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...

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...

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...