Design Validation Capabilities
With the powerful design validation tools in SolidWorks, you can easily subject your designs to the same conditions that they’ll experience in the real world. Raise the quality of your products while you reduce costs for live prototypes and testing.
SolidWorks design validation capabilities include:
Tolerance Stack-up Validation. TolAnalyst seamlessly analyzes a design based on the order and manner in which parts are assembled, as well as DimXpert-applied dimensions and tolerances. Determine if your design meets fit and function requirements without tedious and error-prone hand calculations.
Assembly Simulation. Study the interactions of assembly components onscreen, before incurring the costs of physical prototypes. Accurately simulate static or dynamic loads to evaluate your design’s performance under stress, strain, and displacement.
Mechanism Simulation. Apply a wide variety of physics-based models to simulate real-world operating conditions for your design. Check for colliding parts. Output numerical and graphic data of the results, as well as animations of your tests.
Simulate Welded Structures. Ensure your welded structures perform at peak operating conditions. Apply pressure, forces, and bearing loads. Then use powerful visualization tools like sections plots, iso-clipping, and animation to review the response of either the full assembly or only certain parts.
Product Failure Prediction. Save the time and cost of prototyping AND create safer, more durable products. Predict structural failure thresholds due to yielding, overheating, buckling, and fatigue. Evaluate failure of both common materials as well as more advanced materials such as plastics, elastomers, and layered composites.
Compare and Optimize Alternatives. Determine the best design option by comparing strengths, life, cost, and weight. Perform all comparisons and design modifications within the SolidWorks environment.
Simulate Vibrations. Predict and control vibrations or dynamic responses in your products with a choice of seamlessly integrated design studies, including Transient study, Harmonic Response study, and Random Response study.
Predict Buckling or Collapse. Virtually apply forces, pressure, gravity, and centrifugal forces to your designs to determine maximum loads before buckling. Study the effects of various materials as well as isotopic and orthotropic factors.
Simulate Heating or Cooling. Thermal analysis capabilities enable you to easily study heat effects on your designs. Simulate thermal boundary conditions, fluid flow, thermal-structural interactions, and radiation effects in high-temperature applications.
Simulate Drop Test or Impact. Save time and cost by reducing the number of physical tests. SolidWorks gives you integrated capabilities for detailed drop-test simulation. Define drop height, surface, and orientation. Perform realistic collision simulation between parts or assemblies. Visualize resulting contact, deflection, and even part-part separation.
Simulate Repeated Loading. With SolidWorks, you have the tools you need to simulate, evaluate, and improve a part or assembly that must withstand the rigors of daily operation. Evaluate the differences in your system’s performance to varying speeds or frequencies, and estimate the design life of your entire product.
Non-Linear Dynamics. Thoroughly test and validate your designs with a broad range of advanced capabilities, including: nonlinear displacement analysis, nonlinear buckling analysis and snap-through events, analysis of nonlinear materials, design optimization of hyperelastic materials, onset-of-yield and post-yield elastoplastic analysis, creep effects and temperature-related material changes, dynamic response analysis of parts and assemblies.
Simulate Plastic Parts. Capture all the behavior of your plastic parts without special training or add-ins. Choose the best materials and material models for your design challenges. Simulate your plastic components in all possible tests and environments, and optimize parts for volume and cost.
Fluid Flow Simulation. Study the flow of liquids (including non-Newtonian liquids such as toothpaste, slurry, and blood) and gasses inside and around your designs. Examine the performance of electronic component cooling systems, valves and regulators, drug delivery systems, turbo machinery, and moving objects.
