Applying Additional Characteristic Information

When extracted, a characteristic is assigned a sequential number, and all of its information is recorded in the Properties window underneath the Characteristics Table. This information is shown when the characteristic is selected and includes the nominal value, units, tolerances, and a calculated upper and lower limit to determine pass/fail status of measured values. All of this information can be automatically passed through to a typical first article inspection report during publication.

You’ll notice that many of these fields are blank, and most are editable including the nominal value and tolerances. These fields are critical and should be carefully reviewed for each characteristic, as any information applied to this section can be automatically published to an Inspection Report. Selecting the “Key” checkbox also updates the associated characteristic with a unique flag-style balloon, which can be modified using the Add/Edit Balloons command if required.

Producing Ballooned PDFs and Inspection Reports

Once all the required characteristics have been extracted and the necessary information applied, a controlled PDF copy can be exported in just a few clicks. From the SOLIDWORKS Inspection tab, look for the Export to 2D PDF command. The following dialog allows the entire drawing to be exported as a single PDF or, if preferred, each sheet of the drawing as a unique PDF. You can also use the checkboxes to control which sheets will be published.

Select OK, provide a name/location for the document and save the file. When producing a PDF copy of a ballooned drawing, “what you see is what you get,” so you can expect that the PDF will essentially be an identical copy of your SOLIDWORKS drawing. Importantly, however, the PDF copy is not associative to the CAD data and is very useful for meeting document control standards.

To produce an Inspection Report, use the Export to Excel command in the SOLIDWORKS Inspection tab. From here, select the appropriate template to format your characteristics in the final report. Default templates include AS9102 for first article inspection, PPAP and Process Performance, although these can be customized to suit your unique requirements if desired.

Click the Active checkbox for the template you wish to use, and optionally the Multisheet checkbox if you want to export characteristic information from all sheets within the SOLIDWORKS drawings. Leaving Multisheet unchecked will only export characteristics from the current active drawing sheet. After providing a name and location for the file, the Inspection Report will appear in Microsoft Excel.

All the important characteristic information including the nominal value, unit of measurement and acceptable upper and lower measurement limits are organized and presented in Form 3 of the AS9102 First Article Inspection report. Additionally, the Part Number and Part Name have been exported from the Inspection Project properties, and the Designed Tooling and Comments fields have been populated for the characteristics which had this information applied in the original Inspection Project.

Taking a closer look, you’ll notice that many characteristics do not contain information in the Designed Tooling or Comments fields – this is simply because that information was not applied in the Inspection Project. Additionally, many of these fields (including the Results field) are intended to be filled out manually during the inspection process.

Though outside the scope of this article, it’s worth mentioning that the default AS9102 report template also includes sheets for Form 1 and Form 2 which can be customized to link to additional Inspection Project information regarding part number accountability and product accountability, respectively. In fact, Inspection Report templates can be customized to automatically publish almost any information captured in the Inspection Project.

As a final note regarding Inspection Reports, the same completed Inspection Project can be used to produce multiple reports in different formats if required. Each will be produced as a unique Microsoft Excel document.

Handling Design Revisions

Since SOLIDWORKS CAD models, drawings and Inspection Projects are all associatively linked, any adjustments made to dimensions already captured in the Inspection Project will update automatically, with any changes being reflected in the Characteristics Table. However, if new characteristics are added to the drawing, or if any captured characteristics are removed, these changes are not automatically recognized. These changes require the use of the Update Inspection Project command, which will highlight any deleted characteristics in red, while new characteristics are highlighted in green.

These changes can be accepted individually by right-clicking a highlighted characteristic and choosing “Accept this annotation change” or alternatively, all annotation changes may be accepted at once.

SOLIDWORKS Inspection Projects are also fully compatible with SOLIDWORKS PDM for more comprehensive revision control.

Using Inspection with 3D CAD Models

With SOLIDWORKS Inspection Professional, Inspection Projects and reports can be developed using 3D CAD models using nearly the same strategy as with 2D drawings. As a prerequisite, the CAD models must be annotated with DimXpert dimensions (otherwise known as MBD dimensions) which essentially replace traditional 2D annotations in drawings. This process is further enhanced with the Model-Based Definition (MBD) add-in for SOLIDWORKS, although it is not required to run Inspection on 3D CAD models. For more information on DimXpert and MBD, consider visiting our article on DimXpert.

Ultimately, the process for setting up an Inspection Project in 3D is nearly identical, with the DimXpert annotations being extracted (either automatically or manually) as characteristics and balloons being generated in 3D space.

In conjunction with SOLIDWORKS MBD, this information can then be further organized into customizable 3D Views for improved clarity and published to 3D PDF or eDrawings format along with the final Inspection Report, effectively eliminating the requirement for a 2D drawing.

Limitations and Workarounds

One significant limitation of the Inspection Add-in for SOLIDWORKS is its inability to import data from coordinate measuring machines, which is an advertised feature of Inspection Professional but only available in the standalone Inspection module. Fortunately, both the add-in and standalone module are included with the purchase of SOLIDWORKS Inspection, and a pathway exists to transfer projects from the add-in to the standalone.

After setting up an Inspection Project with the SOLIDWORKS add-in, the Export to SOLIDWORKS Inspection Project command can be used to pack all the required files into a unique project file compatible with the standalone inspection module.

This project file will contain the exact same information, but can be opened in Inspection Standalone. This provides the ability to import CMM data and a handful of other benefits such as enhanced balloon customization and characteristics identification. Unlike the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Project, it is also disconnected from the original CAD data, making it an attractive option for some document control standards.

Additionally, it is important to note that the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-in and the Standalone module are licensed separately and can be used concurrently. Depending on your company’s inspection process and policies, it may be possible to take advantage of this and use both programs simultaneously to improve documentation efficiency.

Summary

The Inspection Add-in for SOLIDWORKS is a robust solution for SOLIDWORKS users looking to develop Inspection Projects and Reports from2D drawings or 3D CAD models (Professional only) and can significantly reduce the time and human error involved in inspection processes. The process of creating inspection documentation can be summarized as follows:

1. Create a new Inspection Project and set necessary Project Properties.
2. (Optional) Save a project template for future reuse via Create New Template command.
3. Extract necessary dimensions, geometric tolerances, notes, etc. for inspection using manual and/or automatic extraction techniques.
4. Verify characteristic accuracy and provide additional characteristic detail as needed.
5. Adjust characteristic order, grouping and balloon position/properties as required.
6. Produce a ballooned 2D PDF of the inspection drawing or 3D PDF/eDrawing if using a 3D CAD model.
7. Produce an Inspection Report according to the type of inspection process in use.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series on the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-In.

I cannot help but feel a little melancholy when I realize that I will not be meeting all the wonderful users of SOLIDWORKS again until next year. This year was the first year that 3DEXPERIENCE World returned to the “original” form with everything in person, and no virtual sessions. Except for a few sessions, like the keynotes (see them here), everything was in person.

In other words, you had to be there.

I was worried that this might make for a smaller event, but it still attracted more than 4,000 people. Hopefully, this number will increase in time. While the virtual version of the event has been great, and the hybrid version worked to ease back into the “new normal,” it is now a good time to return to past glory.

 (Photo: Lennart Tinndahl.)

Getting there

Before I go into my impression of the event, I want to say a few words on how I got there.

With CO₂ emissions coming under scrutiny, I tried a new approach this year: First I took a plane to Boston, and from there I took a train to Chicago and on to Dallas. This 44-hour train ride saved one ton of CO₂, the amount of CO₂ used to produce electricity for two standard houses for a year.

It also gave me a chance to write my “Tips from the Train.” During the ride I created ten “Tinndahl’s Transatlantic Tips” and video journals on the way.

While it was fun to do, this was significantly more expensive than a plane ride. But if you like adventure, I highly recommend it.

The general sessions

Once again, the charming Manish Kumar, Gian Paolo Bassi, Bernard Charlès and Suchit Jain guided us through the general sessions.

When Bassi enters the stage in an electric sports car, the crowd goes wild. You cannot help getting caught up in the moment. What an entrance!

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

SOLIDWORKS CEO Manish Kumar said in the first general session, “In my simplistic view, SOLIDWORKS only has two flavors of today: we come with the platform or we come on the platform.”

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

This means that you can use your SOLIDWORKS with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform no matter what version you have, standard or connected, and take advantage of the many possibilities. On the platform are the cloud-based possibilities that you have: xShape, xDesign etc., where you can use SOLIDWORKS in your browser.

You may fear that the “with the platform” is temporary but Kumar assured us that “both these flavors are here to stay,” and ended with “we are moving forward with SOLIDWORKS,” which, of course, earned him great applause as this has been a great concern for many users.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the first general session was a sneak peek at the work with AI. We already have AI in SOLIDWORKS to some extent; for instance, with the Selection helper. But more is on the way: Image to sketch, command prediction and automatic drawing creation.

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

As far as I could tell, these AI initiatives are meant for the products on the platform, as this was what they showed pictures from, but we will see.

My personal favorite of the general sessions is the skits that show what is new in the upcoming version of SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE.

The tradition of introducing upcoming features goes back to 2005. It is much more fun than just listing the new features.

As always, it is clear that a lot has gone into the skit. This year’s skit was called “Splines Out,” a fun spoof of the movie “Knives Out,” featuring a mystery woven into the use of SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE, complete with a detective with a southern accent.

(Image: screenshot from SOLIDWORKS Live.)

All the actors—and actors they were, not SOLIDWORKS users or Dassault Systèmes employees—on stage were wonderful. They ensured that you as a user would be looking forward to the next release.
I will not dive into the different upcoming news, as I have not tested the new features yet, but I am most excited about these:

• Option to use the round tool on multiple bodies in the same command.
• Using rollup in assembly visualization to isolate components.
• Copy cutlist properties to all configurations.
• Reload drawings (something that has been only for parts and assemblies so far).
• The ability to assign colors in an assembly visualization.

These features are, of course, not final and can be removed at any point in the development process.

Previously when releasing a new version of SOLIDWORKS, all the features were added, and service packs were issued to fix errors not caught by the development team. But ever since SOLIDWORKS 2024, new enhancements will be added to the different service packs. For instance, in 2024 SP1 a new import filter was added that allowed you to select which part of the files you want imported.

Of course, during the last session, we were all excited to find out where next year’s event will be held. And here it is:

Next year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World will be in Houston, Texas, from February 24 to 26, 2025.

The breakout sessions

After the general sessions came a myriad of breakout sessions to select from. Over 300 sessions took place over three days. Each of them with some unique input on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, SOLIDWORKS, PDM, Simulation, MBD etc.

Many of the presenters were well-known faces in regard to 3DEXPERIENCE World, and once again they did not disappoint, delivering top-notch information presented with their own special twist.

You could be sure to find a session of interest. If you want some great tips and tricks, there was “Jazzy Tips and Tricks” with Betty Baker, John Matrishon and Joe Lance, or “Tank’s Top Tips and Tricks” with Brad ‘Tank’ Meador. If you wanted to know something about importing geometry, Danute Nikolova-Petrova finished off nicely with her “SOLIDWORKS Mastery: Importing and Proficiently Working with STL files,” a great tutorial on how to work with imported files.

For a complete overview of my preferred sessions, see this article. All sessions will be made available on the platform on March 4^th.

The Playground

The Playground, AKA the exhibit floor, is the best places to spend your time between sessions. Start with Model Mania and check out the latest trends in hardware and software. You will not be disappointed. Everywhere you go, there is something to do or see. You will have to go back to be sure that you didn’t miss anything.

The Playground seemed a bit smaller this year, no doubt a result of people still getting back to the “in-person” participation. I hope to see a lot more people there next year.

Final impressions

This 25^th anniversary was, to me, a great success and I have high hopes for the next 25 years.

For me, the mission is to meet with old friends and maybe even make a few new ones. Again, the event fulfilled my mission.

But of course, the work-related part of the event is also important. I gained a lot of new knowledge as well as connected with people who can help me in the future. All there is left to say is: Houston? Not a problem.

Here, we continue with the basic steps for using the Inspection add-in for SOLIDWORKS CAD, which is designed to work with SOLIDWORKS 2D drawings as well as 3D CAD models directly (Professional version only).

Setting Extraction Preferences

Be on the lookout for a small blue right-facing arrow at the top-right of the dialog used to create your Inspection Project. This is a multi-page dialog, and the second page allows you to adjust the criteria that will be used to extract characteristics from the drawing.

Use the available checkboxes throughout this dialog to control which types of characteristics should be extracted from the drawing. There are many sub-options to further control which characteristics are captured, and which are filtered out. For example, checking the Include checkbox for Dimensions and leaving all sub-options unchecked would result in automatically extracting all dimensions except for reference and basic dimensions, which are not included by default. Checking the Inspection Only box in addition to Include would extract only dimensions marked with an inspection circle in SOLIDWORKS. The differences can be seen below:

The Notes section of Extraction Setting contains a couple options worth investigating, as well. Checking the box for Sheet Format will extract notes contained within the sheet format, often associated with the title block of a drawing. The auto-explode checkbox controls the grouping behavior of multiline notes. If enabled, each line of a multiline note will be treated as an individual characteristic. If disabled, the entire note will be treated as a single item.

Finally, the Notes section contains an Extraction Criteria field which contains a regular expression for interpreting the formatting of notes. While it is not advised for inexperienced users to adjust this expression, those wishing to learn more can visit the Help File on Note Extraction Criteria.

Like the Notes section, the Hole Callouts section also contains a checkbox for Auto-explode, which controls how the various components of a hole callout will be treated. If enabled, each individual component of a hole callout (such as counterbore diameter, counterbore depth, hole depth, etc.) will be treated individually. If disabled, the entire hole will be considered as a single characteristic.

Finally, the Sheets section (introduced in SOLIDWORKS Inspection 2023) can be used to control which sheets the characteristic extraction will be applied to. This can be particularly useful for multipage or multi-project drawings, where only a single sheet or a select number of sheets are applicable to the Inspection Project. This section also includes controls for characteristic sequencing, which can be customized.

Tolerance Settings

The final page of this dialog (again accessed with the right-facing arrow) allows you to customize the default tolerances that will be applied to any characteristics that do not already have an explicit tolerance assigned to them. Options are available to select between tolerances based on precision or range, set units and assign different tolerances to linear and angular dimensions. The plus and minus tolerances fields can be manually adjusted, and while they are not required to match the tolerances specified in the title block of the drawing, this is most often the case. You will need to update these tolerance values to match your company standards.

Extracting Characteristics

Once all Project Settings have been applied, click the green checkmark to confirm. Keep in mind that if these options need to be adjusted, the Edit Inspection Project command can be used to change Project, Extraction and Tolerance settings at any time. Additionally, these settings can be saved to an Inspection Project template file to avoid repeating this (often tedious) task. Once confirmed, simply select the Create New Template command and provide a suitable file name.

If you have selected Automatic Extraction, confirming the Inspection Project options will immediately initiate the extraction process according to the extraction criteria. The SOLIDWORKS Inspection tab will take the place of the PropertyManager, displaying a table containing all of the extracted characteristics along with a list of properties associated with the currently selected characteristic.

We will be discussing these two windows in-depth in the following sections, but first we must consider the manual extraction approach. Manual extraction can be particularly useful when only a limited number of characteristics are required. Especially in large or complex drawings, automatic extraction can often “over-extract” and provide many unnecessary characteristics, requiring significant cleanup in order to produce a reasonable ballooned drawing or report.

If manual extraction is specified during project setup, clicking the green checkmark only confirms the project settings and does not extract any characteristics. However, a new command becomes available which is grayed out and not useable during automatic extraction.

Clicking the Add Characteristic command will turn it on and keep it active until it is clicked again, allowing you to select any characteristic within your drawing to extract it. This includes dimensions, notes, geometric tolerances, weld symbols and any other available annotation data. Each annotation you select will be added to the Characteristic Table and organized within the left pane of the screen.

If the Auto Balloon checkbox was enabled in Project Settings prior to using the Add Characteristics command, each annotation will automatically receive a balloon as it’s extracted. If this option was left unchecked, the extraction will still occur, but balloons will need to be added manually using the Add/Edit Balloons command. This command can be used to add and edit the properties/positioning of balloons/bubbles en masse.

It should be noted that balloons/bubbles are organized by default in a separate drawing layer which can be shown/hidden independently from other drawing information. The Layers dialog can also be used to adjust the color of the balloons, if desired.

While automatic and manual extraction techniques cannot currently be mixed in the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-in, it is possible to “turn off” any unnecessary characteristics, which is particularly helpful during automatic extraction. Simply right-click a characteristic in the table and deselect “Selected for Inspection.” Though the characteristic will still be listed in the table, it will not be assigned an ID or balloon number and will not appear in any reports published from the project. If you need to turn a characteristic back on, simply reverse this process.

Characteristics in the table can be reordered and modified with respect to grouping. To change the order and corresponding number of a characteristic, simply click and drag it into another position within the table. This technique can also be performed with groups of characteristics by using Shift or Control to select multiple characteristics first. Note that grouped characteristics with detailed numbering (such as 4.1, 4.2, etc.) cannot be moved outside of their group.

Grouped characteristics often occur from annotations with a quantity specified or multiline notes. To adjust grouping behavior, all characteristics within the group must be selected using Shift or Control and then right clicked. The Grouping flyout provides several options to group/ungroup characteristics with various accompanying balloon schemes.

To learn more about the specific behavior of each of these options, consider visiting the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Help File on Using the Bill of Characteristics.

Part 1 of this SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-In series can be read here, and Part 3 here.

In this article, we’ll be covering the basic steps for using the Inspection add-in for SOLIDWORKS CAD, which is designed to work with SOLIDWORKS 2D drawings as well as 3D CAD models directly (Professional version only). As such, there may be some advanced concepts and tools that are not covered. Additionally, if you primarily work with PDF files for inspection purposes, the Inspection add-in for SOLIDWORKS will not be suitable for you — instead, consider reading our article on SOLIDWORKS Inspection Standalone, which is designed for use with PDF drawings.

This article also assumes an intermediate knowledge of inspection as a process — for those less familiar with the industry of inspection in general, we highly recommend first familiarizing yourself with the basic concepts, tools and terminology which are covered in our related article SOLIDWORKS Inspection and the Importance of First Article Inspection.

Creating a New Inspection Project

It is important to note that when using the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in, inspection projects live within SOLIDWORKS drawings/models and do not exist as separate unique files. As such, a drawing or 3D model must be open in order to begin an Inspection Project.

Once the desired drawing has been loaded, the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in must be enabled. Navigate to Settings > Add-Ins and scroll down if required to locate SOLIDWORKS Inspection in the list of available add-ins:

Checking the box in the left column will enable the SOLIDWORKS Inspection add-in for a single session while checking the box in the right column will load the Inspection add-in automatically each time SOLIDWORKS is booted.

Once the Inspection add-in has been enabled, a SOLIDWORKS Inspection tab will appear, providing all the required tools and options for ballooning/bubbling SOLIDWORKS drawings and producing inspection reports. The very first command in this new ribbon tab is New Inspection Project and is the first step toward producing a ballooned drawing and report:

Upon creating a new inspection project, you’ll be prompted to select an inspection project template. It’s important to note that inspection project templates are not the same as inspection report templates. The inspection project template (shown below) sets the default units/tolerances and properties of the project, often according to standards such as ANSI or ISO, to ensure that the project data is captured properly.

Inspection report templates, on the other hand, format the data for export in accordance with a particular report standard, such as AS9102 (first article inspection), PPAP (production part approval process) or process performance.

Both of these template types can be modified to suit your organization’s needs and reduce the amount of time required to set up an inspection project or produce a final inspection report.

Once you’ve selected an appropriate inspection project template, you’ll be prompted to provide a variety of project properties which are divided into four sections. While these are not technically required in order to produce a ballooned drawing or report, any information provided here will be available for automatic export to the final inspection report and as such it is highly recommended to provide any critical information.

The first section is simply named Properties. While the fields available for Part Name, Part Number, etc. can be typed in directly, one of the unique advantages of the Inspection add-in for SOLIDWORKS is the ability to link these fields to custom properties of the associated drawing and/or CAD model. This not only speeds up the data entry process but more importantly, it ensures that if the drawing/model are ever revised, the updated information will be passed through to the inspection project.

To link an inspection property field to a custom property, simply click the button for Part Name, Part Number, etc. and select the custom property you would like to link. Selecting OK will then populate the field with this property and establish the link:

Certain properties, such as Vendor, Operation and Method are controlled by dropdown lists which contain frequently used selections. If a new entry needs to be added to this list, it may simply be typed into the text box for the property and will become available the next time the dropdown is used.

Alternatively, there are commands available in the ribbon to add/remove selections from these lists:

The second section is Custom Properties, which allows additional custom properties from the CAD model and/or drawing to be added and linked to the inspection project in the Custom Properties section. A large dropdown list is available to select from common custom properties, although names can be typed in directly as well if preferred. Once named, the value field can be linked by clicking the green plus symbol and the familiar Custom Property dialog box will appear once again to select a property:

Note that while capturing and linking additional custom properties can certainly be valuable, the default inspection report templates do not contain placeholders for them and as such they will not automatically appear in produced inspection reports without first customizing the Inspection Report templates, which is outside the scope of this article.

The Characteristic Info section contains a handful of settings that control how the characteristics extracted from the drawing will be organized and classified, along with the option to choose between automatic and manual extraction. Automatic ballooning and renumbering options are also available. The options in this section will be different between organizations, and often between individual projects, and should be explored to determine your preferred settings, as shown below.

Finally, the Sampling section allows you to input lot size, default level/type and an AQL value to be applied to the project. These values ultimately control how precise manufacturing processes must be for parts to be deemed acceptable and Characteristic Info will often vary depending on manufacturing methods and requirements.

Read Part 2 of this series on the SOLIDWORKS Inspection Add-In. Part 3 is available here.

The annual event attracts SOLIDWORKS users from around the world.

Last year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World was a hybrid event, which had both virtual sessions as well as live sessions. The year before, 3DEXPERIENCE World 2022, was initially planned as a hybrid event but eventually became an all-virtual event because of COVID.

This year it seems as if Dassault Systèmes has returned to form, making it an all-in-person event, which means that none of the sessions will be broadcast live. However, they will be recorded and available on demand later.

But what should you see while there? In this article, I will share some of the sessions that I am looking forward to seeing at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

Currently there are 365+ sessions to choose from, and it can be very overwhelming to know where to start. This is especially true if this is your first time attending.

Monday, February 12^th

Most of the sessions that I am looking forward to are on Monday, the first day.

The best way to kick off 3DEXPERIENCE World is in the company of Joe Lance. Joe will give his tips on how you can have a great experience at this event.

Joe is a well-known face in the community and if you need some help in any way, he is your go-to guy.

At the time of this writing, space was still available to see Andrew Bonica and Umar Ahmed’s hands-on session “Hands-On Experience Personalizing Your 3D Dashboard for Maximum Productivity”—but you had better move fast!

I have been fortunate enough to be on some of Andrew’s sessions. They are always worth the time.

After lunch, I really don’t have any options. I have my own session, “3DEXPERIENCE Made Simple.”

It is not about how you use the platform but a different take on the concepts of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

And while I would love to see as many people as possible, it is very hard to compete with Betty Baker, Joe Lance and John Matrishon, who have joined forces in what can only be a truly epic tips and tricks session. I’ll be sure to catch it in reruns.

Do not miss Kevin McCleery’s session “Off-Label Weldment” if you are working with weldments. Knowing Kevin, I’m sure you will learn a lot from his session.

After my own session, I am hopping over to sit in on Daniel Deoreo’s and Sarah Idemoto’s hands-on session “SOLIDWORKS Connected and xShape Interoperability,” as this subject is something that I am very interested in.

If you are not into the platform, my recommendation is to attend Alin Vargatu’s session “Healing Imported Geometry Errors - The Ultimate Guide 2024 Edition.” Alin is well known to EngineersRule.com readers.

Alin is a legend when it comes to handling large assemblies and imported geometry. Take notes. I guarantee you will learn something from him.

For those curious about the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, I highly recommend “Beyond Data Management – What Can you Do with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform” with Andy Rammer.

Andy has done a lot of presentations previously and you can always be sure to learn something from him.

And after all these sessions, be sure to take the rest of the day off enjoy what Dallas has to offer.

Tuesday, February 13^th

The second day of the event will be a day to learn and relax—my first presentation is over, and I don’t have another until Wednesday.

After the General session, I will be joining the session “101 Things Your Mother Never Told You About Mates.”

This sounds like an awesome opportunity to get under the hood with mates.

If you are more interested in the platform, there is still room at Jody Stiles’ “Lofty Aspirations: Hands-on with Loft in xDesign,” which will give you an introduction to loft in the xApps.

Jody’s experience will make for a very exciting presentation, I’m sure.

After lunch, I am very much looking forward to Brad ’Tank’ Meador’s “Tank’s Top Tips and Tricks.” He is a legend in the SOLIDWORKS community.

But if you’re into PDM—or curious about it—you will want to attend Jeremiah Davis’ “SOLIDWORKS PDM Tips and Tricks” instead.

Jeremiah has been training some of the best PDM people I know, so it will be exciting to see what he will be sharing.

And afterwards, I am really looking forward to spending some time in the company of Eric Beatty and his “Taming that Other Guy’s Model” which will show you capabilities of FeatureWorks that are not in the documentation.

I have attended this one before and I highly recommend it. You will learn how to repair a model using FeatureWorks—among other things.

The best way to finish off Tuesday will be to drop in on Alin Vargatu’s “Ultimate Import Geometry Optimization for Large Assemblies.”

Wednesday, February 14^th

The last day of the conference is always bittersweet. You’re so full of information, but you still don’t want the event to end because it will be a whole year before you see all these people again.

Better make the best of it.

For the first session, I am going to recommend Artem Taturevych’s session on custom properties.

Artem is very experienced and has a good understanding of the different custom properties.

Then it’s time for my second session, “Tinndahl’s Troubleshooting Techniques.”

I will give an overview of some of the techniques I use when I troubleshoot, as well as show some of the tools you can use when contacting support.

If you want to join a meetup session instead, I recommend joining Danute Petrova-Nikolova’s “Freelance - A World Without Borders for Design and Innovation.”

I have been in contact with Danute for the past three years and not only is she a very talented SOLIDWORKS and xApp user, she also has a lot of insight on how to become a successful freelancer.

Besides missing Danute’s session, I will also be missing Brad Meador’s “Motorcycle Mayhem.”

This session sounds like a good way to finetune your SOLIDWORKS workflow.

After lunch, it is time for the third general session. Tradition has it that they will announce where next year’s 3DEXPERIENCE World will be located.

After the general session, I will be hard pressed to make a decision. On one hand, I really want to go see Danute’s presentation on “SOLIDWORKS Mastery: Importing and Proficiently Working with STL Files.” She really knows her stuff.

On the other hand, there is John Matrishon presenting “Getting a GRIP on Surfacing,” which ought to be a real treat for those doing surfacing on SOLIDWORKS.

Oh, well. I can’t be two places at once. Thankfully, the sessions will be available on demand.

I hope that this article has provided some useful guidance. But no matter what, I am sure that you will be spending these three days learning new stuff, meeting new people and having a blast.

See you in Dallas!

Between the picture on the left and text on the right in Figure 1, which side catches your eyes first?

Figure 1. A page in the Kevin Robot datasheet.

Most of us would pick the image. Indeed, human cognition appreciates images and processes them much faster than text. Remember the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Let’s go deeper into this comparison to explore the specific advantages of images over text. After all, similar documents are frequently authored and consumed. Drowning in the flood of information, it is easy for the customer’s attention to wane.

Table 1. Cognitive comparisons between the picture and text in Figure 1.

Making use of these advantages, the Kevin Robot datasheet includes other intuitive illustrations, striking a sleek balance between images and text.

Figure 2. More straightforward illustrations in the Kevin Robot datasheet.

Thankfully, having 3D models in our hands has opened up an easy shortcut towards intuitive images, videos and 3D interactive experiences. Specifically, 3D models help us inform, inspire and interact with our audience.

What do I mean by inform?

In addition to the informative illustrations in Figure 2, 3D brings a plethora of options for insightful presentation, which would have been time-consuming and expensive to produce with physical goods—assuming it was feasible at all.

Figure 3. Illustration showing in-context height comparison.

Figure 4. In-context annotation.

Figure 5. In-context magnifier.

Apart from the cognitive appeal for the mind, there is always a longing for emotional connection that resonates with the viewers.

Now look at these stellar renderings in Figure 6. Don’t they inspire? Don’t you want to start touching and engaging with the robot?

Figure 6. 3D renderings of Kevin Robot.

I’d love to see this product in my lab!

3D models can also enable the augmented reality (AR) display on your mobile devices, so that you can see what the robot looks like at your facility right away.

“Creating digital marketing assets from design data allowed expediting Kevin’s development and garnering interest from the market before the design prototype robot was ever built,” says Tobias Brode, head of Business Unit Medical Engineering and Biotechnology at Kevin Robot.

“Traditionally, we would have had to either ship Kevin across the world, so that customers can see him in the flesh [so to speak] or bring customers to our lab. We don’t have to do that anymore. It’s a far more sustainable approach.”

Figure 7. Augmented reality of Kevin Robot.

In addition to consuming informative illustrations and inspiring visuals, our audience can now actively play with the product, upgrading one-way-push communications to bi-directional interactions.

On the 3D Kevin Robot webpage, we can rotate the robot at our discretion, examine from any perspective, and click on the yellow-circle hotspots to understand specific features as needed.

Again, it invites the audience to participate in this exploring journey together, at their pace, in a more engaging and empowering fashion.

Figure 8. 3D Kevin Robot webpage.

Is the model too heavy and slow to load on a webpage? How is the visual quality? These are common concerns.

First, the result speaks for itself. Please feel free to click on the link and scan the QR code at the top right corner, to try it out on your computer and smart phone. On my phone, the entire page with high quality renderings and 3D models takes only seconds to load.

What is the secret? Actually, the 3D model is NOT our typical engineering data any more. It represents a special type of 3D, optimized for web presence: glTF, or put simply, “JPEG for 3D.” To make it easier to remember, I created an acronym, FUSE, to convey its key advantages. (Okay, I got a bit of help from ChatGPT.)

The first letter is F, which stands for Fast. You can create a glTF file in SOLIDWORKS’ Product Communicator in minutes, and load it on a webpage in seconds.

For example, the original data of this lawn mower assembly on the left takes over 80MB, while the glTF model on the right consumes only 4MB, a 20x compression, even smaller than certain images. That’s why it loads so fast.

Figure 9. 20x file size compression in a glTF.

As illustrated in Figure 10, Product Communicator is a role on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. You can see how it creates interactive 3D content to showcase your company’s products.

It brings two browser-based Apps: xStudio for quality rendering and xHighlight for 3D presentation. The design data comes from either your desktop SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, or from other design roles on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

You can scan the QR code in the image below to learn more about it.

Figure 10. Product Communicator structure.

The next letter in FUSE is U for Universal. Similar to JPEG for images, we can universally apply glTF for 3D over the internet, which entails a natural evolution of Internet content, from text, images, audio and video, to 3D.

The S in FUSE stands for Simple. It is super simple to export this format in Product Communicator, similar to publishing a rendering as shown below. Furthermore, businesses can present it easily, and online visitors can comprehend it intuitively, similar to images or videos on a webpage.

Figure 11. Export glTF from xStudio in Product Communicator.

The last letter is key: E for Engaging. Even after the mentioned compression, the visual appeal remains uncompromised, which ensures glTF to touch the audience emotionally, with accurate, attractive and interactive 3D content.

Beyond these four key words, FUSE also implies strategic connotations: join together 3D and the Internet, and ignite excitement for and prevalence of 3D.

Now to recap, after reviewing typical communication materials and human cognition preferences, we broke down the level-up strategy into “three I’s”: Inform, Inspire and Interact.

I hope you see how 3D-empowered content will spice up your company’s products on their website.

Figure 12. “Three I’s” to level up daily communications with Product Communicator.

Lastly, if you have any questions or are keen on exploring similar discussions, please feel free to join the Product and Technical Communication community, where users, reseller experts, partners and 3DS employees are inspiring each other and sharing tips and tricks.

Figure 13. Product and Technical Communication Community.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a user advocacy manager with 20 years of experience in engineering, marketing and software. He advocates for 3D communication to accelerate human cognition and enhance the experiences.

It is true that the Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS product definition team has many tools for asking users’ input throughout the year. But none are as simple, as straightforward and as successful as this event. As we reported in last year’s article, the implementation rate of the ideas voted in Top Ten is close to 70%.

Combing through the hundreds of ideas and filtering out the most useful is a lot of work. At the time of the writing of this article, there were 295 ideas submitted in this year’s competition.

Figure 1. Top 10 List – 2024.

If you have time, you can read all these ideas and decide on which to vote. This Wiki page provides all the details you need to know to find your way in the community. Depending on your field of interest, you can filter ideas based on tags such as:

• Drawing
• Assembly
• Part
• User interface
• Sketch
• PDM
• CAD administration
• Surfacing
• Equations
• 3D Sculptor

For those of you who are too busy using SOLIDWORKS to create our world to read every submission, each year EngineersRule.com combs through all the ideas and highlights the ones we believe are the most impactful for most users.

In this article, we compile two separate shortlists of ideas based on two criteria:

1. Low hanging fruit: Ideas that are simple to implement while providing huge benefits.
2. Fundamental or game-changing: Ideas that could bring major benefits but would require a lot of effort to implement.

To vote for any of the ideas included in this article, simply click the hyperlink and press the like button (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Like = Vote.

A.   Low-Hanging Fruit Ideas Shortlist (Easy to Implement)

1.      Instant Save As Dialog

Benefit: Brings the cut list functionality on par to that of BOM.

Figure 3.

Currently when saving an assembly or a drawing for the first time, or saving with a new name, it takes a significant amount of time before the Save As dialog appears. It is clear that SOLIDWORKS does a lot of processing before it asks the user for the file name, as you can see in this video:

This does not make sense. We should be able to type the file name right away and then go out for a coffee or read an email until SOLIDWORKS completes the save. Having to wait for this dialog to appear is very frustrating and a productivity destroyer.

Our verdict: Very easy to implement; huge reduction in user frustration.

2.      User Interface: Option to "Disable Cut List Update" in Large Assembly

Benefit: Reduces rebuild time in large assemblies containing parts with sheet metal or weldments.

Figure 4.

“Updating Cut List” is one of the most frustrating messages you see on the status bar when large assemblies are rebuilt. Having the option to temporarily disable the update of the various cut list when the assembly rebuilds can save users minutes for each assembly opening/rebuild operation.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; significant impact on productivity.

3.      Add "Rollup and Rolldown to Selected Component" Icons in Assembly Visualization

Benefit: Reduce rebuild time in large assemblies containing parts with sheet metal or weldments.

Figure 5.

Assembly visualization is a critical tool for quickly extracting useful information from assemblies. One of the best features is the ability to isolate components based on a huge number of criteria. There are two "roll-back" bars, one at the top of the tree (should be called Rolldown) and one at the bottom of the tree (should be called Rollup).

After sorting the assembly based on one or more criteria, to isolate a group of components in a given range, the user currently needs to start from the top of the tree, drag the rolldown bar down and then navigate to the bottom of the tree to find the rollup bar and drag it accordingly. On a large tree this operation is extremely difficult, and sometimes even impossible.

Let's implement a more elegant solution from the part feature tree, which allows right-clicking on any feature in the tree to access the icon "rollback to here." For the assembly visualization, we should have two icons:

Figure 6. Two New Icons - Huge Impact.

• Rolldown above the selected item.
• Rollup below the selected item.

This simple enhancement will close the last 5% of the missing functionality from the Assembly Visualization tool.

Our verdict: Very easy to implement; high impact on productivity.

4.      Visual indicator of published envelopes in assemblies

Benefit: Reduce feature tree clutter. This will save time finding components.

Figure 7.

Currently, components published as envelopes can only be identified by opening the envelope publishing tool. It would be very beneficial to indicate envelope publishing in the top-level assembly, like a tree structure:

Published envelopes > Publishing group > Published component@subassembly > destination subassembly.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; useful for top-down design users.

5.       Select Multiple Edges using Y/N Shortcut Keys

Benefit: Quick selection of chains of edges. This is ideal for surface modeling and mold design.

Figure 8.

Manually selecting multiple edges that are linked end-to-end is a laborious task that could take multiple minutes. SOLIDWORKS has already implemented an efficient workflow for doing that, but it works only when defining some mold features, as shown below:

Figure 9.

In a nutshell, once an edge is selected, an arrow points towards the next potential edge. The user presses "Y" to add it to the selection or "N" to change direction. This functionality would make a multi-minute boring and frustrating process into one that can be completed in seconds.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; high impact for surface modelers.

6.      Add Ability to Edit Cut List Tables in Drawings

Benefit: Brings the cut list functionality on par to that of BOM.

Figure 10.

Double-clicking on a cell in a BOM allows the user to edit the linked property and it feeds back to the part file.  Cut list tables should have the same functionality.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; useful for drafters.

7.       Exclude Specific Drawing Views from Standard Rebuild

Benefit: Could reduce drawing update time by a factor of 10 or more.

Figure 11.

Currently we can exclude specific drawing views from automatic updates. That is useful but not easy to manage. Many times, users simply press the Rebuild button (CTRL+B) which will update all drawing views, including the ones marked to “not update.”

Give us the opportunity to exclude views from rebuilding with CTRL+B. They will be updated in three scenarios:

1. One by one, manually by the user.
2. When using Force Rebuild (CTRL+Q).
3. When the drawing is saved.

The benefits are huge. Performance Evaluation could easily filter which drawing views are slow and give the user the option to exclude them from Standard Rebuild (maybe add checkboxes inside Performance Evaluation, also). When the user works, only what is essential gets rebuilt repeatedly. Everything else will be rebuilt at the end of the session, thus saving hours per day.

Our verdict: Extremely easy to implement; huge impact on productivity.

8.      Enhanced Diagnostics for Factors Affecting Drawing Performance

Benefit: Save hours in troubleshooting slow drawings.

Figure 12.

SOLIDWORKS is able to import more and more CAD formats. Some of them create models that dramatically impact drawing performance. We need a simple tool to point out which components are responsible for the slowdowns. For more information, please watch this short video:

Our verdict: Extremely easy to implement; huge impact on productivity.

9.      Tree Display: Show Flat Tree View for sheet metal

Benefit: Increase User Interface consistency.

Figure 13.

The Flat Tree view has been implemented as an option for more than a decade. The only exception is for sheet metal features. Having the opportunity to access sketches as main items in the tree can unlock the productivity of sheet metal designers.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; increases consistency.

10. Allow the Offset of Disconnected Sketch Entities or Edges

Benefit: Unlock Turbo Speed when Sketching.

Figure 14.

The Offset Sketch Entities command should get the same functionality that the Offset Surface command has. That would increase the UX (user experience) and save us a lot of time. It would also allow us to have one "offset dimension" for multiple sketch entities. Currently you cannot offset disconnected entities in a sketch.

Figure 15.

Our verdict: Easy to implement; increases speed.

B.    High Impact Ideas Shortlist (Harder to Implement)

1.       ESCAPE Should Terminate Any Process and Return the Model/Drawing to its Previous State.

Benefit: Eliminate the biggest cause for user-triggered crashes of SOLIDWORKS.

Figure 16.

Before any task is completed, the current state of the model should be saved in a buffer. Thus, any process could be stopped by pressing Escape.

Currently, if a task takes a long time to complete, users have no idea if it will take seconds or hours and many times, they will crash SOLIDWORKS.

Examples:

• You start Import Diagnostics on a multibody part. You can look at the blue circle spinning for minutes or hours.
• MateXpert in a complex assembly could take hours.
• Updating drawing views should be stoppable using Escape.
• Rebuilding a part is supposed to be stoppable. Escape does not always work.

And so much more...

Our verdict: Extremely hard to implement; huge impact on productivity.

2.       Multibody Feature

Benefit: Easy management of multiple bodies and/or features.

Figure 17.

In the plastics industry (injection molding or 3D printing), it is common practice to design multi-material parts. In SOLIDWORKS, this translates into multi-body parts to which different materials are assigned. Currently, using weldment features is the only way to activate a multi-body environment but the name would be misleading for plastic parts. The idea is to provide a multi-body feature similar to the Weldment feature (but with a different name) in order to:

• Activate the multibody environment by clearing the Merge result check box in the PropertyManagers of features that add material.
• Create a Body List as a FeatureManager tree object.
• Act as a placeholder for common custom properties that are inherited by all body list items.

An option in document properties would, in addition, automatically display customizable text at component material level (e.g. "composite" or "multi-material") when materials are assigned to bodies.

Our verdict: Hard to implement; huge impact on productivity.

3.       Background Processing of Inactive Drawing Sheets (Optimal use of CPU Cores)

Benefit: Same time by optimal use of the hardware.

Figure 18.

When opening a drawing or when switching between the model and the drawing, start by updating the current sheet and give the user access to the mouse so she/he can start working. Use the other cores to update the rest of the sheets in the background.

Currently only high-quality views allow background processing using the sldbgproc.exe, but this can be further optimized. By updating the other sheets using the other CPU cores, the user would not experience lag when navigating to other areas of the model.

Our verdict: Hard to implement; huge impact on productivity when using drawings.

4.       Add GPU Support for Simulations

Benefit: Optimal use of hardware.

Figure 19.

Simulations studies are currently calculated with CPU. It would be much faster to have GPU support calculations (CUDA/ROCm).

Our verdict: Very hard to implement; huge impact on productivity.

5.       Optimize xShape for Tablet and Pen Users

Benefit: This will make xShape available to non-PC users.

Figure 20.

xShape is a great program but it was programmed by PC users for PC users. It is interesting that Dassault Systèmes promotes xShape as ideal for tablet users—and that makes sense, but not for the current version of the app. That is true for all xApps.

Currently the only pen/finder inputs are mimicking the use of the mouse. See the image of the current toolbar (attached). There is a tool called offset mouse that is clearly a workaround, great for a BETA version of the app but not for serious users.

Simply look at any other Windows, Android and iPadOS CAD application and you will see how powerful the use of a touch device like the Apple Pen could be:

• The pen selects, drags and manipulates geometry. Fingers cannot interact with the model.
• The fingers manipulate the viewport:
  • 2-finger pinch for zooming.
  • 1-finger drag for panning.
  • 2-finger rotate for rotating the viewport.

This idea is simple and proven to be the ultimate way for professional use of such sculpting applications. xShape and xDesign should be optimized for tablet usage as Dassault Systèmes positions them at every webinar, seminar or 3DEXPERIENCE World presentation.

Our verdict: Hard to implement; game changer for many users.

6.       Enhanced Offset Entities Command by adding a "Machining Mode"

Benefit: Huge time saver for sketchers.

Figure 21.

The offset entities command could be significantly improved to reduce frustration by adding a second option in its Property Manager: milling mode. Imagine a cutter with a radius equal to the offset traveling along the chain of selected entities. The offset entities could be approximated from the "virtual milling" result of such a cutter.

No offset would ever fail to complete, regardless of how complex the selected geometry is. Most of the time, a good approximation is all we need. For 100% precision, preserve the current algorithm as an option (check box or radio button).

This video shows what we need:

Our verdict: Very hard to implement; huge impact on productivity.

7.       Bring Back the QuickView Mode

Benefit: Optimal use of hardware.

Figure 22.

The QuickView mode for drawings was removed in SOLIDWORKS 2022 because the Product Definition considered that the new Detailing mode made the QuickView mode obsolete.

Detailing mode is very powerful for the drawings that have the Detailing Mode Data saved in the drawing file. That being said, many users disable the functionality for saving this data for two reasons:

1. The file size can increase by a factor of 10.
2. The saving time for files containing draft quality views can take hours.

Such users have no other options for quickly opening drawings.

Figure 23.

The QuickView mode was extremely powerful for professionally trained users. They could:

1. Open the drawing instantaneously.
2. Navigate to any sheet in the drawing.
3. Zoom in/out and pan.
4. Load one or more sheets without loading the rest. This unlocks the productivity of multi-sheet drawing users.

Please vote to get this amazing functionality back.

Our verdict: Possibly hard to implement; huge impact on drawings productivity.

8.       Add Measure, Hide and Show in Snake Cam

Benefit: Great for saving time when navigating an assembly.

Figure 24.

Short video describing the idea:

In a nutshell, the Snake Cam (walkthrough) is a fantastic tool for large assembly users. You can get in tight places without the need to create and update a ton of section views, or needing to hide/show or isolate.

Imagine how much better this tool would be if you could select, measure, hide and show components as you explore your assembly.

Our verdict: Hard to implement; huge impact on conceptual design, revisions and review meetings.

9.       Add Selection Filters (F5) for Features and Part Components

Benefit: Huge time saver when working with imported geometry.

Figure 25.

The F5 selection filter is amazing, and a true time saver.

Figure 26.

Have you noticed the two most important types of entities missing in the options above? There is no filter for Features or for Components.

Why is this a huge problem for users? Here are two examples:

• A complex multibody part resulting from importing a STEP file. You want to select in the graphics area for the imported features to keep, then invert the selection and delete the rest.
• You cannot do that without using complicated workarounds. When you select in the graphics area, you think you selected features (you see them selected in the Feature Manager Tree) but you actually selected faces. If you invert the selection, you see this:

Figure 27.

Figure 28.

If only there was a filter that would allow selections of features in the graphics area.

The same limitation exists in assemblies. There is no selection filter for selecting part or subassembly components.

Our verdict: Possibly hard to implement; huge impact on productivity.

10.  Filter Modified Components in Resolved and LightWeight Modes

Benefit: Reduce error, save time during revisions.

Figure 29.

There is no better tool than "Filter Modified Components" to see what has changed in your assembly. Unfortunately, this tool exists only when an assembly is opened in Large Design Review mode. We need it in all modes to save time and reduce the possibility of errors.

For more details, please watch this video:

Our verdict: Possibly hard to implement; huge impact on error reduction.

Call for Action

The goal of this article is to make it very easy for any user to vote on a curated list of ideas. If you like any of them, voting is as simple as Click and Like.

That being said, we are sure that once you see how easy is to read the rest of the ideas, you will spend more time in the Top Ten List Community and find even more ideas worth voting for.

Let’s help SOLDIWORKS improve by taking a few minutes to make our preferences known.

If you want to see which of the ideas made the Top Ten, you can attend The Top Ten List Session at 12:30 pm CT on Wednesday, February 14, 2024 at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2024.

About the Author

As an Elite AE and Senior Training and Process Consultant, working for TriMech Solutions, Alin Vargatu is a Problem Hunter and Solver. He has presented 43 times at 3DEXPERIENCE World and SOLIDWORKS World, twice at SLUGME and tens of times at SWUG meetings in Canada and the United States. His blog and YouTube channel are well known in the SOLIDWORKS Community. In recognition for his activity in the SOLIDWORKS Community, the SWUGN (SOLIDWORKS User Group Network) awarded Alin the SOLIDWORKS AE of the Year title.

Trying to Replicate Physical Experiments

Referring back to the concept of an analysis plan discussed in the previous article, it’s important to decide if you’re trying to analyze the in-situ performance of your product out in the wild or replicate a physical experiment, as these often have very different requirements.

A frequent source of error is due to users trying to match the results of some test or physical experiment by using boundary conditions that would be more appropriate for the performance of the product under typical usage.

Consider the aerodynamics of a car. Replicating a wind tunnel test may involve a stationary model in a chamber of known size. Replicating the real use case of the car driving down the road may require incorporating effects such as wheel rotation, the relative motion of the ground under the car in an infinitely large open environment.

Another example is for automotive intake accessories or cylinder head geometry as in the figure below. There is a significant difference between trying to simulate the in-situ performance which could require time-dependent flow conditions representing the various strokes of the engine cycle, versus replicating a steady-state “flow bench” test where a fixed amount of vacuum is pulled to determine the resulting flow rate.

Figure 1. Replicating a flow bench test for an intake manifold.

Physical experiments usually only output results at a few key locations, while CFD provides output everywhere. Instrumentation usually involves additional test fixtures and rigging that may influence the device’s performance. If you’re attempting to replicate a physical experiment, representations of these fixtures should likely be included in the analysis. Also ensure that you probe the virtual measurements or define goals in the exact location of any physical test sensors.

Steady State vs Transient Analysis

When developing an analysis plan for thermal problems, it’s important to consider the “thermal mass” of the device and the time period of its intended operation. When a device has a low thermal mass and a long period of intended operation, a steady-state analysis makes a lot of sense. But what if the device has a heavy mass and only operates for short bursts? A steady-state analysis may provide a too-conservative and unrealistic result.

Steady-state analyses don’t reveal how long it takes for peak temperatures to be achieved. The engineer may think temperatures have stabilized quickly but there is no way of knowing whether those temperatures took 30 seconds, 30 minutes or 30 hours to reach a steady state.

When the thermal mass of the part is significant compared to the heat powers and time scale, it can be worth running a transient or time-dependent analysis. While the solve times of a transient analysis are much greater, they can be reduced significantly by taking advantage of solver options such as nested iterations, which perform sub-iterations for each solver timestep and allow specification of a much larger manual timestep size.

Figure 2. Transient thermal natural convection analysis.

In the transient thermal analysis above, the device takes approximately two hours to reach a temperature within a few percent of the steady-state value.

If you run a steady-state analysis and observe fluctuating goals or residual values, it’s possible that your problem may be “unsteady” in nature. This can occur due to vortex shedding or other dynamic effects that can spontaneously appear in the fluid flow at certain Reynolds numbers.

The more unsteady a problem is, the less accurate a steady-state solution will be. Even if you are after an averaged value as an output, it’s best in this case to switch to a transient solver.

To extract a steady-state value from an unsteady transient problem, you can export results from your monitored goals/sensors into Excel or other software and average the results over some relatively steady period.

Figure 3. Configuring averaged results for a transient study.

Alternatively, you may be able to specify in Calculation Control Options “averaged” results for a specific time interval. This will allow viewing time-averaged contour plots and other outputs that should be similar visually to the results you would expect from a steady-state study but with the confidence that the physics are properly supported.

Choosing Internal vs External Analysis

We commonly think of “internal” analyses for problems like manifolds and pipe flow and “external” analyses for flow over a vehicle. But the reality for many products is that the choice is not so obvious and although limiting the calculation to the internal region will almost always solve faster, it may neglect important factors about the outside environment.

Figure 4. Venting of a firebox as internal (left) and external.

If working with a room-scale or larger product, it may be desirable to see flow patterns through inlets or outlets and how they can interact with other geometry such as the floor or other obstructions.

For enclosures, if the model is too difficult to prepare as “water-tight,” we can use an external analysis as a workaround which allows the simulation of leakage through any small openings.

Figure 5. External analysis of an electronics enclosure with leakage from uncapped openings.

For problems where an internal analysis makes sense but there are still important effects to represent around the inlet and outlet, a balance can be achieved by creating a more representative inlet geometry shape. An example would be a hemispherical cap, which helps approximate the inlet air flow direction for devices that feature a rounded opening or velocity stack.

Figure 6. Hemispherical inlet on an internal analysis.

Extending geometry away from inlets and outlets can also help minimize any artificial effects imposed by boundary conditions. Guidelines for CFD typically recommend the length of these extensions in some multiple of the pipe diameter (three times diameter, six times diameter, etc.)

Figure 7. Extended inlets and outlets on a pump.

If you intend to neglect the frictional losses from these extended inlets, then be sure to specify an ideal wall condition on the inner faces.

Unrealistically High Heat Powers

For electronics cooling analysis specifically, a common issue seen is improper definition of the heat powers of electronic components.

Avoid confusing the absolute power rating with dissipated heat power. This can apply to power supplies, inverters, DC converters, etc. The waste heat for these could be estimated by multiplying the power rating by the efficiency – for a 300 W rated power supply that is 90% efficient, we could estimate about 30 W of waste heat that could be applied as an equivalent heat source within the CFD analysis. Applying the 300 W condition would result in some very high temperatures. Light emitting devices like LEDs also emit a portion of their energy as visible light so it’s important to apply their efficiency as well.

A trickier issue is understanding the duty cycle of various components. For many electronics, it may be unlikely that every component on the board will be operating at its maximum rated thermal power continuously 100% of the time. Detailed simulation of duty cycle can be carried out by cycling heat power on and off in a transient analysis but it is more common in practice to overlook minor transient fluctuations in temperatures and instead, simply scale down the heat powers by an appropriate factor.

Neglecting Thermal Radiation

Before neglecting thermal radiation altogether, it’s important to determine whether radiation has only a limited influence on your device’s thermal performance. For forced convection (fan or liquid cooled) electronics devices, the heat transfer tends to be dominated by convection and it is common to neglect thermal radiation.

While conductive and convective heat transfer rates are both proportional to linear difference in temperature, the radiative heat transfer rate is dependent on the difference of each body’s absolute temperature raised to the fourth power. This means that at higher temperature differences and higher absolute temperatures the effects of radiative heat transfer become much more significant.

For passively-cooled electronic devices that rely on natural convection, radiation can be worth investigating. Incorporating radiative heat transfer into your analysis would also be a requirement to analyze effects of different surface finishes and coatings such as black anodize which are known to have high emissivity values.

A quick way to investigate the effects of thermal radiation would be to duplicate your study and enable radiation, observing both the changes in temperature and heat transfer rate due to these newly included effects.

Figure 8. A flux plot showing heat transferred by radiation and convection.

The Flux plot in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation is a method to quickly filter by high power components and see where the heat is going. It’s also a useful tool to catch setup issues like lack of contact between components that should be conducting heat to each other.

Alternatively, investigation of radiation can be performed by a quick hand calculation. Incorporating temperatures obtained from your original analysis and measurements of external surface area should give a good idea of whether or not the radiative heat transfer will be significant factor for your problem.

Unsupported Physics

For problems beyond simple thermal and fluid flow, it’s important to ensure your CFD package supports the relevant physics.

For example, consider problems that involve the coupled motion of bodies with fluid flow or other effects such as “free surface” liquid/gas boundaries.

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation has the “free surface” functionality which can be enabled which uses the volume of fluid approach to solve simple problems involving sloshing or other behaviors. It also supports rotating components through the definition of rotating regions but doesn’t support any other type of body motion such as reciprocating or oscillating components. It also doesn’t support surface tension or capillary action.

Figure 9. Coupled body motion in SIMULIA XFlow.

For arbitrary motion of bodies with multiple degrees of freedom, coupled two-way FSI and more powerful and varied free surface methods, SIMULIA XFlow and SIMULIA Fluid Dynamics Engineer each have unique advantages.

Figure 10. Mixing tank with headspace in SIMULIA XFlow.

If your problem hinges on chemical reactions, combustion or phase change, you will want to find a solver that can tackle those effects.

Conclusion

It’s easier than ever to use CAD-embedded CFD to predict the performance of your product, with tools like SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation making the setup process very straightforward.

While it still may require significant research and investment to build a very high accuracy simulation model (the saying, “getting the last 10% takes 90% of the effort” comes to mind), avoiding the mistakes in this article should help you achieve a level of accuracy sufficient to make design decisions and avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

Start by planning out the analysis with defined assumptions, inputs and outputs, then carefully choose where you place your virtual sensors or goals. Ensure your parameters of interest are solved through to their convergence and check that your mesh is adequate. Step back and look at the problem you are trying to solve, and determine if there are any changes required to match a physical experiment or to make sure the proper physics are incorporated.

Lastly, if you aren’t sure if you should make a certain assumption, use a certain approach or just how to proceed in general – reach out to your colleagues or your software provider for assistance! Sharing what you’ve tried so far and any documentation you have for your analysis plan should give them the info they need to quickly advise.

However, the extra accessibility afforded by modern CFD software allows users to neglect common analysis fundamentals. This can lead to poor accuracy or misleading results. It won’t be possible to address every possible source of error in this article, but I’ll do my best to address the major setup mistakes I’ve seen often working with engineers using CFD.

The article will focus primarily on SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation but the principles should apply to most CFD packages.

Mistake: Not Creating an Analysis Plan

Before jumping into any kind of simulation, it’s a great idea to come up with an analysis plan. This should include defining the main parameters of interest (the “outputs” or independent variables) and the main inputs to be used in the simulation.

While you’re at it, it’s a good idea to document the relevant assumptions you’ll be making and the level of simplifications you plan on making to the models.

A little bit of planning upfront can keep you on track and save a lot of time in the long run so you don’t lose sight of your end goals and assumptions. Perhaps more important is that having your plan documented allows you to easily reach out for help to colleagues or your software technical support team and clearly explain what you’re trying to achieve.

Figure 1. Simplified analysis plan for a Tesla valve.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a plan, I usually recommend thinking of the simulation setup like a virtual experiment. If you were conducting a real-life experiment, how would you set it up? Where would you place measurement sensors and what parameters would you want to measure? Would you run the test only for a short duration or an extended period? How large would the test chamber/environment need to be?

Answering these questions provides a great starting point for an analysis plan. This will directly translate into decisions on where to place virtual sensors to monitor the solution, choosing a steady-state vs transient analysis, sizing the computational domain, etc.

Mistake: Not Monitoring Goals and Solution Convergence

Whatever the parameters of interest for the simulation are, appropriate goals should be defined to track them throughout the course of the solution. Depending on the type of analysis this could include monitoring values such as pressure loss from inlet to outlet, flow rates, lift and drag forces on surfaces, temperatures of key components in a thermal analysis, or the concentrations of various species of fluids in a mixing problem.

Since computational fluid dynamics is an iterative process, failure to monitor these values can cause one of two problems: the peak values may not be captured due to the solution not developing long enough (causing major inaccuracy) or the solve time may be drastically increased by solving for much longer than required.

To avoid this, a good rule of thumb is to think of these result monitoring locations as virtual sensors, so wherever you would place a sensor in a physical experiment, place a goal or output request to track the parameter of interest in that location.

You can then plot values at these locations over the course of the solution (practically every CFD package will allow viewing results at these monitored locations in real-time) to manually assess convergence once the values have stabilized within a certain threshold, but a better idea is to take advantage of stopping criteria.

Figure 2. Goals defined in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation (left) and solver monitor goals plot.

When goals are defined in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, automatic stopping criteria are placed to stop the solver once the goals are converged to within a tolerance. The user can manually specify the tolerance if they want more control. As soon as all the parameters of interest are stabilized to within this threshold, the solver will automatically terminate and save the results, often cutting minutes or hours off the solve time.

It is still important to double-check the solution convergence after the fact.

Adjusting Stopping Criteria

If you find that the monitored locations are still increasing in value when the solution stopped, it’s likely that some secondary stopping criteria, such as a limit on number of iterations or “travel” is kicking in. For problems where your monitored locations are taking a particularly long time to converge, it may be necessary to raise the limit for the number of iterations/travels or eliminate these secondary stopping criteria entirely.

Figure 3. Finishing criteria for SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation with manual goal tolerance.

Aside from helping ensure accuracy of the solution, defining the goal or other result monitors in advance saves time when it comes to post-processing or interpreting the results later, as these values can easily be graphed and exported to reports. 

If you find you need to extend the solution after completing an analysis, most CFD programs allow you to continue or resume the calculation from where you left off. You don’t have to solve the whole problem all over.

Monitoring Residuals

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation doesn’t require the monitoring of residuals for typical problems including steady-state and transient problems with the default settings.

In other CFD packages like SIMULIA Fluid Dynamics Engineer, the residuals will automatically have associated output requests so that they can be plotted over the course of the solution. Residuals are typically provided for mass flow, energy and turbulence parameters. The residual value can be thought of as the imbalance that remains between iterations of the solver and, due to the iterative nature of the solution process, they are expected to decrease over the course of the analysis before plateauing at some infinitesimal value.

If you observe residuals increasing over the course of the solution or their absolute value is much larger than expected, it is likely there is a problem with the CFD setup and the program is producing an instability or “divergent” solution. The results in this case should not be trusted until whatever is causing the residuals to diverge is corrected.  

Note that monitoring residuals on their own isn’t a replacement for directly monitoring the convergence of your parameters of interest. In SIMULIA Fluid Dynamics Engineer, this can be done by placing additional output request for whatever your key parameters are, similar to the goals in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation.

If you happen to be running a SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation time-dependent study with “nested iterations,” you will have access to residuals for normalized mass, momentum and energy as additional goal plots. If you are trying to speed up the solution process by forcing a large manual timestep with nested iterations, checking these residuals will let you know if the solution is stable or if you’ve pushed the timestep size too far.

Mistake: Resuming or Continuing an Analysis

When running the CFD any time after the initial solve, there should be an option to resume the previous simulation.

Figure 4. Dialog showing options for either new or continued calculation in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation.

As previously discussed, this option to resume can be helpful if the goals were not converged and you wanted to solve for more iterations. However, take note that if you made any changes to the simulation setup, you will most likely want to do a “New calculation.”

This comes up often: you are making changes to the simulation setup and wondering why they are not being reflected in your results. It’s very possible you’ve accidentally picked the “Continue calculation” option rather than starting a new one.

Performing model adjustments or geometry changes will flag the mesh as out-of-date and start the process from scratch but you must pay close attention to these options when you’re only modifying simulation parameters.

Mistake: Lack of Mesh Refinement

Automatic meshing done by many CFD packages makes it easy to do simulation but it is important to examine the mesh to ensure it fulfills a few general guidelines. If time allows, a mesh convergence study should be performed to examine the effects of increasing mesh refinement and determine a point of diminishing returns. These studies are commonly called “mesh dependence” or “grid dependence” studies and are carried out with the goal of proving the solution is mesh or grid independent.

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation uses a fairly unique meshing technology that combines a Cartesian grid or octree mesh with the immersed boundary method, a technique that allows capturing features that are smaller than the mesh cell size.

These cells (referred to as solid/fluid or partial cells in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation) provide a great deal of flexibility in controlling the amount of detail in a simulation.

In the image below you can see a draft mesh for a server rackmount unit featuring hundreds of components.

Figure 5. SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation mesh for electronics cooling displaying partial solid/fluid cells.

Note that the mesh cells in the zoomed-in view are larger than and not aligned with the memory chips. Thanks to the support for partial or solid/fluid cells, SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation can resolve this detail which greatly reduces the mesh cell count (and time) required to solve such a problem.

Avoiding Severe Mesh Issues

While the automatic mesh creation is impressive, it’s not a magic bullet for all situations.

By far the most common issue I see regarding meshing for SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation is a mesh with cell sizes many orders of magnitude larger than the solid features they are trying to resolve. There is only so much the partial cells can do and when there is too much variation in the size of the cells will result in very inaccurate results or generated cryptic solver error messages.

Simply checking the mesh that the software generates by inserting a Mesh Plot command. This will ensure the cell sizes are roughly of the same order of magnitude as the feature sizes you expect to resolve and will prevent these worst errors.

To increase accuracy further, it’s recommended that you provide a few cells across any narrow channels. If you’re expecting to see detailed thermal gradients through a solid, then you’d be well advised to include a couple cells through the solid thickness as well. For the best quality results, you will want to place 10-15 cells across a narrow channel.

Proving Mesh Independence

None of the guidelines discussed are replacements for performing a mesh independence or mesh convergence study. Performing a series of studies with increasing mesh refinement to observe the sensitivity of your key results to the mesh is crucial if you are striving to eliminate all errors.

One area where additional effort for mesh refinement is important is aero and hydrodynamic effects on curved surfaces – for example, lift or drag calculations for a vehicle or the performance of a rotating impeller.

Figure 6. Mesh convergence study for a propeller thrust calculation.

The figure above shows a simple mesh convergence study conducted on a rotating propeller, with the thrust as the key output. Zooming in to the propeller cross section and hiding the propeller body shows that at coarse refinement levels the profile of the propeller cross section is not well defined – this is known as discretization or local truncation error. If you consider that that pressure is resolved into forces across each cell, it is clear why this can yield large differences in the predicted thrust.

However, with minor refinements the solution converges to a thrust value while still maintaining a reasonable number of cells. As one might expect, this is the level (Refinement 5 in figure above) at which the outline of the profile of the cells on the zoomed in view matches the geometry of the original propeller blade. Refinement 6, which more than triples the cell counts, does not change the thrust, so the results may be considered converged.

Note that ensuring the solution is mesh independent does not necessarily mean it is accurate – only that you have addressed one possible source of error.

Solution-Adaptive Meshing

If you don’t want to fool around with a mesh convergence study, you can also check whether your CFD software offers a solution-adaptive mesh approach.

Figure 7. Solution-adaptive mesh solve progression for wind loading.

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation’s solution-adaptive mesh allows setting targets for the maximum number of cells and a time period to wait between refinements. The software will then periodically refine areas of the model with high pressure gradients. If you are tracking your goals, this will give you a record of the goals converged values at each level of mesh refinement – essentially built-in proof that your solution is grid-independent.

Body-Fitted Mesh

The structured Cartesian mesh used by SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation excels at applications like electronics cooling but can require significant amounts of refinement on smooth curved geometries. For classical aerodynamic and hydrodynamic problems, many CFD experts swear by “unstructured” or body-fitted mesh like that available in SIMULIA Fluid Dynamics Engineer and other standalone CFD packages.

Figure 8. Coarse and semi-refined body-fitted mesh in SIMULIA fluid dynamics engineer.

This mesh structure relies on special boundary-layer elements (commonly referred to as an “inflation layer”) near the walls to precisely resolve the mesh.

This meshing method tends to require additional geometry preparation and simplification as it is much less forgiving about any faults or imperfections in the CAD model quality compared to the immersed boundary method used by SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, which is capable of healing over small faults and geometry errors.

The payoff (especially when combined with advanced turbulence models like k-ω SST) can be higher accuracy for predictions of lift and drag, potentially at overall lower element counts.

Meshing guidelines for conformal mesh are mostly related to the thickness of the boundary layer elements, which can be determined in SIMULIA Fluid Dynamics engineer by placing an output request to track YPLUS (y+) the normalized wall-normal distance.

Each turbulence model will have recommended values for y+ to aim for depending on whether you plan to rely on wall functions which approximate the local effects of the near-wall boundary layer (possible with even a crude mesh) or directly resolving the viscous-sublayer.

That’s all…for now. There’s a few more mistakes to be avoided. Stay tuned.

In this article and the next, I will go over how you can best set up your SOLIDWORKS templates, for both models and drawings. The first article is all about setting up your model template, with a focus on the part template.

What is a Template File?

A template is a file that is set up to meet your company’s set of rules for documentation. If everyone uses the same template, the documentation will be uniform.

When setting up your template, you need to consider a few different things:

• Do you have any custom properties that you want filled out automatically?
• Do you want to use a drafting standard (ANSI, ISO, DIN, etc.) or do you want to deviate from that?
• Do you want multiple templates, for instance with different drafting standards, different measurements, etc.?

I usually divide model templates into two categories:

1. Document Properties
2. Custom Properties

Document Properties

To open and modify the document properties, you need to have a document open that is the same type of template you want to make.

With the part open, go to Tools > Options.

Here you will find the Document Properties tab.

These properties can be divided into two categories: “Drafting standard” and for the lack of better words, “Non-drafting standard.”

In the image below, you can see where it separates.

The Drafting standard is the document rule set that covers font type, size, arrow sizes, etc. While it has no effect on the drawing, you may want to give it a look to ensure that your coworkers always use the same font. Using these rules will guarantee that you comply with the international drawing standards for ISO, DIN, ANSI etc.

If you modify these standards, a new drafting standard will be created called “<last used standard>-MODIFIED.”

Once the drafting standard is done, the file can be saved (1, in picture below) and used in some of your old files if you want to (2).

Next, we have the “Non-drafting standard.”

These are properties that are not affected by international standards for drawings. The most important ones here, if you ask me, are the Units and Image Quality.

Units

This section determines what units you are using in your model. Setting it incorrectly can create problems in the model. For instance, you think you have set a length to 3 inches, but it is set to mm.

These values do not transfer to the drawing. If your drawing is set to mm and your model is set to inches, then you will get the result in mm on the drawing.

Image Quality

Setting your image quality correctly can be very prudent for your future assemblies.

Image quality is used to set the level of detail in your model. The higher the detail, the longer the rebuild time. Rebuild time is transferred to any assembly in which the part is inserted, even if you set the assembly image quality to low.

In the below image you can see the difference between a model with the highest quality and the lowest quality. This is why I usually set this to 10-20% percent of the maximum.

On your drawing, the quality of your model is of no consequence.

With the document properties set, you can save it as a template but you can also set up your “Custom Properties.”

Custom Properties

Custom properties are values created on the model that can be transferred to your drawing, BOM, PDM and even to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

When setting up properties, you can either make it a property that is general for the entire model, or meant for the configuration only. The easiest way to differentiate the two in the custom properties tab.

Why is that important? If you have a property that you know will always be the same for every configuration, you can add this as a custom property.

If you have a property that changes in each configuration, the Configuration Properties will need to be reconfigured.

One note on custom properties and configuration specific properties, is that your drawing will always attempt to read the Configuration tab first, and then the Custom Properties tab.

But there will be more on drawings in the next article on setting up drawing templates.

You have a few different options when setting up your properties in SOLIDWORKS. For now, let’s go over two options.

The first way is by using File > Custom Properties or the shortcut.

This is by far the most commonly used and the simplest solution.

Open the Custom property tab and write the custom properties that you need.
In this case, I have created these five custom properties and two configuration specific properties.

As you can see above, I have set some of the values to be filled out automatically and some properties with the value to “To be filled out.” This is done to ensure that I do not use an old value by mistake.

Another method is to use the Property tab builder.

The property is a program that is installed with your SOLIDWORKS that allows you create a custom property box that is quickly available within SOLIDWORKS.

We won’t get into details here but suffice it to say that this is quite a useful program. It allows you to save predefined property tabs for parts, assemblies and drawings.

To create a new property file quickly, click “Custom Properties” in the right side of the screen and select “Create now”.

This will open the program and you can determine the type of boxes you want and if you want to have some of them filled out with predefined values.

Once you are satisfied with it, save it as a custom property part template (.prtprp) or the equivalent template that you are working on.

Once it is saved, it is available on the right side of your screen and you can quickly access and fill out your custom properties.

Once the Custom Properties is prepared, it will be saved as a template by going to File > Save As.

Then, select the part template extension.

Afterwards, repeat the process for the assembly template and save it as an assembly template.

3DEXPERIENCE

Saving your template on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a little bit different since it is saved online to ensure that everyone has access to it.

To do this, you press File > Save As once your part (or assembly) template is ready to be saved.

This will bring up a pop-up box, where you can give the template a title and a description.

When saving the template, you can determine if you want to keep on developing on it by saving it in a draft state or make it available for everyone by setting it in released state.

Creating your model template is the first step to ensuring that your documentation will be uniform and thus reduce the number of potential problems down the road.

I have been fortunate enough to get my hands on the prerelease of next year’s version, and had a chance to look at some of the features that I’ve been hearing about.

Over the course of three articles, this one being the last, I review some of the new features of SOLIDWORKS 2024. For this final article, I will focus on the new drawing features.

Each feature will get a small description of how to use it, as well as a final review. Each feature will receive a rating of 1 to 5 “Trains.”

Reattach Dangling Dimensions

Every SOLIDWORKS user has been in a situation where the 3D model has changed and as a result your dimension becomes dangling, which means it can no longer find its original attached location.

What does it do?

While it was possible to reattach the dimension by dragging it into place, it may be troublesome to do so. In SOLIDWORKS 2024, it has become much easier to reattach dangling dimensions. You can do it with just two clicks.

How to use it?

When you have a dimension that is dangling, as seen above, simply right click on it and select reattach.

After the reattach command is activated, you can see the “unattached points” marked with red.

The point you are currently working in has a little red X.

As you can see in the animation below, once you have attached the first dimension, the other attachment point becomes active and you can attach that one, as well.

Do we need it?

This can be a huge time-saver, because we no longer must drag the dimension into place. It is simple and intuitive to use, which is why I am giving it 5 trains.

Keep Link Property Dialog Box Open

When creating a custom property link from model to Drawing in SOLIDWORKS, a surefire way to get the correct properties is by selecting them with the property Dialog box.

What does it do?

In previous versions, the dialog box closed whenever you had created one property link, and you had to reopen it to add another value to the annotation.

For instance, if you wanted to add the value “description” and “number” to a certain note, you first had to add description and press OK and then open the dialog box again and select the number.

However, in SOLIDWORKS 2024 the dialog box stays open until you decide to close it.

How to use it?

With a text annotation activated, press the “Link to property” button. Select the first property you want to add and press “Add.”

Select the other property you want to add and either press Add if you want to add more, or just click OK if you only want to add that property.

The end result is a dynamic textbox that updates as you change the custom properties.

Do we need it?

Working with support, I know many companies who use multiple properties in their description. While you can do this within a single line on the model, it’s a very good solution when setting up your link to properties in a text.

This will get 4 out of 5 trains.

Overridden Dimensions

In SOLIDWORKS, you might find it useful to overwrite a dimension manually on a drawing. However, when opening the drawing after a couple of months, it can be difficult to see which dimension has been changed.

In SOLIDWORKS 2024 it has become a lot easier to find your changed dimension.

What does it do?

This new feature gives your changed dimension a specific color which makes it stand out compared to the other dimensions.

How to use it?

It is already active by default. To test it simply select a dimension and press “override dimension.” Change it and you can see the dimension has changed.

You can, of course, set the color yourself. Simply go to Options > System Options > Colors.

Within the color scheme, you can find the line “Drawing, overridden dimensions.”
If you want this rule to apply to drawings pre-SOLIDWORKS 2024, you have to reload your drafting standard.

Pro Tip: If you decide to use the original value again, simply right click on the dimension and press “Restore Original Value.”

Do we need it?

This feature has its merits, especially with older drawings, as it makes it a lot easier to find dimensions that have been changed manually. In my previous employment, I would often find myself searching for old dimensions that had been changed.

Out of sheer nostalgia, I am giving this 5 out of 5 trains.

Highlight Referenced Elements

This turned out to be a favorite of mine once I got to know it. When selecting a dimension, you can see where it is referenced. This means that you can see if it is a point-to-point selection.

How to use it?

This is a document setting, which means that you want to add it to your template.

Go to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Detailing.

In this pane, you will find a checkmark for “Highlight associated elements on reference dimension selection.”

With that checkmark set, you can see the first measurement selected is the bottom line for my measurement.

And in the second measurement, I selected the two vertical lines.

And then, with the third dimension I selected two points.

Do we need it?

As I wrote earlier, I really like this feature as it can help you find out how you have dimensioned your model.

This feature is also rated 5 out of 5 trains.

Keeping Chain Dimensions Colinear

A lot of users have requested this one, as most users of the chain dimensions prefer their arrows to be colinear.

What does it do?

This is a purely cosmetic change but a great addition nonetheless.  It ensures that your chain dimension is colinear at all times, no matter how small the space is.

How to use it?

This is a document setting. Go to Options > Document Properties > Dimension > Linear > Chain Dimensions

You actually have two options. To avoid having the text and the arrowheads overlap, you can put a check mark in “offset text automatically when space is limited.” If you are using the ANSI or ISO drafting standard, this checkmark is added automatically in your options. However, if you want to ensure that the arrowheads do not overlap, you can make a decision on what should be done.

Under “When Arrowheads overlap substitute arrowhead termination automatically with” you can select either Points or Oblique Strokes.

If you are using the ISO drafting standard, this checkmark is added automatically in your options.

The result is as you can see below.

Do we need it?

It is a great addition to the options for the chain dimensions and I know quite a few people who will be very pleased with it. You still have the option to use the chain dimension as you want to, and you are not chained down (see what I did there?) to only one option.

This is why I am giving this new feature 5 out of 5 trains.

I really like all these additions to the drawing and sketching environment. There is no absolute favorite. They are all good ways to create drawings, spot errors and troubleshoot.

Each feature will get a small description on how to use it, as well as a final rating of 1 to 5 “Trains.”

Rip Tool

In SOLIDWORKS 2024, you can use the rip tool to create rips in hollowed out cylindrical bodies and convert it to sheet metal.

What does it do?

In previous releases of SOLIDWORKS, converting a conical or cylindrical body to sheet metal would require you to insert a cut before converting it.

How to use it?

To use this tool, you need a hollowed out solid body that is not a sheet metal component.

For this test, I am going to create a point on one of the end faces. If you use a point that is not on the face, it will be projected to the face.

Select the Rip tool and then select one of the edges of the model.

A menu will appear. First select the starting point of the rip (1). Afterwards, you can use the menu to fine tune the placement and size of the rip. (2)

After pressing OK, you can see the rip in the body.

After that you can use Insert Bend.

Then select an edge and convert it to a sheet metal object.

Do we need it?

This is something that users have been wishing for and I like how Dassault Systèmes has approached it and created an easy-to-use solution.

5 out of 5 trains from me.

Stamp Tool

SOLIDWORKS 2024 has made it a lot easier to create stamps.

What does it do?

In previous versions, you had to save a file with the .SLDFTP extension in order to use the Stamp tool, but now you can just use a sketch.

How to use it?

After creating a sheet metal component, you can either sketch your stamp or insert a saved block.

With the sketch (or sketch block) selected, press the Stamp tool.

Modify your stamp as needed.

Press OK and a stamp is created.

Do we need it?

This is some of the best news about this year’s version of SOLIDWORKS. It makes creating stamps very simple and can really improve your workflow.

Because of its simplicity and great interface, this feature receives 5 out of 5 trains.

Repairing References in Patterns

In SOLIDWORKS 2024 you have the option to repair the reference for a linear or circular pattern.

What does it do?

Depending on the type of pattern, SOLIDWORKS can do one of two things:

With a linear pattern, SOLIDWORKS will attempt to replace the reference by selecting a reference on the component that has the same orientation or type, as well as the reference which is located closest to the original reference.

With circular patterns, SOLIDWORKS will attempt to select a reference which is coaxial to the original reference.

How to use it?

After opening your model with the problematic pattern, right click and press Auto Repair.

You might find yourself in a situation where an auto repair is not possible due to the complexity of the model. In that case you will have to do a manual repair.

It is also worth noting that the Auto Repair feature is not available when the assembly is in large assembly mode.

Do we need it?

While writing this article, I came up with quite a few scenarios where the auto repair could be helpful – and in each case, it worked very well.

5 out of 5 trains from me.

Specify Default Prefix or Suffix for Components

Now you can specify a prefix or suffix for your hand mirrored components.

What does it do?

In previous versions, you had to decide your prefix or suffix every time you wanted to create an opposite-hand mirrored component. With SOLIDWORKS 2024, you can specify a default prefix or suffix for your mirrored components as well as for your internal files.

How to use it?

Open your options (Tools > Options, or via the cogwheel) and within the system options find the assembly pane.

In the bottom of the assembly pane, you can select whether you want a default prefix or suffix for your hand mirrored components. You also can set a prefix for internal files created from external references.

If you have an assembly, and you select to create an opposite hand version, you have the option to save it. You will get a predefined prefix (if that’s what you selected).

If you want to save a file as an internal reference, the prefix is added by default.

Do we need it?

Hand mirrored versions have been very popular for quite some time, and I know quite a few people who will be happy about this addition.

While it is not revolutionary, it will definitely help in the workflow for some users, which is why I give this feature 4 out of 5 trains.

Defeature Rule Sets

Defeature has been around for 12 years now and has always been a popular feature to use when improving the performance of your model.

With this year’s version, you can define your own set of rules within defeature.

What does it do?

When using the Silhouette defeature method, you will be given the option to create a set of rules to help you automate the simplification of your model.

This will enable you to set up a rule for many different variables.

How to use it?

With your SOLIDWORKS assembly open, start the defeature tool.

First you need to select the defeature method. If you want to set up your rules, you must select the Silhouette defeature method.

After pressing next, you will get the option to load a previously saved rule set or create a new set of rules.

Start by selecting Edit Rules.

If you are well-versed in Advanced Search, then this might seem very familiar to you. If not, allow me to give you a few pointers.

Start by naming your first rule. In this case, I will call it Remove Pins.

Next you should give a selection criterion. in this case, we select all files that are named “pin.”

Next you should select the defeature type. I will not go into the different defeature types, but you’ll find mention of it in a previous article.

For now, I will select the bounding box which will also give me the option to include all components with the name “pin,” in one bounding box or in one bounding box per part.

With the next selection you can select the orientation of the defeature.

And finally, you can select if you want to include the appearance of your part, which is also a new feature of SOLIDWORKS 2024.

When the rule has been set up, press Save to save the rule set to be used later.

Once the rule is loaded into the system, click Apply and the rule is applied to your model.

Afterwards, you can continue to use defeature as you see fit.

Do we need it?

This is a great addition to the defeature tool. The selection criteria can really help you narrow it down.

And I can certainly see how this will save a lot of time for users.

Another 5 out of 5 trains from me.

Those are all the features we will cover in this article. Stay tuned for the next one. The train is just around the corner.

What is a Multibody Part?

In SOLIDWORKS, a multibody part is exactly as it sounds: a part with multiple solid bodies. A very simple example is in the picture below, which shows a part with two bodies that are not connected. You can see that in the Feature Tree, it says Solid Bodies(2). This means there are two discrete bodies inside this single part file.

A multibody part in its simplest form.

While this may look like an assembly, it is actually quite different.

Multibody Parts vs. Assemblies

Usually when modeling something with multiple components in SOLIDWORKS, we tackle it piece by piece, or part by part. Then, when we have all the separate parts designed, we combine them into an assembly, and use Mates to ensure that they are correctly put together. Assemblies are a basic tool that most users are very familiar with, and something that is taught in most introductory SOLIDWORKS courses. 

While extremely useful in their own way, assemblies do have their drawbacks. One of these drawbacks comes when the parts being assembled are not completely finalized in their design. It is somewhat difficult (but not impossible) to make design changes to individual parts in the context of the assembly. To avoid issues, it is sometimes necessary to constantly switch between the assembly and the parts to make changes. You could also use Top-Down or In-Context modeling (if you don’t know what these are, I encourage you to learn about them), but these tend to lead to external references that can get messy. 

Those nasty X’s and arrows denote a broken external reference.

An easier way to design a simple assembly is by using multibody part design. This way, all the design work can be done in one file, and there are no messy references between the part and the assembly. 

However, multibody parts are not always a good replacement for an assembly. While some assemblies require only simple, static mates, some require more complex mates that simulate motion, such as limit distance or slot mates. In this case, a multibody part would not work since the discrete bodies can only be modeled in place and they cannot easily be moved.

How to Make a Multibody Part

Now that we know the difference between a multibody part and an assembly, you may be wondering how to create a multibody part. Let’s look at three different methods.

1. Don’t merge result

The simplest way to make a multibody part is when creating a Boss Extrude feature. Let’s look at a simple example:

We want the cylinder to be a separate body.

In this example, we want to create a cylinder extruded from one of the faces of this box. Since the two extrusions would be touching one another, SOLIDWORKS will by default want to merge them. However, we need them to be separate bodies. To achieve this, all we need to do is uncheck the “Merge Results” box in the Boss Extrude FeatureManager. 

Uncheck the “Merge result” box to create a separate body.

Now once we hit the green checkmark, we will have two Boss Extrude features and two Solid Bodies.

Two unmerged extrusions.

2. Use Cut Extrude

We can also create a multibody part by cutting an existing solid body. In this example, we need to create separate cubes from this existing rectangle.  

You can cut a single body to create multiple bodies.

Let’s create a sketch on one of the faces of the rectangle and open the Cut Extrude feature. Select Through All as the end condition and hit the green checkmark.

If a cut separates bodies, you must select which bodies to keep.

You’ll notice that a new dialog box pops up when you hit the green checkmark, called Bodies to Keep. Since we want to keep the two cubes that are a result of our Cut Extrude, we will keep the All bodies option selected and hit OK. We now have two separate cubes inside of a multibody part.

3. Use the Split Tool

The Split Tool is very useful in creating a multibody part from existing geometry. Let's look at another example and use the Split Tool.

A cube that we will split using the Right Plane.

Here is a simple cube that we need to make into a multibody part. Let’s open the Split Tool by selecting it in the Features toolbar, or from Insert > Features > Split. 

Split tool FeatureManager.

We now see the Split tool dialog box. In the Trim Tools box, we can select either a sketch, a plane or a surface to split the body. In our case, we will use the Right Plane as our split tool. Select that plane and hit Cut Part. 

The resulting bodies from the split, selected and shown in the graphics window.

We can now select the bodies we want to separate in the Resulting Bodies section, and we will see them change color in the graphics window. Once we hit the green checkmark, we will be left with two separate bodies.

A multibody cube made using the Split tool.

What Else Can Multibody Parts Do?

Aside from the benefits talked about above when compared to assemblies, multibody parts can also be useful in other circumstances. One last benefit I would like to highlight is that features can be applied to discrete bodies individually. 

Let's take another look at the example we just did, with the cube split using the Split tool. We now want to cut a hole in one half of the cube, but not the other. Or in other words, one body and not the other. 

Let’s make the sketch and open the Cut Extrude tool. Select Through All for the end condition. Normally, this would cut the hole through the entire part. But since this is a multibody part, we now have the option to select which bodies to apply the feature to. We do this by selecting the desired body in the Feature Scope section. 

A Cut Extrude feature applied to only one body.

Select the body on the right and hit the green checkmark. We now have a hole in one body, but not the other, as shown in the section view below. This allows us to make changes to the overall part without the Cut Extrude feature breaking.

A section view showing the Cut Extrude we just made, applied to the right body.

Final Thoughts

The ability to make multibody parts in SOLIDWORKS is extremely useful in many different circumstances. I have outlined a few different ways to use them in this article, but this is only scratching the surface. I encourage you to get creative with multibody parts and see how they can improve your own designs.

This year I’ve had the good fortune to get my hands on the pre-release of next year’s version of SOLIDWORKS. It has given me a chance to look at some of the features that will be offered—and select favorites.

 I have more favorites than can fit in a single article, so this will be the first of a series in which I give new features a rating of 1 to 5 “Trains.”

Backward Compatibility

This one is very exciting: it is finally possible to save a SOLIDWORKS 2024 file as a 2022 or 2023 compatibility version – to some degree.

What does it do?

When saving the file, you now have the option to save it as a SOLIDWORKS 2022 or 2023 compatible file.

How to use it?

After saving your file as a 2024 version, you can use File > Save As.

With the Save As window open, you can select if you want to save it as a 2022 or 2023 SOLIDWORKS file.

Once saved, you can open the file in that particular version.

However, if you are using one of the new features of SOLIDWORKS 2024, a popup screen will warn you that you cannot save your file before you remove that particular feature.

Once the feature is deleted, you will be able to save your file.

Note that you need to be on subscription in order to use this feature.

Do we need it?

All users have been waiting a long time for this and I really like what they have done with the option.

It makes sense, in my book, that it is not possible to save 2024 features in an older version. However, I am missing two things:

1. An option to delete the features that will not let you save to a previous version from within the Save dialog box itself. That would make the process a lot easier.
2. I can imagine that a lot of people will be using this, which means that it would be great if there was the option to set up a shortcut for saving in either 2022 or 2023 compatibility mode.

This is why I am giving the “Backward Compatibility” feature 4 Trains.

Sketch Dimension Preview

You now have the option to preview a sketch dimension before you create it.

What does it do?

Selecting a sketch entry now gives you a preview of the dimension, and clicking on it will give you a preview of the dimension.

How to use it?

After creating a sketch, click on one of the sketch entries and you will get a preview of the dimension.

Clicking on the dimension changes your tool to the dimension tool, and you can change the dimension you want.

Once this is done, you can either create a new dimension or press escape to exit the dimension tool.

By holding down CTRL and selecting two lines, you can get a preview of the angle between the two lines. And as before, you can change the dimension as you see fit.

Do we need it?

I really like this new way of dimensioning as it feels more organic and can really help you speed the up your sketch creation.

It gets 5 out of 5 Trains from me.

Within the models and features, there are two things that I want to emphasize on:

Convert Assembly to Multibody Part

At a first glance, this seems like “save assembly as part” in another wrapping, but it is quite the upgrade.

What does it do?

In SOLIDWORKS 2024, it is possible to create a multibody part from an assembly much like you would make a stock part.

How to use it

With the assembly open, go to tools and press “Make Multibody Part.”

This opens a new menu which gives you the option to decide what configuration you want to export to the new file, including covert surface bodies, axes, planes, coordinate systems and material. Solid bodies are always transferred.

You also get the option to break the link to the original file, as well as keep the visual properties from the original file.

Press OK and the file is created.

If you have selected to keep the link to the original file, the file will update if you add components to the assembly.

With previous versions, it was possible to save your assembly as a multibody part file. However, this part had no link to the original file and any updates were lost, and you had to create a new file. With this feature, it is possible to always have the latest file of the assembly on a part.

Do we need it?

I really like the possibilities with this new feature. By suppressing components in a configuration, you can easily decide what you want included in the exported part. This is also one of those things we did not know that we needed, but which has been provided.

Once again 5 out of 5 trains from me.

Hide and Show

If you select multiple instances, i.e. sketches, bodies or planes with different visibility, in SOLIDWORKS 2024 you will get an option to either hide all or show all.

What does it do?

In previous versions, when you selected instances where some are hidden and some are visible, your option was limited after selecting them.

In SOLIDWORKS 2024, you get the option to either hide them all or show them all.

How to use it?

Select either multiple bodies, sketches or planes by hold down CTRL while you select the different objects. Or select them by using the selection tool.

A selection menu will appear allowing you to hide all instances or show all instances.

Do we need it?

You can achieve the same effect with a right click after selecting the components, meaning that you save a mouse click. I was a bit skeptical at first, but after playing around with it, I can see its potential.

This is why I am giving this feature 4 Trains.

Use an Existing Sketch in Hole Wizard

This one is one that I remember missing, while working in my previous job.

What does it do?

In previous versions, you had to select the points individually if you wanted to use an existing sketch.

Now you can use an existing sketch as a hole location.

How to use it?

You can start by selecting the sketch and start the hole wizard and select the hole size.

Or you can select the hole wizard, select the sketch and when you need to place the holes, you select the sketch from the flyout tree.

For both cases, the location of the holes will be determined by the placement of the points. This means that if you have a rectangle, the holes will be placed in the corners.

You can plan your hole location using different sketches, and if you add a hole in the sketch, a hole will be added to the model.

The sketch menu will also give you the option to skip instances of points in the sketch.

Do we need it?

This addition can be a real time saver, as well as a great way to edit your Hole Wizard locations.

I am feeling generous and will give this 5 out of 5 Trains.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned for the next article in the series.

Let’s go over some troubleshooting techniques for your everyday work with SOLIDWORKS to help make this less of a problem.

The Source Folder is Not Versioned Properly

This error is usually seen when you want to modify your SOLIDWORKS installation.

Scenario

You have removed or added some features in your SOLIDWORKS installation and when you press “Modify” this message appears:

What is wrong?

This error usually appears because you have deleted the original installation set and the system cannot find the source file.

What to do?

The easiest solution is to recreate the file yourself.  Start by opening the Notepad program.

In the notepad, type “SOLIDWORKS 20XX SP0Y” without exclamation marks.

XX is the version number (19, 20, 21 etc.) and Y is the service pack (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). If the service pack has a revised number, you should separate them using a period.

If you wanted to modify the version number with service pack 5, then it would say “SOLIDWORKS 2022 SP05”.

Once this is modified, you should save the file in the folder specified in the error message and call it “swdata99”.

Close Notepad and browse to the location where you just saved the file. Rename the file to “swdata99.id” and press yes to change the extension.

You should now be able to run the modification.

“A Newer Version of this Application is Already Installed”

This issue first started to appear after SOLIDWORKS 2021 was released, and it only applies if you want to install SOLIDWORKS 2020 or older.

Scenario:

After filling out your serial number and deciding where to install SOLIDWORKS, you press “Install” and after a few seconds this error appears.

What is wrong?

In 2021, a newer version of VBA was released. This meant that the prerequisite VBA was obsolete. However, the software thinks this version is necessary and cannot skip it. The new VBA could be installed with a newer version of SOLIDWORKS or even with a Windows update.

What to do?

You have a couple of different options. You can start by using the original installation file set. Open it and go to prerequisites, find the VBA folder, locate the VBA then right click on it and press uninstall.

After installing your SOLIDWORKS, you can reinstall the VBA.

The other option applies if you have 3DEXPERIENCE products installed. Within your control panel, find the application: “Dassault Systèmes – VBA 7.1” and uninstall it.

You will be able to install SOLIDWORKS.

The final option applies if neither of the two above solutions are possible, such as if you no longer have the original install file set or if you do not have 3DEXPERIENCE installed.

If you contact your reseller, you can ask for the hotfix for S-078838. This is a text file called “S-078838_uninstall_vba.txt”. Rename this to “S-078838_uninstall_vba.bat”.

Right click on the file, and press “Run as administrator.”

This will remove the VBA installation, and you are ready to install SOLIDWORKS.

“Journal File Could Not Be Created”

This error appears when you start SOLIDWORKS. While it does not influence your ability to work on the software, it is still an annoying message that you want to be without.

Scenario

When starting SOLIDWORKS, you get the message “Could not create journal file.” You press OK, and the software starts.

What is wrong?

This error can occur because of multiple things. The first is the most obvious: you already have an instance of SOLIDWORKS running and therefore a new journal file cannot be created.

A few other options could be an invalid file path to the journal file, or the fact that you do not have write access to the file for some reason.

What to do?

There are two solutions.

When the error involves an invalid file path, I usually see this when the user has copied the settings from a colleague and the file path is “C:\Users\<Username>\...” then links to a user that does not exist on the computer, and which cannot be created as it is on another Windows user.

Another reason could be that the user does not have write access to the folder in question.

In both cases, I recommend the same test: Open your regedit as an administrator.

Pro Tip: Be careful when editing the registry, as incorrect information can cause serious damage to your system. If you are in doubt, contact your IT department and they can assist you.

Go to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > SolidWorks > SolidWorks 20xx > ExtReferences”, with XX being the SOLIDWORKS version that you are using. For instance, in the screenshot I am using SOLIDWORKS 2023.

Within this you should look for a key called “SolidWorks Journal Folders.”

Change this to a folder that you know you have read access to, for instance C:\SW_Journal file\.

Close the registry editor and try and start SOLIDWORKS.

If the file error still occurs, it is easier to determine the cause, which can be one of two things:

1) No rights to write to the folder.

In Windows Explorer, find the folder that is referred to (in the example, “C:\SW_Journal file”) and right click on the folder. Go to Properties.

Ensure that you have the necessary rights to write to the folder.

2) Damaged log file.

The log file can be damaged due to improper shut down. To solve this, locate the log file, which is called “swxJRNL.swj” and delete it.

“Could Not Obtain License for SOLIDWORKS CAM”

This error can occur when you start up SOLIDWORKS and while this does have any effect on SOLIDWORKS, it can be annoying.

Scenario

This error can appear out of nowhere and without the knowledge in this article, it can seem like it appears for no reason.

What is wrong?

 This issue is related to the CAM add-in. The CAM add-in is a part of your “standard” SOLIDWORKS installation, not a part of the SOLIDWORKS connected installation.

The license for CAM standard is part of your subscription. This means that the activation is only valid for your subscription period, which typically is one year.

What to do?

You have 3 different options:

1) Reactivate your CAM license. This, of course, requires subscription.

To reactivate your CAM license, open SOLIDWORKS, go to Help > License and press “Activate.” This will open the activation window.

Here you can select your CAM license and activate it by selecting SOLIDWORKS.

Press Next and then your CAM is reactivated, and the error disappears.

2) The quick and dirty solution.

This solution is used by people who do not use the CAM add-in and who either just want to get on with their work or don’t have time/permissions for solution 3.

Go to add-ins and find the CAM add-in, remove the checkmark in the “Start Up” box. This will ensure that a license is not needed.

3) Remove the CAM Program

The final option is to change your SOLIDWORKS installation. Of course, this is not an option if your company utilizes image installation. In this case, you need to speak to your CAD administrator to get them to remove it from the image installation.

However, if you have a standard installation, go to your control panel > Add/Remove Programs and find your SOLIDWORKS installation. Press “Change.”

The installation window will open. Press next until you get to the product selection and remove the checkmark for the CAM program.

Modify the installation and the error will no longer appear.

The License Will Expire in X Days

This is an error that has recently surfaced, due to new policies in the way license activations are handled within Dassault.

Scenario

You start up SOLIDWORKS and this error appears, counting down each day. Once the countdown reaches zero, you cannot start SOLIDWORKS.

What is wrong?

It can be because you have a temporary license which has not been renewed, and then you cannot activate it. However, in 2022 it was decided that licenses did not need to be activated each year. This was done mainly done to ensure that licenses are not stuck on old machines that were not deactivated, and the machines reformatted with the license still active.

What to do?

The solution is actually quite simple. All you have to do is to reactivate your license before it expires.

Go to Help > License > Activate, select the SOLIDWORKS tab and press activate.

Select SOLIDWORKS and press “Next.”

You should be good to go.

All of these troubleshooting tips are specific solutions for well-known issues. I hope they will be of use.

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Winick, a shy girl growing up in Tampa, Florida, married her high school sweetheart and went on to do communications for NASA, for which she received an award. She shares her journey through her public speaking at events worldwide, on TV programs and with 70K followers on social media.

The 29-year-old has launched two companies and has nine years of experience as a professional science communicator, writer and speaker. She is also ranked in the top 200 women pinball players in the world, after starting just a year ago in Houston, where she now lives.

Winick, who has a background in engineering, said that when growing up she wasn’t confident in what she wanted to do professionally, but she loved making things, such as Halloween costumes, lots of arts and crafts and building Rube Goldberg machines.

STEAM queen Erin Winick sporting a crown she designed in SOLIDWORKS and 3D printed.

“I was torn between going into journalism or engineering, which I know is a weird combo for a lot of people,” she says. “But I was editor in chief of my high school paper, and I loved that sort of thing. But also going back to that core of making stuff, I was really interested in exploring what that meant more professionally.”

Erin decided to go with engineering and got her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida. She figured she could always go back to journalism if engineering didn’t pan out. 

What did she see herself designing? She didn’t know. “In college, I was exploring that. I had a number of different engineering internships, and I was really interested in the manufacturing side of how things were created. I always loved that show How It’s Made,” said Winick.

Through her internships, she explored several types of engineering, including structural engineering at Bracken Engineering and tractor component design at John Deere, plus a number of others.  

During college she also took up some writing gigs, which included writing engineering educational materials for kids. She started her own company Sci Chic to further educate people on the fashionable side of science by showcasing her 3D printed fashion designs and processes.

She later transitioned into more writing and media roles, such as a space reporter for the MIT Technology review focusing on space technologies. Her big break came when she got a job working in the space industry as a NASA contractor, where she was a science communications specialist at Johnson Space Center who communicated the research conducted aboard the space station.

Winick’s video on taste testing space food at NASA’s Space Food Systems lab went viral and has more than one million views.

Just this year she left NASA and took the leap into starting her own company called STEAM Power Media, a science communication company that creates STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) content and helps science and engineering companies share their creations with the public.

Winick is still a maker at heart, one who is always designing and making things and sharing them on social media, such as clothing and accessories.

What inspires her designs? Space and engineering. Since her time studying engineering and working at NASA, space and engineering have definitely influenced her work.

“Definitely space,” she says. “It's where my brain is at a lot of the time, and I think there's so much cool imagery in space. And then also I like coming back to just the engineering aspect of things, for the inspiration to show how you can bring the industrial side of things into fashion and show how that can be stylish.”

One of her designs that went viral is a parachute skirt inspired by the Mars Perseverance Landing. She has since sold hundreds of them on STARtorialist, a woman-owned small business that does space fashion, which she partnered with to produce and manufacture it.

A skirt inspired by the parachute design from the Mars Perseverance Landing designed by Erin’s husband.

Her power tools of choice? SOLIDWORKS, xDesign and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. She sticks mainly to Dassault Systèmes lineup of products since she used SOLIDWORKS in college. Cura is her go to prepare her models for 3D printing and then she has two Lulzbot 3D printers.

Screenshot of the crown she modeled in SOLIDWORKS.

What technology is she excited about? On the art side, she said it’s the intersection of 3D printing and fashion, especially printing flexible filaments on fabric or directly printed, like 3D printed laces. “There are some amazing creators on social media who are doing that. And I love seeing that, to showcase that art and engineering and where they can intersect,” says Winick.

On the more technical design side, she says, “I’m very interested to see where AI [artificial intelligence] and design intersect in the future. I think that's probably not a surprising answer, but going to 3DEXPERIENCE World and seeing some of the things that they're putting out there is really exciting to me, and I'm very interested in seeing how that continues to grow.”

What advice does she have for those on the fence about pursuing engineering?

Just go for it! It’s never too early to try out engineering or related things you like or might be interested in. Check out some CAD tutorials online, get your hands on local resources such as a 3D printer at a local library, or join a FIRST Robotics Club.

“There are so many ways that you can test out your interest and also start finding a community of other like-minded people who are also interested in that passion,” she says. “And I think that can be hard, especially for women in engineering who are in the minority, to find a community and supporters who can encourage you. I highly recommend you just start making stuff. It'll build from there. Then just go for it! And if you don't like it, don't feel bad about moving out of it. But it's a really great thing to try out.”

Engineering is Fun

Winick points to all the cool projects she gets to work on. Her mission as a STEM and STEAM advocate is to continue to show how creative you can be with science and engineering, which she said can often be perceived as very technical. But there’s a fun, creative side to it too.

“I think it's really trying to bring that whole world together and that STEAM concept of science, technology, engineering, art and math. And so, when I'm making the content myself, it's trying to showcase those really cool discoveries of points of fascination that are breakthroughs and that creative aspect of it.”

You too can be an influencer, says Winick. That is part of what Winick is doing at STEAM POWER Media: helping science and engineering companies to learn how to communicate what they do and tell their stories. She encourages people in the field to share, share, share and use social media platforms to not only create awareness about their company, but to help spread the word and encourage people to go into engineering. There is a workforce shortage, after all.

In a field where the workforce is primarily male, Winick is a prime example that women can do it, too. There are many awesome women in engineering that inspire her, she said. There are STEM influencers and great role models, including Emily Calandrelli who does cool science communication for kids in the space world. She recently got to fly in an F-18 with the Blue Angels and hosts Emily's WonderLab on Netflix. Another is Alex Dainis, a science communicator with a PhD in genetics, who makes videos to make science accessible and engaging to broad audiences.

Shout Out to Space

Winick says that she’d like to thank space. She recently posted on her Instagram during space week, “It’s crazy to think about how much of an impact space has had on my life. From growing up in Florida seeing Space Shuttles lift off, to writing about space, it's always been in my day-to-day experience. Without the space industry, I don't know where I would be right now. So, thanks space! Can't wait to see where humanity explores next in the cosmos.”

What’s next for Winick? Her journey has just begun. Her next adventure: she will soon set sail on the JOIDES Resolution ship as an outreach officer for two months.  

We’re excited to see what the future holds for her, including what Halloween costumes she ends up making for herself and her husband. On the first of November, she’ll also unveil her latest project.

You can follow Winick’s journey on social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, catch her writing on engineering.com and learn more her on her website erinwinick.com.

You’ll find the xShape app under the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s 3D Sculptor role, which I have as part of the Makers License. Under this license, you can get access to the 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Professional, 3D sculptor, 3D Creator, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Connected and other cloud-based apps. If you are a SOLIDWORKS user and you’ve yet to try xShape (I know you’re out there), now is the time. It will surprise you and you might surprise yourself on how quickly you will pick it up.

With the first dive into the xShape, a SOLIDWORKS user may find the layout a bit intimidating. But take heart, the tools and features are very intuitive. You have your design manager, which is essentially the equivalent to your feature manager design tree in SOLIDWORKS. That will make you feel at home. If you want to, you can bring up the design guidance tab to turn on the learning assistant which has some handy tips for SOLIDWORKS users. I recommend opening this up first.

The Learning Assistant in xShape.

I recently used xShape to design and model a custom chess set for a tutorial I created for the SOLIDWORKS blog, which featured some of the tools this app has to offer as well as to demonstrate how you can take different primitive shapes to model the chess pieces. This app takes me back to my ceramicist days where I would take a ball of clay and manipulate it into a little pot, pushing and pulling the material while being careful not to overwork the clay. With xShape, you use the same approach, but you are pushing and pulling a mesh surface with points and edges. You have to be careful not to over-work or over-complicate the mesh, but other than that it is a sculptor’s dream.

A chess set rendered with SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

You begin by choosing a primitive shape to start your model. This is possibly the most important decision you can make, one that will make or break your design. That might sound a little dramatic, but planning ahead with the shape you choose can save you so much time, thus making your modelling experience much easier in the long run. For example, don’t start modeling an apple with the box shape. Selecting the right shape comes with experience and a little trial and error. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Running through some of the tools and features of the app that may be new to you, let’s start with the subdivision extrude feature which allows you to extrude mesh faces from your sub-D shape. What’s even more interesting is that you can select two separate faces and cut them away from your model, creating a hole. You can see this tool in action below. I used this design element across some of my chess pieces to bring some cohesion to the set.

Chess set piece made with xShape.

This kind of geometry creation at such speed was mind-blowing to my SOLIDWORKS user brain. Modelling a piece like this would take me a long time in SOLIDWORKS and I’m not even sure I could do it. I thought I’d show you a few more examples of this tool below, to illustrate the power of the extrude feature. You’ll see how complex the geometry can become in the video below.

See how I create several cut extrusions through the Quadball primitive shape with a few simple selections. I can also join extrusions from two separate faces to create bridge-like structures. Again, its abilities are impressive and at first glance may look challenging to create, yet it doesn’t take long at all to model geometries like this.

Subdivision extrude tool in xShape.

Even though sub-D modelling provides sculptural freedom, you might think that it has no ability to model with constraints. Not true.  Yes, it isn’t SOLIDWORKS-precise, but you can achieve some design precision when you need it. With the help of images or guide sketches you can model to constraints. I did just that when I designed my chess set and created guide sketches for the height and diameter of each piece.

Chess piece guide sketch in xShape.

The next tool I’d like to highlight is the crease tool. This tool can crease edges/loops of a sub-D shape to remove curves on a design and give you flat or straightened edges. The tool also gives you the ability to crease fully to a value of one hundred making the edge sharp, or partially up to a value of zero, making an edge soft. This tool can completely change your shape. It is like the fillet tool, but in reverse. I use this tool when I want to define areas of a shape or flatten faces. It is especially useful for levelling the base of a shape. My favourite part of the tool is the ability to reselect creased edges and edit them to be more or less creased, or to completely undo the feature. It offers you a wider scope of control of the mesh.

Chess piece crease tool in xShape.

The final tool I want to include is insert loops, this tool can be used to add extra control loops across a primitive shape, which can be necessary when you’re creating something more detailed. The primitive shapes start off very simply in their mesh structures. I always suggest starting this way. I only add extra loops one at a time, because starting with too many loops or adding in more loops before you need to can make a model difficult to work with. There is the option to remove loops, which can help to fix or smooth a model.

Chess piece with insert loop in xShape.

As a designer, I believe one of the top benefits of the app is the ability to save and export models into SOLIDWORKS. Depending on how you model your component in xShape, whether you keep the design as a surface or you knit the surface into a solid body, your design can be imported into SOLIDWORKS as either “solid bodies” or “surfaces.” You can then edit the model to an extent, apply appearances and decals and finally, render within SOLIDWORKS VISUALIZE. I did just that when I modeled a giraffe teddy you can view here.

xShape has had many updates and improvements since the first time I tutored about it in 2021. Previously, xShape was not able to to work with mirror bodies and I had to use the symmetry tool to create mirrored arms/legs/ears and eyes. That issue has thankfully been fixed.

Giraffe teddy with xShape.

With my first project with xShape, I remember thinking that the ability to go from xShape to SOLIDWORKS to apply my decals and then render my design within Visualize with such ease was exciting. It sparked my curiosity and imagination and offered the possibility of using xShape as my main modelling tool for new designs like this:

Giraffe teddy rendered with SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

As a toy designer, I have designed plush toys in the past with Photoshop as 2D sketches. The issue with this when it came to manufacturing the toy was not being able to see a 360-degree view of the design and therefore, the design could be lost in translation. Multiple view sketches would help and, physical models could be made. But with xShape, I can model my plush designs in 3D and send multiple views or even rendered animations of the design from all angles.

xShape is one of those tools that I keep finding new uses for. It has allowed me to create designs that I wouldn’t dream of trying in SOLIDWORKS – and I am still able to integrate the two.

About the Author

Jade Wilson is a product designer, SOLIDWORKS blog contributor, CSWP and SOLIDWORKS Champion from the U.K. In 2015 she became a Queen Elizabeth Scholar for her degree specializing in ceramics and digital design. She is a self-taught SOLIDWORKS user with 10 years of experience under her belt and has been using it to inform and create her designs since university, and to becoming a freelance product designer with her own company. She has her bachelors and masters degrees in Design and specialises in the design and production of ceramics, homeware accessories and wooden toys. She has worked with a range of companies, including the BBC, Bigjigs, Great Little Trading Company and Granby Workshop. During this time, she has exhibited her own work and held workshops across the U.K. and Europe as well as working in several U.K. Universities as a technician and guest tutor. She now creates fun and informative tutorials.

If I am creating a sheet metal part, I want to be able to use the sheet metal tools.

To add a sheet metal toolbar to your user interface, go to Customize, located under Options on the Standard toolbar.

On the Toolbars tab, enable Sheet Metal.

This adds a toolbar with sheet metal tools to your screen. You now have all the tools available within easy reach.

If you prefer using mouse gestures, you can configure your mouse gesture wheel to use sheet metal commands. Simply drag and drop the desired commands to replace the commands you won’t be using with the mouse wheel.

If you are designing in sheet metal, you are familiar with the use of gauge tables. Sheet metal comes in sheets of various thicknesses, aka gauges. Normally, you want to designate or use the thickness that will provide the greatest stiffness and least likeliness of failure with whatever it is holding. Most computer chassis/enclosures are designed using aluminum sheet metal with a thickness of 0.064 or 14 gauge.

SOLIDWORKS comes with two sample gauge tables – one for aluminum with metric units and one for steel with English (Imperial) units. If you want to use a gauge table for aluminum with Imperial units, you will need to create one and store it in a location where it is easy to access. The gauge tables are Excel files. If you want to use Google Sheets, you can do that and save as/download as an .xls file to use with SOLIDWORKS.

I want to create a gauge table for aluminum sheet metal parts using Imperial units. The easiest way to create one is to open the existing gauge table provided with SOLIDWORKS and perform a Save As.

To determine the correct values, I referred to my machinist’s handbook and used the values for 6061 aluminum, since that is the metal I most often use. I store my Excel file away from SOLIDWORKS but in a location where I can easily access it. If I am working in a team environment, I might create several gauge table files for my team members to use and store them on a shared drive.

Then I can browse to the file location and load the file. Select the desired gauge and the values will auto-fill based on the table.

By using a standardized gauge table, I ensure that the sheet metal shop will be able to create my design.

In the SOLIDWORKS 2023 release, SOLIDWORKS has added the ability to add thickness in both directions of a sketch.

Symmetrical thickness helps you create sheet metal parts from sketches, to help achieve equal bend radii for upward and downward bends. In the image above, Symmetric is cleared for the example on the left and selected for the example on the right. Note the position of the blue line in the examples. The blue line represents the sketch that is being extruded. If you are having an issue with a hem or a bend, switching to a symmetrical thickness may eliminate the error.

SOLIDWORKS automatically generates a flat pattern for any sheet metal part. Just create a drawing for the sheet metal part. Then, drag and drop the flat pattern onto the sheet.

To access the cut list for a sheet metal part, place a flat pattern in your drawing.

Right click on the flat pattern and select Annotations → Cut List Properties.

This provides a note which can be placed on the sheet. The cut list can be used for cost estimates. In 2023, the assigned sheet metal gauge property has been added to the cut list.

In order for the material and finish to appear in the cut list or to be used as properties in the title block or notes, you need to make sure that you have those properties defined. With the part file open, go to Files > Properties.

The cut list uses a property called SW-Surface Treatment for the finish, while the title block uses a property called Finish.

I normally will create a template with the properties that I want to be able to leverage in my drawings. That way you don’t have to reinvent the wheel spending time defining properties for every drawing. You can then use the drop-down list to select the desired properties and fill in the values.

The 2023 SOLIDWORKS release allows you to include the Surface Finish property and use it in your cut list, title block or notes. In prior releases, you weren’t able to leverage that property.

As we are waiting for the SOLIDWORKS 2024 release, take some time to explore these new sheet metal features. I guarantee that they will help make you more productive.

About the Author

Elise Moss has worked in Silicon Valley for the past thirty years as a designer and mechanical engineer. She is currently traveling the United States with her husband and their two horses, exploring backroads and historical trails. She is writing about her horse travels on her blog shakespeareantrails.substack.com. Her professional website is mossdesigns.com. She will be returning to work in Silicon Valley in a few weeks.

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