A few days ago, my friend Chris Thompson, founder and owner of Appian Way Technologies, took a look at my model of the safety latch and suggested the following changes in order to improve the simulation study. First of all, he added small fillets to the areas of the latch where stress concentrations are expected, at the “root” of the latch. He also “cut” the model in half, in order to take...

Most of you have no idea and perhaps don’t even care about the fact that I adopted a little kitten about a month ago. What can I say? If you are a smart person, unlike moi, you’ll avoid visiting the pet store while the local cat rescue is showing off their adoptable cats. But I admit I would’ve probably ended up adopting the kitten anyway, eventually… I named him Troubles because it suits ...

This is a picture of Master Andrew, my youngest son, ridding on one of his favorites at the park near our home, the “wild ducky”.  In the back you can also see his other favorite, the “bucking bronco”.  The picture was taken a few years ago, when I used to carry my camera everywhere I went, and take a picture of every single smile, frown or bugger.  Andy’s summer break started sever...

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 ha...

I guess the bad thing about being a self-learner is that many times you have to make do with whatever materials you may find available, and sometimes they may be a little outdated. For instance, I grabbed this COSMOSWorks Designer 2007 manual on eBay and was going through the lessons using SolidWorks Simulation (that’s the new name for COSMOSWorks in 2009). Except for a few differences here and ...

 Fear is one of the most powerful emotions a human being can ever experience.  It can trigger quick thoughts and actions that will help us fight back or flee from whatever situation we perceive as danger; it can be paralyzing, as well, robbing us of valuable experiences and opportunities that we may have otherwise enjoyed.  Take me for example: I used to be afraid of driving the freeway. The th...

This week is exciting, as I finally venture into the world of finite element analysis through COSMOS Works.  I have waited for such a long time! Unlike many young engineers nowadays, I didn’t receive a foundation on finite element analysis while in college.  Sure, we did have a class on numerical methods, where finite element methods were briefly discussed, but nothing else. Years later I had ...