WHY YOU SHOULD BE SUBMODELING USING SOLIDWORKS SIMULATION ?

SOLIDWORKS Simulation comes with powerful virtual testing environment that helps product engineers in efficiently evaluating structural product performance under a variety of physical scenarios.

Furthermore, SOLIDWORKS Simulation is fully embedded within SOLID WORKS 3D CAD and therefore enables engineers to evaluate products mechanical resistance, natural frequencies, product durability as well as test heat transfer and buckling instabilities.

Submodeling is based on the St. Venant's principle. The St. Venant's principle states that the stresses on a boundary reasonably distant from an applied load are not significantly altered if this load is changed to a statically equivalent load. The distribution of stress and strain is altered only near the regions of load application.

Talking about Submodeling, it offers a swift and easy way of zooming in on a component of interest. Because it creates a sub-study using displacement results of the parent study while isolating the part you need to be focusing on, it renders ease of operation with quick results.

You can use Submodeling on SOLIDWORKS Simulation to the fullest by removing away the rest of the assembly which may not be required anymore and use finer mesh for gaining accurate results, more so without raising the solution time.

Submodeling is available in Simulation Professional and above and requires a parent study. It comes with plenty of advantages, and it is the optimal way to gain quick results that are high in quality.

Being a fundamental component of SOLIDWORKS Simulation, Submodeling is a necessity to learn and understand. When in Toronto, you have the benefit of receiving the required training at FEA Training Consultants, which has the award-winning certified instructors with years of experience. The instructors brilliantly cover the entire process from meshing to results evaluation for parts and assemblies. 

THE RIGHT WAY TO REVISE DRAWINGS IN SOLIDWORKS ELECTRICAL

SolidWorks Electrical comes with an integrated library database that provides numerous symbols and over five hundred thousand manufactured parts which you can use in your design.

Overall, SolidWorks Electrical schematic design capabilities ease the process of developing embedded electrical systems for both machines as well as other applications. This is something it does by using single-line and multi-line schematic tools which assist you in planning your electrical systems.

Here, in today’s blog, we shine some light on the method of revising drawings and projects in SolidWorks Electrical.

Considering that you are using one of the standard project templates that are installed in Electrical, you would be able to see, on the very first page, a revision block.

If the project is in the initial revision, you will find the revision number to be zero. You can add revisions at the individual drawing level or even at the book level.

We say, begin at the project level by right-clicking on the Document Book. Once selected, a revision box will open. Feel free to add information in any of the boxes that has dots. If required, you can also click Customize to alter any of the data fields.

Next step is to click on Validate for finalizing the revision. Follow that up with a click on Verify, which will lead to a dialog pop-up asking whether you want all the book documents to be set to similar revision. Click yes in case you want them to start at zero. Then, click Okay and proceed. 

You will find the Print Book option on the screen next. Use it to print your drawings or export them to a PDF. Whichever option you choose, your revision block would update accordingly and you can freely move on with your design.

There, you see, adding revisions to your project and drawings is a pretty easy task. All you need to do is simply follow the above procedure.

To learn more about SolidWorks Electrical, feel free to take up SolidWorks Electrical Training at FEA Training Consultants.

Frequency Analysis: Super Frequency Study

“Super Frequency” study type

There are many different types of studies that you can run in SOLIDWORKS Simulation, such as Linear Static, Thermal, Fatigue, Nonlinear and Drop Test, but there is one study type that is sort of a “super” type.  The super study that I’m talking about is a Frequency study type.

Why it’s super is that it has multiple applications where it is useful:

1 – Determining natural frequencies

         The typical usage of a Frequency analysis is to determine the natural resonances of a system, see example listing below.  You all may be familiar with some famous examples, such as the Tacoma Narrows bridge, where a system’s vibration will be amplified when it is excited by an external force at (or near) one of its resonant points.  And every system theoretically has an infinite number of resonant frequencies that are at increasingly higher values, so everything you design has a lot of points where it can fail.  If you don’t think that your design will undergo vibration during use, you should consider how your products get transported often by many vehicles, either by land or air, that subject it to a wide range of external frequencies getting to its final destination.

2 – Characteristic movement of system

      Another great result to obtain from a Frequency simulation is the characteristic shapes that the system wants to move.  This gives you an indication of the relative stiffness in each direction, and where some areas of the design may be “weaker” (or more susceptible to stress) than others.  As you can see in the example below for an engine mounting frame, where the engine is replaced by a remote mass point, the first mode shape shows that has a tendency to want to rock to-and-fro and thus tear itself away from the base.  While it cannot be determined from this analysis whether it will actually tear away, but you can plainly see that special attention should be placed on the horizontal braces and its bolted connections to the base.  And there are multiple characteristic shapes that can be evaluated

3 – Troubleshooting tool

      One might not think of running a simulation as a troubleshooting measure for the FEA modeling, but a Frequency analysis can also help in this regard.  You can setup the model similarly as you would in say a linear Static analysis; the advantage of starting it as a Frequency study is that even if you have issues with insufficient restraints or connecting all the parts in your assembly, it will still solve albeit with some rigid body motions yielding a nearly 0 (zero) Hz frequency.  This information is valuable to working out the model issues.  Once you have it all figured out in the Frequency study, all the setup features can be copied to another study by ctrl+mouse select plus drag-and-drop them into the tab (at the bottom) for that study.

4 – Basis for many other types of analysis

     A Frequency study is also the underlying basis for the following study types: linear Buckling and the four Linear Dynamic studies (Time History, Harmonic, Random Vibration (or PSD), and Response Spectrum analysis).  The definition of a linear Buckling study is when the transverse stiffness goes to zero under a compressive loading case, and this can be represented by the first natural frequency, which for a simple column example is a half-sine wave.  The combined response from summing up all of the resonant frequencies and associated characteristic mode shapes provides a very efficient way of performing a Linear Dynamic analysis.

VIDEO: SolidWorks World 2014 Day 2 General Session

The second general session of SolidWorks World 2014 was all about the user community and customers. This past year, we had 14 new chapters for the SolidWorks User Group Network and over 800 people attending the SWUGN Summit events (they’re like miniature versions of SolidWorks World).

The general session kicked off with a customer presentation featuring eatART, an organization that ”fosters art research with a focus on large-scale, technically sophisticated art by supporting both independent and internal art projects,” led by Suchit Jain, Vice President of SolidWorks User Advocacy. Jonathan Tippett, founder of eatART, talked about their vision which was instrumental to the design of the Mondo Spider (demoed on stage yesterday).

Then, SolidWorks Usergroup   Network Leader Richard Doyle presented the SWUGN awards. That was followed up by more presentations from two amazing customers: MarkForged and BoDyn Bobsled.

Then, CEO Bertrand Sicot introduced the BoDyn team: Geoff Bodine and Bob Cuneo, who are behind the design of the Night Train 2 bobsled that the US team is taking to the 2014 Olympics next month in Sochi, Russia. Bertrand had an opportunity to visit with the team last year in Park City, Utah, and even got to take a ride down the track. He showed some video documenting the experience, and the team discussed what goes into designing a bobsled used in the winter games.

WATCH the SolidWorks World 2014 General  Session Day 2 video.

VIDEO:SolidWorks World 2014 General Session Day 1

SolidWorks Worls kicked off yesterday morning with a nearly 6000 people gathered together to celebrate their love for engineering and design.

With over 2.3 million users and counting around the world, the SolidWorks community is the biggest in the 3D CAD industry. Bertrand discussed his belief in “inspired people create inspired designs,” and the idea that the community is what makes the company and the products so powerful.

Bertrand went to announce two new products SolidWorks Inspection and eDrwaings Meeting. He also talked about My.SolidWorks.com, the new community website launched last year.

The SolidWorks team has also been working on new products built on the Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. For those of you unfamiliar with the 3D experience platform, it is a cloud-based service that enables 6 services:

• Search
• Tagging
• Collaborative Sharing
• Messaging
• Cloud Storage
• Live dashboarding capabilities

It integrates seamlessly with SolidWorks, to make your design experience the best possible. And we are now offering the first SolidWorks application available on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform: SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual. The new SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual platform resides on four basic pillars: instinctive, conceptual, social and connected. All of this was made possible by the research and development team at Dassault Systemes and SolidWorks.

Check out the video on SolidWorks 2014 General Session Day 1.