Hi everyone! I hope you had a really nice weekend! It was a four day weekend for us here and it sure felt good to get a break, plus a little Valentine’s Day candy. Now it’s back to the routine… and the diet.  Anyway… I shall now resume my chronicles of SolidWorks World 2010. As I mentioned before, this year I was really fortunate to be able to pre-register for hands-on s...

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 ...

Just as promised, here is the video of the second part of what was going to be my presentation at the local SWUG.  This one deals with Free Motion, changing component properties and changing the orientation and camera views during the animation.  By the way, I added a new option to the controls of the video. If you notice, there’s a button in the video control bar that will allow you to select...

While checking out the 2010 Beta, I ran into this new option available for Motion Studies, when you have SolidWorks Simulation added as well. You can find it listed as Structural Simulation Analysis for Motion in the What’s New Guide.  It simply means that in SolidWorks 2010, and with Motion and Simulation added, you can perform your stress, deformation or factor of safety analysis automaticall...

Just as I promised, I got one of the videos about Animation ready. This one is about the easiest part: using the Animation Wizard to create animations of exploded/collapsed assemblies and rotations. I apologize if the video is not the best, more in particular the audio of the video (I kind of don’t like my voice), but I still hope someone out there finds it useful.  Enjoy!     ...

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 week...

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, perh...

I’ve never really been a car enthusiast. I mean, I like race cars and I sure enjoy the looks of a few models, like this particular one that was parked at some sort of car expo near the amusement park a few weeks ago. Isn’t it a real beauty? I actually like this one better than its younger cousins that were also on display that day.  Anyway, I like to look at cars and I like to drive them, bu...

I had mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a motion study using a model of a pair of friction grabs. Here I have a short video of that motion study, demonstrating the use of friction when defining 3D contacts for motion analysis.   When defining 3D contacts for motion analysis in SolidWorks Motion, we have the option of acknowledging there’s friction between the components or no...

I was actually planning on posting about friction coefficients and the way it all works using an example of a simulation of these tong grabs, but before I do that, I thought I should share with you about a little problem I ran into while trying to use a special option available for the hinge mate and a way to work around it. OK, first of all, let me tell you a bit about what these tong grabs do....

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...

As I had mentioned previously, and also in a comment to my last post, I’m  currently teaching myself SolidWorks Motion, with the aid of the official  2009 training manual. I’m really enjoying the exercises and examples provided in the book, and the way everything always turns out as predicted in the lesson.  My problem began, however, when I tried to use Basic Motion to run some examples of...

This is a short video I put together on using SolidWorks Motion to simulate the movement of an arbor press. This is really my first try on animation, I mean, besides the examples and exercises on books and tutorials. I’m currently learning at my own pace using the SolidWorks Motion training manual. There’s also a book called The Step by Step Self-Study Guide to SolidWorks MotionManager. I was...