SolidWorks 2004: Something for everyone

SolidWorks 2004: Something for everyone

SolidWorks® 2004 is here and it's big. All counted, there are over 250 enhancements in this latest release, 95 percent of which came by customer request. SolidWorks 2004 also implements eight of the top ten requests from the annual user conference – SolidWorks World. With a release this big, it's impossible to cover everything in one article, but suffice to say, there is something here for everyone. Here's a roll-down of the top features in SolidWorks 2004 for machine, mold, and consumer product designers.

Faster designs for big machines
Machine designs can be monstrous, with assemblies typically consisting of tens of thousands of parts. For machine designers, SolidWorks 2004 highlights include performance boosts as well as new features in weldments and drawing automation.

Large assembly performance has greatly improved in SolidWorks 2004 with a lightweight subassembly feature. Only the subassemblies you are working on become fully resolved.

Loading giant assemblies can be a time sink, especially if your day consists of making mini-edits here and there. Thanks to a new feature called lightweight subassemblies – an extension of lightweight parts in earlier versions of SolidWorks – large assembly performance has greatly improved. When you open an assembly using lightweight subassemblies, only the subassemblies that you are working on become fully resolved. Spatial and visualization data is available at all times, but B-rep data, which hogs more memory, loads only when needed.

More time-savers are found in weldments. Earlier versions of SolidWorks treated weldments as assemblies. You had to sketch each structural member as an individual part and then mate the parts together in an artificial assembly. In contrast, SolidWorks 2004 treats structural or plate weldments as a single part, making them easier to manage and edit. What's more, in SolidWorks 2004, structural members, such as fillets, weld beads, gussets, and end caps are available out-of-the-box. Instead of having to draft a gusset by hand, you simply select two faces on the weld, input the size of the gusset, and apply the feature.

In SolidWorks 2004, weldment structural members are applied features. To add a gusset to a weldment, simply select two faces and input the size of the gusset.

"SolidWorks has automated a simple task that used to require a lot of design work," says Rick Behnfeldt of the applied features for structural members. Behnfeldt is a mechanical design engineer at Automatic Feed Company (Napoleon, OH), a company that makes coil processing equipment for carmakers. He gives another thumbs up to a new automatic weldment cut list. The feature allows you to group solid bodies in a part into cut list items so that they appear on the drawing cut list.

Drawing automation tools will also pique the interest of machine designers. In SolidWorks 2004, you can create a drawing of any component simply by clicking a command and placing the views. Another tool creates balloons for all components in an assembly. Previously, you had to click on each part to bring up its balloon. A new tabulated bill of materials lists different configurations of a single assembly. And a revision tracker helps users flag areas in a drawing that have recently been changed.

Integrated mold tools
Mold design is complicated. But SolidWorks 2004 makes it easy with a set of integrated tools that step you through the process. Several analysis tools check a part to make sure it's moldable. A thickness checker points out thin regions that might fill improperly or else warp in the finished product. An undercut analysis tool looks for negative drafts – areas that require special tools to release them from the mold. Another tool sets the parting line, the area where the part will split, and checks draft angles at the parting line to ensure the part will slip out of its mold.

SolidWorks 2004 introduces a full set of integrated mold making tools. Shown here, the core/cavity command uses a parting surface to split the core and cavity of the mold.

Once parting lines are set, another tool shuts off any holes in the part to prevent material from leaking. A core/cavity command uses a parting surface to split the mold and creates a flash well around the part. Finally, another tool creates a cavity and core block.

Bob Pozzo, design engineer at Precise Courtesy Corporation, looks forward to saving money with SolidWorks 2004. The Buffalo Grove, Illinois-based company, which makes plastic caps and parts, enjoys the new mold features that are integrated in SolidWorks because everything is automatic. "Before you had to manually create your own parting lines and core and cavity," says Pozzo. "Now this is at a push of a button."

Consumer products with curves
It's tough to find a flat surface anywhere on today's consumer products, which are all swoops and curves. SolidWorks 2004 gives you more control in making these shapely shapes. A new deform feature lets you turn boxy shapes organic by pushing and pulling on any point or deforming the shape to an existing curve. You can put realistic embossing across a bottle with a wrap feature that puts text into curved contours. "You simply could not wrap text before," says Simon Stone, mechanical design engineer at MechInnovation (Lamington Spar, UK). "You could make the text follow a curve, but it would point to the inside. When you wrap text, you don't get that effect at all. It's a powerful bit of functionality."

A deform tool allows users to push and pull on any point to transform boxy shapes into organic ones like this telephone handset.

Another feature, the loft connector, allows you to create complex 3D shapes by interpolating several 2D cross-sections of varying size without undesirable twisting. An example of a lofted shape would be an airplane wing, where you start off with a large section and generate smaller and smaller sections. The new feature joins each of those sections together to create a stylized solid. "If you're going from a six-sided to an eight-sided object, it will interpret the connection points for you," explains Stone. "And there are no limits to how many sections you can loft."

Stone is also a big fan of the new section tool. "It's absolutely fantastic," he says. By driving a plane through the center of an object, the tool makes half an object disappear, allowing you to view the innards of the model. "You can imagine how useful that would be if you've got a really complicated mechanism that you want to show to a client," says Stone.

Another show-and-tell feature in SolidWorks 2004 is RealView, a real-time rendering tool that demonstrates how designs look in the real world. Realistic shaders and materials add lifelike qualities to designs. And environment maps provide realistic reflections.

A less showy but equally useful added feature is the Print3D menu located beneath the File/Print menu. A click of the mouse links you to a web resource that puts you instantly in touch with the fastest available online quoting services for getting rapid prototypes made quickly and cost-effectively. There's no better way to test for fit and finish or verify the "feel" of your design.

"Every time SolidWorks does a major release, there are so many things about it that are great," says Stone. "They continually strive to improve the unimprovable."

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