anyway, philosophical views aside, last Tuesday, while I was at the SWUGN Summit, getting ready to do my presentation and talking with other SolidWorks users, I realized that most people are actually very open to the idea of other users sharing useful information with them. They don’t see you as pompous if you do. If you have anything useful to contribute, they’ll be happy to take it. And a lot of users, especially those that are in great need of learning fast,  really dig tutorials and step by step examples. So, with that in mind, I added a page called Downloads and uploaded thee  my first tutorial in pdf format. I hope to add more tutorials and files with time, always free, of course, and the best thing is that they can be about just pretty much anything that comes to mind, even if it’s not something I’m learning right at this moment, and they can be as short or long as needed. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to blog about what I’m doing or learning right now. I always blog as I go, you know that.

So, what do you think of that? I would like to see some comments. Do you think it’s a good idea? What kind of things would you like to see there?  Where are you, people? How come lately I get more comments from my regular spammers than I do from my regular readers? LOL

There’s also a couple more things I wanted to mention for those of you looking for more information and learning resources right now.   First of all… For the very beginners, my fellow blogger and friend, Alex Ruiz, has just come up with a really nice book  “SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required“.  I actually had the pleasure to work with him and help him complete three of the chapters for the book. It was a great experience, but no, I don’t get comissions or royalties, so don’t think I have a secret agenda.  This is a very nice book for the beginner user and student and Alex put his heart and soul into this volume; he even prepared materials for teachers and a companion website to provide the readers with help and more content. Check it out!

This is also the time of the year when all sorts of learning resources become available. If you are going to buy, take advantage of the offers. For instance, with the coupon code SWFUND10launch you can receive a $20 off  your purchase of the SolidWorks 2010 training from Inspirtech. I checked out what’s new and improved in their materials and I must say I was very impressed. Among other things you’ll find that now you can access the training from the Task Pane, plus  plenty of review exercises and questions to test your knowledge. Again, I’m not getting any commission or payment for passing this info to you.

For those looking into learning more complex stuff, such as surfacing, for instance, IGetIt  has just released some new courses. I’m just telling you this because I got a newsletter from them not so long ago.  I don’t have a coupon code for this one, though, but I’m sure they may be having some sort of offer going on, so why not ask?  Also check out the video lessons offered by Solid Professor and Matt Lombard’s series of books on SolidWorks.

There’s actually so much out there about SolidWorks, I could never list it all here. Please, feel free to add to the list if you know any other good books, websites, videos, etc. And, please, keep those comments coming!

As I mention in my last post, I was encountering a series of issues and strange behavior when running some examples in Basic Motion. While I’m still waiting for what SolidWorks developers may have to say about this, I was very lucky to hear from someone that really knows his stuff when it comes to Animation and SolidWorks Motion.  Jim Boland, who does not represent SolidWorks Corp., but has worked as a contractor for SolidWorks for many years in the development of training materials, including the original Animator training manual, took a look at my arbor press example and made a few comments about the issue that I find really interesting and think may be useful to others, as well.  As I said before, these are Jim Boland’s thoughts and do not speak for SolidWorks Corp. or the software developers, but you may learn a thing or two from them. Trust me! So, here it goes…

What made me contact you was that the Arbor Press video you made was right along the lines of what I’m doing in many of the case studies in the book in that it shows multiple ways of achieving the desired results.  In all the years of teaching SolidWorks, I always get the standard question of “What’s the right way to do this……?”  My response has always been the “right way” is whatever way allows you to achieve your design intent and the “wrong way” is what keeps you from meeting the design intent.  That said, among the many “right ways” some are better than others because they are easier to solve, more flexible to change, etc.

After just attacking the problem of the contacts in the Arbor Press head on, I finally took a step back and looked at the broader picture, so here are some thoughts. 

• Why would you ever want to use Basic Motion instead of Animation for this video?  Over the past 9 months, Jindrich and I have had lots of discussions about the three products and the correct use of each.  If you look in the SolidWorks Motion book, there is a section on page 225 about Kinematic Systems vs. Dynamic Systems. To help clarify this issue, I’ve spent some time in the new version of the book talking about this difference and the fact that as a general run, you use Animation for Kinematic systems and Basic Motion for Dynamic systems. The Arbor Press is a Kinematic system because for every position of the rotating shaft, there is one, and only one, position for every other part. Always remember that our goal is to create an animation, NOT an analysis.  If I use Animation instead of Basic Motion, it can be done in half a dozen different ways in a matter of seconds and I can be off to the next task.
• One confusing comment in the Help and tooltips is that you get a more realistic result with Basic Motion over Animation.  I think that’s a simplification in that it is true for Dynamic systems but not for Kinematic systems.  Look closely at the case with the linear motor.  While motion stops at contact, there is visual penetration, which is unrealistic. In a simulation run, that’s expected because we are using a mesh to define the boundary and material properties are considered, so it is OK.  In an animation it’s not OK, but I can easily fix it in an animation by turning off the drive motor at the correct time or drive the motion with a distance mate.
• What do we expect the results to be when using Basic Animation with a motor driving and Contact between the table and rack pad?  Besides the two situations you did, where you use the rotary motor and linear motor, I also did two other studies where in one case I used the rotary motor but replace the rack and pinion mate with contact between the two gears.  In the other I used a double rack where a linear motor drove the first rack which drove the pinion which drove the second rack.  There were three different results.
  • Rotary motor and rack and pinion mate.  Problem solves but does not stop at contact.
  • Linear motor, no mates involved.  Problem solves and stops at contact.
  • Rotary motor with gear contact.  Solution stops (fails) at contact and timeline shows in red.
  • Linear motor with double rack and pinion. Solution stops (fails) at contact and timeline shows in red.

 

The question is which is correct?  I would think that the third and fourth cases are correct as we have an over defined system.  The motor is told to keep driving but the contact prevents it.  Kind of like putting a coincident and a non-zero distance mate between two faces.  It cannot solve both cases simultaneously. Then the question becomes, if the third and fourth cases are correct, why does the linear motor case you did solve without error?  Simple answer is I don’t know.  That’s what the developers will have to tell us.

• When Basic Motion is used with a Dynamic system, contact is normally the result of a component rolling on another, or impact where both components are still free to move.  When Basic Motion is used for a Kinematic system, we run into a problem because the parts are not free to move after collision.  I think this is what gives us the two types of errors, either contact is ignored or the solution fails.
• If we were doing an analysis, we wouldn’t use a motor unless it had a control to turn it off at contact or at some load.  Otherwise either the motor would burn out at contact or the gears would fail.  In reality, we would define the analysis with a force rather than a motor.  In that case the contact should stop the motion properly.

 

I’m really excited about a great new resource available to all those engineers, scientists, students, and enthusiasts out there that perhaps never got exposed to CNC machining while in their college years (like yours truly) and/or that wish to learn the basics on how to program and operate a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling machine.  It is a book  -actually  it’s a complete course with curriculum available for educators-  written by Charles Davis, General Manager at NEXGEN Manufacturing Systems, Inc., and is available at www. cncforengineers.com. 

On the website, you will also find information about upcoming training (4 day hands-on classes with limited enrollment offered at various locations around the country), on-site training, and educators can request information on curriculum, videos, lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations available to them, and/or how to sponsor training at their school. BTW, this book is already being used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was recently displayed at the ITEA (International Technology Education Association) Conference and received a very positive response from technical educators from around the U.S., and, although it is not exclusive of any particular kind of CAM/CAD software application,  SolidWorks 2009 files are available for completing the exercises (parasolid files also available), and is also being displayed by DS SolidWorks at all educational tradeshows.

While the book is no substitute for hands-on experience and won’t turn you into an expert machinist, it provides an excellent foundation, and is especially useful for those of us that desire to understand the CNC processes; what is doable, what goes beyond its limits, what would be too expensive to machine, what changes could be made to our design to improve its manufacturability and decrease cost, etc. Even if we never have to actually program and run a CNC machine ourselves, having some understanding of all this can greatly improve our designs.

I got my copy of this book a few days ago and I’m already reading. I plan to complement what I learn from it with a few classes at DeAnza or some other institution this fall (hopefully I’ll have reliable childcare by then). So far, it looks like an excellent book, but don’t take it from me, go and check it out yourself!

My first render ever was made in PhotoView 360. That was also the day I fell in love with rendering applications, because seeing how good that rendered image looked like made me feel that I could also be a creative (even artistic) person after all. This is big news if you are like me and grew up with a sister that could draw incredibly realistic images with her hands by the time she was nine years old.  For years I wouldn’t dare to even doodle in front of her, in fear of her criticism!  Anyway, as I was saying, my rendered image wasn’t the big deal, certainly not as good as many others I’ve seen in blogs, websites and magazines, but it was enough to ignite the flame of curiosity inside of me. Now I had to learn how to do this rendering thing!

While PhotoView seemed really easy to use, just by clicking and dragging and that’s it, I felt that what I really needed was to learn about the process involved in creating a good rendered image, because frankly I had no idea of what I was doing back then. That new Step-by-Step guide to PhotoWorks, featured in Rob Rodriguez website, seemed just perfect for that purpose.

So I started reading, and solving the exercises, and discovered quickly that PhotoWorks isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Yes, in general it does take a little longer than PhotoView, but there are also a few options available in PhotoWorks that I wish PhotoView had, like a feature manager to select from, and a render manager, to keep track of the appearances that have been added to faces, features and parts and to aid in the process of editing appearances and scenes.

Something else that I certainly appreciate about PhotoWorks and that I haven’t found the way to do in PhotoView just yet is the ability to edit the scene and change, among many other things, the plane or surface against which to project the shadows of the model. Both applications offer the possibility of editing the appearances, but it seems to me that PhotoWorks has a few more options available, many of them I haven’t quite figured out how to use yet.

So far, I’ve done only very basic renderings in PhotoWorks, using predefined scenery available in PhotoWorks Studio, which already includes all the necessary options like a background and a scheme of lights. I also used the Render Wizard, which guides you along every stage in the process while assigning appearances, scenes and finally rendering the model. I guess this would be the equivalent to the click and drag from PhotoView, except that it’s possible to use this render as a starting point and then edit these options  and tweak settings a little bit in order to obtain better results.

This is a rendered image of a little toy tank that I downloaded from the 3D content central.

I used PhotoWorks Studio first and then tweaked the scene a little bit, but only to specify that shadows on the floor would be visible and that the model would be considered resting on its X-Z plane; that way the shadow appears under the model in the image, instead of on a wall or any other place. This little detail adds some realism to the image, I think.

The same model, as rendered in PhotoView, using exactly the same appearances and the closest match to the scene that I could find. I could never find a way to add a shadow to the image by tweaking the scene in PhotoView, but maybe there’s an option that I didn’t see?

Anyway, I just learned that Rob Rodriguez is soon to post a series of articles dealing precisely with the differences between PhotoWorks and PhotoView 360, so make sure to visit his blog often and, while you are there, enter this month’s rendering contest. I’m planning on entering for the very first time. I know that with my less than stellar skills I’m not likely to win anything, but it would be really fun, anyway. And now back to the guide. I want to learn more advanced techniques!