SW2009 Beta period right around the corner.

Have you ever wanted to get an early look at the next version of SW? There is normally about 200 pages in the What's New manual to read thru. SolidWorks is getting ready to announce the start of the next Beta program in the first part of June. There are prizes available for the person that helps point out the most problems. You can gets points for filling out surveys too. Shankar and I have both won prizes on the VAR side of things in years past. Right now my 4 year old is running around with my 40 Gig IPOD that I won. I think Shankar put most of his stuff out on Ebay. I am still trying to decide how much effort I am going to put into it this year. You can sign up for the Beta program and there will be more information on the SW website soon. Here is a link for more information: http://www.solidworks.com/pages/services/CustomerBulletins.html

Have fun and try not to hurt yourself.

Maintaining your Dimension Machine

I have visited quite a few Businesses, some machine are well maintained,(properly cleaned) some are fair, other are embarrassing, if your machine is not well maintained (this means cleaned), this could void your maintenance agreement do to lack of. Debris could fall upon main components causing sensors to short out or jam moving parts.

Large deflection option for assembly contact problems

It is general perception that non-linear structural problems are usually associated with Cosmosworks advanced professional module. Cosmos designer package can handle large deflection for contact modeling. With large deflection switch turned on cosmos solver performs true non-linear calculation by applying loads in incremental steps and formulating new stiffness matrix with load increment. When you have models with sliding type contact conditions large deflection option comes in very handy.

Its normally recommended to run the assembly analysis first with no penetration type contact condition and large deflection switched off. After running the analysis look at your displacement plot in a scale of 1. When you can see noticeable deformation in true scale then turn on large deflection and run the problem again.

To consider material based non linear and non contact based large deflection effects please use Cosmosworks advanced professional module. When using large displacement solution for static studies, program uses automatic load stepping and you can only view the results at the last step which corresponds to the full load.


To activate the large displacement option:
1. In the COSMOS Analysis Manager tree, right-click the static study icon and select Properties.
The Static dialog box appears.
2. On the Options tab, check large displacement.
3. Click OK.

SWUGN Technical Summit in OKC!!

The user group network is bringing a summit event to our backyard. If you did not get a chance to go to San Diego in February for SolidWorks World this is the next best thing. It is a 1 day user group with many specialized presentations. Please look at http://www.swugn.org/pages/summit/SWUGN_Summit_OKC.html for more information. The meeting will be held in OKC at the Biltmore Hotel on Tuesday May 20th.

Instant3D

Instant3D was introduced in SolidWorks 2008. Now, what does it do for you? It makes it easier for you to quickly create and modify model geometry by using drag handles and rulers. How do you turn it on? Click on the Instant3D icon in the “Features” toolbar.

You may have recently heard of something called “Synchronous Technology” from Siemens PLM. Sounded interesting, after all I am a geek. I saw their taped webcast. Some of the functionality they were showing looked familiar; it was what we can do with Instant3D. Here is some of this functionality in Instant3D.

Notice how with Instant3D I can select the end face of Extrude2 and drag it to the other side of Extrude1 and the boss becomes a cut. Also notice that I did not have to repair the fillet. This is the good news about Instant3D; you can quickly make drastic changes to your model without having to worry about how your model was created.

When you drag to resize the feature, if your cursor is over the ruler, it will snap to the increment marks on the ruler. The increments are controlled by your “System Options -> Spin Box Increments”.

There are pros and cons for any new feature. Now is the time to talk about the cons, or things you have to be careful of if you use the feature. In the video, you saw where I selected the end face and then dragged the blue arrow. This makes it too easy to accidently resize a feature. It happened to me at the worst time. I was beta testing the new CSWP exam. On the base extrude for the first feature, I accidently changed the extrusion depth and did not notice my mistake. This accident cost me the correct answer to the first six or seven question on the exam. My cost was the embarrassment of not passing the exam. If you make the same mistake, it will cost you scrap parts.

There is a SolidWorks System Options setting will help prevent most of these accidents, but not the one I made. Uncheck “System Options -> Sketch -> Override dimensions on Drag/Move”. This will prevent you from accidently moving a face that is controlled by a sketch dimension. In my example the sides of the rectangular boss are controlled by sketch dimension. With this option checked, I could select one of the side faces and drag the arrow and it would change the sketch dimension. With this option unchecked, I can still change the dimension, but it requires a deliberate action. I click on the face, all of the dimension associated with the feature that the face belongs to will appear on the screen. You will see a blue dot at the end of the dimension arrow head. You can change the dimension value by dragging this blue dot around. You can also just click once on the dimension text and key in a new value.

If you use Instant3D, I suggest that you uncheck “System Options -> Sketch -> Override dimensions on Drag/Move” to prevent most of the accidental mistakes. I also suggest that you submit an enhancement to SolidWorks to make this option to prevent you from using the blue arrow to change the extrusion depth.

Additional Power of Admin Images

Ever thought of using an admin image for all of your stand-alone Solidworks installations? Solidworks has a great tool that allows the correct products, with the correct serial number, to be installed by windows login name. This ensures that every user gets the products they should and they don't have to keep track of the serial number they should use to install. The tool is the Admin Image Option Editor and works in conjunction with the new installation manager introduced in 2007. It is accessible once an admin image has been created, in the shared folder where the image was saved. The first Admin Image should be created with every product needed. Navigate to the sldim folder and select sldamdinimageoptioneditor.















Double click on this and an application will start up where users and groups can be set up.














To set up a user, the user name is the Microsoft Windows login name and the display name is anything you want. Then add the serial number for every product that the user should have installed.
















To install the Solidworks products the users will browse from their computer to the shared folder where the image was saved and run the StartSWInstall HTML file.