3 TIPS FOR WORKING WITH A LARGE ASSEMBLY IN SOLIDWORKS

SolidWorks 3D CAD Design software is famous for its impeccable design capabilities.

Now, considering the number of parts and components that are created using SolidWorks on a regular basis, working with large assemblies may prove challenging.

To help you overcome that limitation, here we present a couple of tips and tricks.

First tip, undoubtedly, would be to consider the mode. Let’s dwell deeper into that.

So, there are four modes in which an assembly can be opened. These are, namely – Resolved, Lightweight, Large Assembly Mode and Large Design Review.

Resolved is the default option when you work within assemblies.

Lightweight opens the assemblies but not the associated file information. Although it does share the information about primary planes and origin.

Large Assembly Mode is similar to Lightweight in operation with the only difference being involvement of a couple more options.

Finally, Large Design Review is different from the other three in a way that it provides you with restricted command manager. Best part about Large Design Review is that it doesn’t open the file in memory and therefore, offers super ease in opening and navigating large assemblies.

Second Tip is to use simplified configurations, which means creating a configuration within the assembly and suppressing unnecessary associated parts and sub-assemblies.

Third Tip is to use the Defeature tool, which is a tool that helps in removing selected faces, features et al. With this tool you can save the file as a Dumb Solid, which refers to a file without any feature definition or history.

With these tips we believe you would be able to work with large assemblies in SolidWorks almost flawlessly. For more such interesting details and information, you can always go for a SolidWorks 3D CAD Training.  

HOW TO USE INCREMENTAL BENDING WITH SOLIDWORKS SHEET METAL

Widely used across designing and engineering industries, SolidWorks 3D CAD Design is an efficient software with remarkable capabilities. People from these industries use SolidWorks 3D CAD Design for numerous operations, one of those being creating sheet metal part designs. This software is known to have helped them accelerate the design process, save time and increase productivity.

One thing that may seem complicated when creating sheet metal part designs is handling complex sheet metal bends. Contrary to the mass belief, it is rather simple. In this blog we will discuss about doing just that.

To practice this, import a part into SolidWorks. Using Convert To Sheet Metal, flatten the part. Here, you would need to tackle the two tabs first, the ones that are in the middle of the part, to break them into incremental sections.

Something that works the best in this case is the Split Face Tool. It projects a series of sketches onto those faces that you want to add more bends to. You can also use a trick wherein you add a bridge of material between two ears by flattening them together.

Then, all you would need to do is use the Convert To Sheet Metal option as well as Collect All Bends to get that part which has incremental bends. You will then be able to flatten the parts and witness all the bend lines. A quick trick: you can also suppress some of the bends and see how you can, in fact, step through the bends.

That is how you can use incremental bending with SolidWorks Sheet Metal. To learn more about SolidWorks Sheet Metal, we would suggest taking a professional SolidWorks SheetMetal Training.

HOW TO USE SOLIDWORKS SIMULATION CLEANING UTILITY TO THE FULLEST?

SolidWorks Simulation is included within SolidWorks 3D CAD Design Premium package. It offers core simulation tools which assist well in testing your designs and enhancing the quality of your decisions. One of those tools is SolidWorks Simulation Cleaning Utility.

It is a slightly lesser known tool that gets installed with SolidWorks Software. The benefit of this tool is that you can use it to permanently delete any simulation data, including results information and simulation setup from any of the SolidWorks assembly file or part file. For all we know, disk space is almost always a limitation and hence, needs to be cleaned for optimum and efficient utilization.  

Here we discuss how you can use the SolidWorks Simulation Cleaning Utility tool to the fullest. Before we do, we must mention that you would need to create a back-up of your file, and ensure your file is not open in SolidWorks.

To open the tool, browse to its default location, which is in the C-Drive, namely, “C:\Program Files\SOLIDWORKS Corp\SOLIDWORKS\Simulation\Utilities. Then, double-click on the Simulation Cleaning Utility executable.

Post that you will need to follow these minor steps. Browse for the file, select the type of data you wish to delete and finally, click on the Clean File button.

This will help you get rid of all the unwanted files, provided you select and manually delete them. To learn about more such cool features of SolidWorks it is advisable to take up SolidWorks Simulation Training at FEA Training Consultants.