Curvy Stuf 101
Inspiration:
Like everyone else in the late 90’ss/early 00’s, I was struggling to try to figure out how the core SWx
curvy features really worked, informed only by spotty, sometimes conflicting, and occasionally (and
disturbingly) false resources from training, SolidWorks corp, Vars, and user groups. This has not
been eliminated over time, by the way – in spring of 2007 I went to a VAR presentation that gave
wrong advice over and over again about modeling curvy stuff (note: this info was objectively wrong, I
have enough character to sit back when someone presents a different approach than I would take they presented things that simply did not work, even when the Var demo-jocks tried it on screen, yet
they pretended that it DID WORK?!?! or excused it as a quirk. It was surreal. My policy is if it doesn’t
work, it doesn’t work… so let’s find out how to make it work and share that knowledge).
At the time I dove in to reverse engineer SolidWorks and test everything that I could in the curvy
features so I could model the shapes that I needed to for my job. After working a lot of it out, it
seemed like a shame that every other user interested in the same sort of modeling would have to go
through the same laborious testing process, so I took additional time to document and present my
findings. Good thing, too – I personally gave this presentation to developers at SolidWorks in
Concord and subsequently some of the more painful bits have been removed from the software.
Please note that many items in this presentation are out of date by subsequent improvements in SWx.
As with any presentation you see or find online, be it mine, someone elses, or even God’s, don’t take
anything on faith – test everything out for yourself !
Abstract:
This presentation goes beyond the tutorials and takes a detailed, deconsructive look at the construction and
capabilities of SolidWorks organic modeling features in SWx 2001+ 9some of which have been improved on or
superceded by later versions).
Benefit:
In this session, attendees learn how to overcome the feature-level issues that frequently prevent users from
developing the organic shapes they require.
Curvy Stuff 102
Inspiration
Having been to SWx world a couple of times, and been for years an eager consumer of any SWx tips I
could get my hands on, I noticed that there was a huge hole in the available worldwide conversation
about modeling curvy features in SolidWorks. Sure, Individual features have their issues (see Curvy
Stuff 101) and there was plenty of traffic on that topic, but the much harder problem was bringing
Curvy Features and other features together into a single model. So this, my first and probably most
important contribution to the conversation about SolidWorks, discusses how SolidWorks works
behind the scenes and the ways you can use that knowledge to overcome modeling issues
Abstract:
In this session, attendees gain the confidence to conquer the challenges of bringing complex features together.
Topics for discussion include: surfaces versus solids, overcoming awful modeling challenges, filleting problems,
and more.
Benefit:
Attendees learn how to overcome modeling roadblocks by understanding how SolidWorks works at a root level.
The importance of knowing the interchangeability of surfaces and solid features, the critical fact of the BREP
behind it all, and that every feature is just a macro for creating faces is critical to anyone who wants to push
SolidWorks modeling beyond simple blocky shapes
Curvy Stuff V – The Wrath of Scotty, Part 1
Inspiration:
Abstract:
How can Engineers work with the curvy models delivered by Industrial Designers? Part 1
focuses on the differences in the disciplines of industrial Design and Engineering and
why their models so often seem incompatible, It provides and understanding od what
causes the other camp to model “that way” and presents modeling strategies, tips and
tricks to ease collaboration on curvy products
Pulling critical to function dimensions from the industrial designers model into the
drawing
Benefit:
Both Engineers and Industrial Designers will learn how to better collaborate with each
other and share a common SolidWorks database that caters to the professional
requirements of both disciplines.
Curvy Stuff V – The wrath of Scotty, Part 2
Benefit: Both Engineers and Industrial Designers will learn proven real-world techniques
to get past tough modeling problems and create manufacturing databases that do not
compromise the Industrial Design of their swoopy shapes
Abstract: Part 2 discusses tips and trick for the engineer and Industrial Designer to turn
the Industrial Designers SWx models into a manufacturable database. Using Cast,
injection molded, forged, and vacuum-formed samples, the session covers how to handle
modeling overmolds, tough draft problems, “shelling” models that won’t shell, modeling
complex shutoffs, creating ribs from non-planar parting lines, and managing ‘mastermolde’ files.
Trees of blood
Inspiration:
The single issue that, in my observations of my coworkers and clients, caused the greatest
loss in productivity was rebuild errors. Users would make a change in their model or
assembly that caused rebuild errors and they would become apoplectic – instead of
calmly going about the business of fixing their models, they would spend inordinate
amounts of time complaining about how their parts ‘blew up’, freeze and not do anything,
respond in a way that exasperated the problem, or (worst case) ditch changes necessary to
the improvement of their designs because those changes caused errors.
Early on I embraced rebuild errors as the price of doing SolidWorks design, developed
techniques to get through them quickly and painlessly, and over time embraced them as a
useful check for identifying issues where design intent might be compromised by design
changes.
I never wanted to do a presentation about handling rebuild errors because each one of
these presentations takes well over 100 hours to compose, format, and test, test, test.
Unfortunately for me, no one else stepped up (regardless of the lobbying and attempted
recruiting on my part). Even the training material is pretty lean about the topic, though it
is in my experience the biggest, most common productivity issue run into by SolidWorks
users.
So I did it. If nothing else, the clear, proven techniques for how to delete a feature
without losing any of child features is worth the time to look at it. And I hope anyone
who reads this will learn that rebuild errors are not a big deal and can stop spending their
time criping about how their model ‘blew up’ or ‘errored out’ and instead spend that
criping time calmly fixing it. Its really easy and won’t raise your blood pressure a tic if
you know what you are doing.
Benefit: attendes will leave this sessiona rmed with the best pactices that will minimize
their exposre to rebuild errors, and some great tips and techniques that will allow them to
quickly and painlessly repair their SolidWorks files and get back in action. Most
importantly, the will learn to calm down when their feature trees erupt in bolld – they will
learn that most can be fixed in seconds (when one knows how) so they can fix their
models and get back to designing
Abstract: We have all been there : we make a necessary change to a design, and the
feature tree “blows-up” with rebuild errors. This session covers how to quickly and
painlessly repair rebuild errors in part models by understanding why they happen and
discuusses tips, tricks, and techniques to repair them fast without ever hacing to delet and
recreat anything. The discussion also highlights proven modeling habits that prevent
rebuild errors in the first place
Drawings
Inspiration:
The Engineer knows the functional requirements and tolerance information at the time
they design their product’s components, and are more intimately involved with these
‘critical to function’ dimensions than anyone else on the planet. At the time of the
writing of this presentation, it was still common practice to hand components to drafters
to add ‘driven’ dimensions to the SolidWorks part drawings, and the drafter had to guess
at this important information (worst case) or interrogate the component’s Engineer
(slightly less worse case) to create an appropriate drawing.
All of the information required for the drawing was ideally captured within the features
of the part at the time it was originally authored. Using ‘insert model items’ along with
strong design practices during the part modeling stage, the DiMonte Group is able to
insure that any Engineer in the organization (even those unfamiliar with the component
and its function) can appropriately create a functional detail drawing of components
designed by anyone else because the functional dimensions are captured at the part level.
Hence the title: ‘Create a drawing without even trying’; if the part is designed correctly,
the drawing, from a dimensional and tolerance standpoint, is largely done if the drafter is
educated on how to pull that information out of the SolidWorks part.
At Swx World 2006 we attended a presentation that showed that 50% of the attendees
used ‘insert model items’ to create their drawings. It is good to know that the word is
getting out, but we still need to continue posting this presentation until that number
becomes 100%.