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 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 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...

  My son made me promise this was really a model of lip balm… less girly I guess, if you’re willing to overlook the flowers on the decal, that is. Sorry, I couldn’t resist! Not that I usually wear lipstick, err, lip balm, but when stressed out to the max and whenever tossing a 12 lb ball at a group of unsuspecting pins won’t make me feel any better,   I often find solace in regular thin...

Well this turned out to be a two part post, instead of one. It all started with me venturing into SolidWorks MotionManager, which is used to create little animations of assemblies as they are exploded and/or collapsed, rotated, dragged around, or just made to have their components move and interact with each other in the way they would do in real life. I’m working on a little video about it, usi...

This is a small post in hopes to answer a question from one of the visitors to this blog. How to apply a limit angle mate in SolidWorks? Well, for illustration purposes, I created this little assembly of a couple of thin plates, and mated one of their edges coincident to the corresponding edge in the other plate, so that they could rotate about each other like a hinge. Now, it’s time to apply t...

Children and puppies have a way of keeping people busy and my home is no exception to the rule.  My five year old is extremely inquisitive (and possessive)  and has it figured out already that this is not a job I’m doing when I write the blog, so, for him, this that I do must be some sort of selfish hobby. Now, the problem with that reasoning is that, in his book, moms should not have hobbies....

The Insert Part command is used to add one or more solid bodies (parts) into an active part. This is not the same as creating an assembly, although there are certain similitudes about the way the inserted part is oriented using the Locate Part dialog.  The big difference, however, is that what we end up with is a multi body part, that allows no movement of the bodies relative to one another, and ...