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.

1. Mechanical engineers who are responsible for integrating electrical systems that they did not design and who are facing challenges and unexpected issues they could not have anticipated—and who also might be wondering what is going wrong in their designs.
2. Electrical/electromagnetic engineers who do not understand the landscape of the type of problems that can be solved with off-the-shelf software such as CST Studio Suite in Dassault Systèmes' SIMULIA.

If you fall into one of these two groups, then you understand the long history of companies and governments adding new criteria, considerations and regulations to the projects that you work on—all of which need to be designed and optimized for.

Often times, it takes a new line of thinking to ensure the quality and safety of people in industries that are challenging the status quo. A perfect example is the mainstream development of electric vehicles for automotive and commercial trucks. Replacing internal combustion engines (ICEs) will have new challenges and new requirements for the safety of passengers and for proper operation at all times. Without a century of history to guide the teams designing these tools, engineers will need to work from first principles.

Imagine you were driving along when suddenly you cannot control your acceleration, and your vehicle races off. Would that scare you?

That scenario is not probable, but as we move to more electronics control in our vehicles, things such as incompatible signals, frequencies and electric currencies could potentially trigger strange events. Engineers having a strong understanding of the possible events that could occur is important for public safety, especially the safety of the people driving these new vehicles.

With massive changes happening in automotive technologies, smart devices and all sorts of other digital devices that impact our day-to-day lives, now is the time for engineers to understand these phenomena, even if they don’t think it applies to them.

Hear that, mechanical engineers? You may need to address electrical concerns as well.

Switching to the topic of electromagnetics, if I asked a five-year-old what a magnet is, they may mention something that sticks to a refrigerator. That is, of course, correct.

Magnetism and the movement of charges and electrons are all tightly integrated. Atomic particles, protons and electrons, have charges to them. Like charges repel, while opposite charges attract. The attraction between two particles of opposite charge is what we recognize as that magnet sticking to the refrigerator. The charges of the refrigerator door due to the alignment of its particle structure, and the charges on the magnet, are attracting each other.

With the refrigerator example, it may not be immediately apparent that magnets and electricity are related because both the magnet and refrigerator are stationary. If you take a magnet and spin it, you will create an electric field. Further, placing a conductor inside the field creates a flow of electricity through the conductor.  Alternatively, if you run electricity through a conductor, a magnetic field is created around the conductor. If you run electricity through a conductor coiled around a ferromagnetic material, such as iron, you will create an electromagnet. The reason for coiling the wire is to focus the magnetic field in a particular direction. If you want to pick something straight up with a magnet, it makes sense to have the magnetic field acting in the vertical direction.  

Thanks to the relationship between magnetism and electricity, spinning a magnet creates an electric field, which a conductor in the electric field will then create a flow of electricity. All along the length of that flow of electricity, a magnetic field is created. Electricity is the distribution of a magnetic field and a magnetic field is the sign that electricity is present. It’s like the classic chicken or egg question, but with physics.

Today, thanks to the discovery of electricity and the invention of digital devices, we are surrounded by electric and magnetic fields. The overhead power lines that deliver electricity to our communities emit powerful magnetic fields as they push electricity to us.

Your computer and printer, cellphone and TV, washer and dryer, electric stove and microwave, your lights, and alarm clock, and soon your vehicle, are all devices that carry electricity and emit electromagnetic fields. When you plug them in, they complete a circuit and depending on the orientation and design of the circuitry inside, as well as the amount of power each device consumes, they create a different size electric field around them. This is increased in complexity by the electromagnetic wave spectrum. When we consider a field in physics, it is thought of as a fixed area of space. However, when that field begins to move, it becomes a wave. The electromagnetic spectrum is filled with waves, including the visible light we see.

(Image source: Wikipedia, "Electromagnetism.”)

Radio waves, microwaves, visible light, X -rays, and gamma rays are being emitted all around us. This is due to more than a century of mass commercialization of electricity and the last 30 years of digital devices. There isn’t a huge amount of study on the effect of exposure to electromagnetic fields. While we understand exposure to super potent fields and waves is bad, it is not as clear what level of electromagnetic exposure people can have without negative health consequences. The study of this is called bio-electric compatibility.

Electromagnetic Compatibility

Electromagnetic compatibility is not limited to interactions with biology. It can also interact with other electronic devices, interrupting signals, exciting natural frequencies to create buzzing noises or otherwise disrupting normal operating conditions. Traditionally, this has been a trial-and-error process when it comes to companies integrating components together into a system.

Today, tools exist to better understand the interactions these components have on each other due to the electromagnetic fields and waves that different components produce.

The methods for hand calculations are better suited for solving algebraic equations than they are for differential equations. Since computers can use numerical techniques to solve differential equations, they are well suited to analyze electromagnetic fields. Software offers engineers powerful methods for visualizing these otherwise invisible fields.

While physical validations through the trial-and-error process are still useful and present in the industry, there are significant drawbacks including but not limited to the fact that physical tests tend to be a go or no-go determination. Either things work, or they do not. Not much insight is gathered.

Secondly, you have to pull together a full physical prototype to have any understanding at all. There is not a strong first pass analysis method since fields are three dimensional and highly influenced by geometry.

This is starting to change. Tools such as the CST Studio Suite offer prediction and visualization capabilities for electromagnetics and allow engineers to efficiently design, analyze and optimize electrical systems while ensuring signal integrity, optimal antenna design and more.

There is a new paradigm emerging in tools for understanding electromagnetic compatibility: signal integrity and biocompatibility, where the traditional methods of trial-and-error have become too costly or slow. More than 90 percent of the innovation in vehicles is related to digital and electronic devices, a trend indicative of where the world of product design is headed in general with the push towards smart devices.

Without a better understanding of electromagnetic fields, staying a leader in your industry will be nearly impossible. It is worth taking the time to review the knowledge, ramifications and especially the tools available that can impact your work.

About the Author

Brandon Donnelly is an engineer. For ten years, he was a simulation specialist and then moved progressively towards helping customers better understand the technologies available. Today, he ensures that those in the truck industry don’t overlook opportunities where CAE tools can help.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS with the eBook SOLIDWORKS 2022 Enhancements to Streamline and Accelerate Your Entire Product Development Process.

This is a story about the struggles that software companies go through in implementing and perfecting new enhancements.

The best companies are actively listening to their end-users’ feedback, identifying specific needs and developing new modes, tools and techniques for addressing those needs. This is a much more complex process than it seems. It is exciting and frustrating at the same time for both developers and users.

Many times, though, other users will attempt to repurpose the tool for solving their own problems, which could be outside the original scope of the enhancement.

When Product Definition decides that an enhancement requested by a user has merit, the resulted new tool will most likely satisfy the original request. Many times, though, other users will attempt to repurpose the tool for solving their own problems, which could be outside the original scope of the enhancement. It is exciting, because this is the best way for the software to evolve organically; it is frustrating because most of the times the tool has significant limitations when is being used outside of its original scope.

Some of the most promising SOLIDWORKS tools have been implemented to only 95 percent of their potential. Of course, they serve very well the specific request of the enhancement’s originator, but leave the rest of the users unsatisfied. The missing five percent in functionality is what makes so many users try such a tool once and then abandon it forever. It is understandable: they are very busy meeting deadlines, and have no time to experiment or submit enhancement requests to their VAR and, ultimately, to the developer.

Only the most passionate ones, who can foresee a huge increase in productivity, if the tool were to be improved, take extra steps to convince all stakeholders that it is worth allocating the time and resources for further enhancing the functionality.

The new detailing mode for large drawings, a major enhancement just announced at SOLIDWORKS World 2019 in Dallas, is such a tool. This is its unofficial story.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that there are no guarantees that a functionality shown in a New Release Preview presentation, or even included in the Beta versions, will remain available in SOLIDWORKS 2020 SP0.

In order to produce a section view, a copy of the model is generated in RAM, a physical cut is made on this copy and the resulted edges are displayed in the drawing.

The struggle for detailing large drawings

The computational process for generating 2D drawing views from 3D models is intense, especially for section and broken-out section views. In order to produce a section view, a copy of the model is generated in RAM, a physical cut is made on this copy and the resulted edges are displayed in the drawing. This is a time-consuming process. If you have 40 section views, there are 41 models loaded in a RAM at the same time. Imagine how painful that could become if the model is a large assembly.

The symptoms, experienced by an end-user working with large drawings, could be grouped into three categories:

1. Long opening times
2. Long drawing update times
3. Slow operational speed when detailing the opened drawing

At the end of the day, such a user will be fully productive for only 30 minutes, the rest is spent waiting for control to be returned to the user.

While the first two symptoms are mentioned the most by users, the third one is the most painful. If a drawing takes 20 minutes to open or update, the user can do something else in meantime. But if, after opening, every click of the mouse is followed by a 5- to 20-second lag, there is nothing to be done during these small breaks. It is not only the wasting of time that is worrying, but also the frustration and distraction that affects the user. Imagine working like that for four hours or more! At the end of the day, these users would be fully productive for only 30 minutes; the rest is spent waiting for control to be returned to them.

Due to the nature of my work as a process improvement consultant, I have the opportunity to see these symptoms daily, when partnering with my customers to find solutions to increase their efficiency.

A great example of a company working with extremely large drawings is Feature Walters, with which I have had the privilege to partner since 2016.

Feature Walters is a company within Walters Group, a network of companies that provides construction engineering, detailing, fabrication, finishing, delivery, and construction. Feature Walters specializes in unique elements that define the best in architectural design, some of the most eye-catching and memorable structures. Based in southern Ontario, Feature Walters takes on projects ranging from public art to floating staircases to building facades.

The ICE Building Stairs in midtown Manhattan.

It’s a one-stop shop, including manufacturing facilities, a large architectural detailing department, and installation services.

Veil Sculpture – Conrad Hotel

Studio Bell, Home of the National Music Centre

390 Madison Avenue, New York

The design team works very closely with clients, architects and installers, all of which could request design changes at any time during the life of a project. Many times, what some would consider a minor detail change could cause days of work, mostly spent waiting for the drawing to update, or for the blue wheel to stop spinning between simple detailing operations. Since such requests are quite frequent, the loss of productivity could be significant.

I spent several days with Grant Mattis—the company's lead designer and a SOLIDWORKS power-user— and his team, working on improving the performance of the large assemblies, the modeling methodology and, ultimately, the drawing performance.

Grant Mattis, Lead Designer, Power-User and SOLIDWORKS World Presenter

When we started our collaboration, the operational speed for simple dimensioning operations was extremely slow, as shown in this video:

The Temporary Solution for Feature Walters: Detached Drawings

After streamlining the methodology and the firm's assembly environment, Grant and I tried various tools for reducing the amount of computations needed in the drawing environment. In the end, we found success with the use of Detached Drawings.

As the name says, a detached drawing offers the user the option to load a drawing along with its model or alone. In order to be able to operate independently from its model, the drawing file has to contain all of the information about the edges of the model, as shown in its drawing views. The benefits are huge:

• Quick opening times without the model loaded
• Quicker opening times even with the model loaded, compared to a regular drawing
• Fast operational speed when detailing without the model loaded
• Faster operational speeds when detailing with the model loaded, compared to a regular drawing
• The user can load the model(s) during opening, or at any time after the drawing is open

Watch this video to see the operational speed increased by tens of time compared to the preview video:

Among the tools I mentioned earlier as being implemented with 95 percent functionality is the Detached Drawing tool. The 95 percent implementation refers to all the huge benefits mentioned above. The missing five percent represents all of the dangers and problems a user will face when using these tools.

A Short History of Detached Drawings

The large drawing problem is not new, and SOLIDWORKS attempted to find a solution as early as SOLIDWORKS 2000.

In that version, a new drawing format was introduced, called RapidDraft Drawing. A new drawing could be started as a RapidDraft, or a regular drawing be converted to one.

In essence, a RapidDraft drawing had all of the benefits of what we call now a Detached Drawing, minus one: it could never be converted back to a regular drawing.

The promise of RapidDraft Drawings was huge. Not only did it have the potential to reduce the opening times of a drawing by 100 times, but detailing operations would not be affected by any lag. It was as fast as working on a 2D Drawing in DRAFTSIGHT or AutoCAD.

Moreover, for the first time, it offered another way to collaborate between designers and detailers. Detailers would simply receive RapidDraft drawings, with pre-created drawing views, without model files. They would add dimensions, annotations, balloons, then return the drawing to the designer. At this point, the designer would simply open the drawing along with its model to ensure everything was updated, then release it to production.

Notwithstanding existing bugs, the RapidDraft Drawings were not adopted by companies using SOLIDWORKS because they were very dangerous when used by untrained users. The main problem was that, once a drawing was converted to RapidDraft, there was no way to convert it back. When untrained users opened such a drawing at a later date, they were not aware that this was a special type of drawing, and would miss opening the model at the same time. As a result the danger of manufacturing products with errors was significant.

SOLIDWORKS recognized the danger and, in 2004, made two significant changes to RapidDraft Drawings:

1. Renamed RapidDraft Drawings to "Detached Drawings" in order to make users more aware of the behavior of the tool
2. Allowed the saving of Detached Drawings as regular drawings.

The effects were immediate:

1. Power-users would save a regular drawing as detached, then use it for detailing. When the drawing was released for production, they would save it back as a regular drawing. Anyone opening the released drawing in resolved or lightweight modes would have the model opened automatically.
2. The rest of the users started to avoid using these strange “detached drawings”. The name itself was scary enough.

The problem was further compounded by the fact that there were very subtle differences between a regular drawing and a detached one.

The file extension was the same. In File Explorer, but not in PDM, the thumbnail of a detached drawing might show a broken link .

In the File Open dialog, a detached drawing would offer the option to load the model.

Other than that, there were no other clues that a drawing was standard or detached.

This ambiguity forced companies like Feature Walters to decide that all their drawings would always be detached, and all users trained on how to securely work with such drawings.

"With that, we turned a 20-minute wait into only 30 seconds. We used to click on a line in a drawing and watch the cursor spin. Today, it reacts in a fraction of a second. Those time savings add up over a day, a week, or a year."

Grant Mattis – Feature Walters

The Solution Proposed by Grant Mattis

Grant recognized that the use of Detached Drawings might work for his team, but would never be accepted by the majority of companies using SOLIDWORKS. It was simply too complicated and dangerous.

His proposed solution was very simple: unify the regular drawings and detached drawings under one category. When opening any SOLIDWORKS drawing the users should have the ability to decide if the model will be loaded or not. Also, they should be able to load the model even after the drawing is open. In effect, expand the detached drawing functionality to all drawings.

As an extra security check, there should be a system option that would force the loading of the models for all drawings. Such option should be lockable by the CAD Admin in any company.

Harnessing the Power of the SOLIDWORKS Community

Knowing that, if implemented, his proposed solution would provide huge savings to the whole SOLIDWORKS Community, Grant started to actively engage the other end-users via the SOLIDWORKS Forum.

In parallel with that, we performed multiple benchmarks, studying the effect of:

• Configurations
• Display States
• Drawing view type: model, projected, section, detail, cropped
• High Quality versus Draft Quality Views
• Standard versus Detached

on:

• Drawing opening time
• Drawing update time
• File size

Grant and I presented these findings at SOLIDWORKS World 2018 to an audience containing end-users, VAR employees and SOLIDWORKS employees.

SOLIDWORKS is Engaged

The presentation caught the attention of Mark Johnson, the Technical Support Guru from SOLIDWORKS. For many of us, Mark Johnson is SOLIDWORKS!

With more than 15 years of experience working daily with end-users, CAD Admins and managers in quickly solving the most complex problems they encounter, Mark knows SOLIDWORKS inside-out.

When he saw the presentation he was intrigued and, typical to his approach to solving problems, acted immediately.

"Like any engineer or designer, I take great pride and find joy in seeing something new or improved come together.  Working with customers, prioritizing issues and helping to draft new specs or improved functions is my favorite part of this job!"

Mark Johnson, Expert Technical Support Engineer, SOLIDWORKS Escalation Manager, Americas

Mark arranged for the presentation to be delivered again at SOLIDWORKS Headquarters in Waltham, in front of applications engineers from VARs and SOLIDWORKS employees. During the presentation we received multiple questions from R&D specialists from the Drawings Development team. They seemed intrigued. too.

After the presentation, Grant, Mark and the R&D team continued to exchange information about the current large drawings experience for Feature Walters designers and brainstorm concrete ideas for significantly improving it.

Top Ten Ideas List for SOLIDWORKS World 2019

The next step was proving that the User Community was interested in Grant’s solution.

For that, an idea describing this functionality was submitted in the Top Ten Ideas Contest for SOLIDWORKS World 2019.

The idea proved popular, and, at SOLIDWORKS World in Dallas, was listed at #7 on the Top Ten list.

Good News: New Detailing Mode for Standard Drawings

In the second and third days of SOLIDWORKS World 2019, the R&D team provided an exciting preview of the new functionality they are working on for the 2020 version.

The highlight of the presentation was the new Detailing Mode for standard drawings, which showcased the exact solution Grant proposed!

This was Grant’s reaction after watching the video:

"Collaborating with Alin Vargatu and Mark Johnson to determine a more efficient process for detailing large-assembly drawings using existing methods and then presenting those ideas together at SOLIDWORKS World 2018 have been real highlights for me.

My immediate reaction when watching the SW2020 new features announcement was: 'Wow!! That’s exactly how we were hoping our suggestions would translate in SOLIDWORKS.'

The impact on our team’s ability to efficiently edit drawings as a result of SOLIDWORKS’ new Detailing Mode is nothing short of tremendous; this new feature has the potential to save many SOLIDWORKS users an enormous amount of time."

Grant Mattis

If this functionality passes Quality Control testing, in both Alpha and Beta phases, once implemented in SOLIDWORKS 2020 it will have the potential to change the way users experience detailing large drawings. We estimate that the savings will not be quantified in hours or days, but in weeks and months of savings for some companies.

Next Steps: Critical Action Items

As mention earlier, there are never full guarantees that new software functions currently in the works by the R&D team will make it in the final release.

To maximize the chances that the new Detailing Mode for Drawing will survive the testing it is imperative for us, the end-users, to test this functionality intensively during the BETA Testing program for SOLIDWORKS 2020, which will start in June this year.

Conclusion

This story shows how well the collaboration between all stakeholders (end-users, managers, VARs, Community and SOLIDWORKS) could work.

It also shows the importance of being active in broadcasting your problems and solutions, using all available channels. Software companies like SOLIDWORKS are very keen in hearing from their users and engaging their R&D departments in providing meaningful solutions.

About the Author

As an Elite AE and Process Improvement Consultant, working for Javelin Technologies, Alin Vargatu is a Problem Hunter and Solver, and an avid contributor to the SOLIDWORKS Community. He has presented 22 times at SOLIDWORKS World and tens of times at SWUG meetings organized by four different user groups in Canada and one in the United States. Alin is also very active on SOLIDWORKS forums, especially on the Surfacing, Mold Design, Sheet Metal, Assembly Modeling and Weldments sub-fora. His blog and YouTube channel are well known in the SOLIDWORKS Community.

Neri Oxman has a radical vision for the future of design and engineering.

Design by Algorithm, Design by Life

Oxman’s lab, the Mediated Matter group at MIT’s Media Lab, is aimed at taking the world of design from a place where products aren’t assembled from smaller components, but rather grown, much in the same way that nature produces complex “products.”

But why?

Oxman believes that the Industrial Revolution’s assembly line model has become outmoded. The pollution it produces from unrecyclable materials, energy waste and more isn’t sustainable, so a new mode for manufacturing and design is required.

Central to Oxman’s idea is the notion that manufacturing should use solutions already developed in nature, like the production of melanin to protect from UV radiation, to improve production design.

But melanin is a complex chemical, created by an even more complex set of biological reactions, and manufacturing melanin today is an expensive task ($315/g, according to Oxman) not suited for modern modes of production.

So the solution to this problem is to build biological systems into materials by means of genetic engineering. Oxman calls this process “parametric chemistry,” and it’s one of the most intriguing aspects of her work.

Essentially, parametric chemistry is a method of carefully placing select chemistry within a product’s material where its chemical potential can be leveraged to affect the way a material behaves. In the case of a melanin-impregnated material, melanin would be grafted to a material in select locations so that when the material is acted on by UV radiation, the material could respond by producing a protective pigment that resists the damage of UV rays.

But how will these new biologically driven material designs be produced? Contemporary manufacturing methods can’t produce the type of radical design that Oxman envisions. A new method of manufacturing will have to be developed. And that brings us to…

Additive Manufacturing, a Crucial Element of Oxman’s Idea

For years, Oxman has been working closely with 3D printer manufacturer Stratasys to create methods for building biologically active materials via additive manufacturing. Amazingly, her work with additive manufacturing has been met with some great success.

Through the use of additive manufacturing, Oxman and her MIT team have been able to build biopolymer materials made from chitin and other naturally manufactured bits with substances like melanin to create “living materials” that respond to their environment.

A 3D-printed sample of a material built using parametric chemistry. This sample includes reactive melanin that will darken as it comes into contact with damaging UV rays.

The reason that additive manufacturing is so critical to Oxman’s vision for design is that it gives engineers the ability to create complex materials that aren’t chemically homogenous by building a form layer by layer. This layer-by-layer approach makes it possible for designers to engineer their materials to have distinct qualities throughout their structure, something that’s seen frequently in nature. The process works like this: A 3D printer is loaded with a base material, say chitin and other substances, as well as a melanin-producing biomaterial. As the print begins, the chitin cocktail is laid down layer by layer as instructed by the engineer who built the material. Once the printer reaches a place in the material that requires melanin, the printer switches materials and adds the melanin where it’s needed. What’s more, the printer is not only creating a new material, but it’s also creating the form of whatever product is being built, making it an interesting analog for the way that biological structures are formed.

Unfortunately, this same process can’t be done as precisely with modern mass manufacturing technologies, so Oxman’s team has embraced additive manufacturing as the most viable means for experimental materials and product design. Given her team’s success with additive manufacturing, Oxman posits an idea that should begin being considered by engineering and design teams that want to stay at the forefront of innovation.

Additive manufacturing will be crucial to the development of biologically inspired material design made possible by parametric chemistry.

The Relevance of Oxman’sWork

While additive manufacturing, let alone parametric chemistry, is still a fledgling field, it’s become increasingly clear that advances in its mass manufacturing performance and additive manufacturing material libraries are occurring at an accelerated rate. The same can also be said for computational design, where generative algorithms are pushing innovation to nearly unimaginable extremes. However, these technologies have not yet reached maturity.

And there’s the rub.

Oxman’s work exists in place where both of these technologies have already reached maturity. That’s too say, Oxman’s work is both futurist and aspirational and is relevant to today’s engineers because it points the way to a possible design future. But before that future arrives, a number of issues have to be resolved.

One question that remains with Oxman’s work is the hidden conceit that bioinspired, computational design can offer limitless and unique solutions to design challenges. While the constraints of a design challenge vary from project to project, and nature seems to have an ingenious solution for every design challenge, one has to wonder if a standard computational design tool kit of algorithms will lead to a proliferation of biologically inspired, yet nearly identical, products that cease to be unique in appearance and function.

The answer may be “no,” provided the engineers in charge are sophisticated programmers who can retool an already established algorithm, or build one from scratch. Maybe the answer remains “no” if engineering teams engaged in this type of avant-garde design attempt to employ AI to create new models for design optimization.

But since that future hasn’t arrived, another question still lingers for me: Will this radical vision for design be transformed into a mass-manufacturing paradigm that eventually wears the wonder from these unique forms? Will additive manufacturing really make short-run, unique and bespoke products a viable means of putting products in a customer’s hands? Can nature provide a more sustainable mode for producing complex goods?

The answer to these questions are still unknown, but from all appearances, it seems that Oxman is at a critical nexus for answering these questions. What’s more, her insights into design may be propelling engineering towards an exciting new future.

After achieving success over in Europe, Dassault Systèmes decided to bring the Lab across the Atlantic and opened a new 3DEXPERIENCE Lab in May 2017, located at the North American HQ of Dassault Systèmes in Waltham, MA.

Engineering.com spoke with Abhishek Bali, the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab North America Manager, to get the skinny on what’s going down at the new Lab.

Figure 1 Fabbers...fabbing in the Lab. (Image credit: 3DEXPERIENCE Lab.)

“3DEXPERIENCE Lab Boston combines the strengths of a Startup Accelerator and a sophisticated Fab Lab set up in collaboration with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, to facilitate the creative community of entrepreneurs and makers in the US with latest hardware and software tools” said Bali. “The Lab’s Grand Opening on May 30^th, 2017 met resounding success with over 150 delegates from across industries, domains and geographies participating in the event, flanked by live demos of cutting-edge hardware, software and VR technologies.”

And the list of hardware is indeed impressive. The Lab features state-of-the-art Digital Fabrication tools, including high-end CO2 and Fiber Laser Cutters, Precision Mills, CNC Routers, a Vinyl Cutter, a Robotic Arm, a well-equipped Electronics Station and a variety of 3D Printers and Scanners. But of all the tools and equipment available to the users of the Lab (also known as “fabbers”), Bali gives kudos to one tool in particular

“The most advanced ‘piece of equipment’ in the Lab is the human mind” mused Bali. “It is amazing to see our fabbers and mentors coming to the Lab and experimenting with new creative ideas born out of their ingenuity. This is exactly what makes 3DEXPERIENCE Lab live and kicking!”

The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab operates on a unique Mentor-Fabber Interaction model. Every new fabber, is assigned to a set of mentors who train her/ him across various machines in the Lab. These mentors are Dassault Systèmes employees who have spent more than 20 hours in training across at least 5 machines in the Lab. The initial set of mentors were trained by instructors from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms(CBA) in a rigorous week long ‘Train the Mentor’ program. The program was led by none other than Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, Director of CBA, and the visionary behind Fab Foundation, the organization that connects over 1000 Fab Labs from across the world.

In addition to mentors, Fab Lab has a cohort of interns and co-ops from some of the best technical university programs that include MIT, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Northeastern University, and so on. Student startup teams from Babson College with hardware-based entrepreneurial ventures are using the Lab for fast prototyping and making proofs-of-concept for their innovative business ideas.

In the Lab, SOLIDWORKS and CATIA are used for 3D modelling, SIMULIA is used for multibody, multi-physics and computational fluid dynamics simulation, ENOVIA for project management, along with EXALEAD and NETVIBES for data management and research. DraftSight is used in the Lab for 2D Modeling. All of these are Dassault Systèmes owned software brands that facilitate Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

“In this sense, they utilize the full-spectrum strength of various tools of Dassault Systèmes’s 3DEXPERIENCE Platform that offers amazing apps for 3D Modelling & Simulation, Social Collaboration, and utilizing information intelligence throughout the complete lifecycle of a product from ideation to production” says Bali. “Dassault Systèmes, as you know, takes pride in being a 3DEXPERIENCE Company, with its wide range of software solutions that cover all aspects of Product Lifecycle Management across industries and product categories.”

Speaking of projects, the Lab is currently hosting students and mentors working on a variety of projects including assisted technology based virtual hands, Da-Vinci inspired mechanisms and Arduino-based connected devices.

“One of my personal favorites is called Ultrasonic Flash Light Sensor” said Bali. “The idea is to help one of our dear colleagues who is visually challenged to walk using a context-aware system that can reliably inform him about obstacles in his path. A diverse team of mentors is working on this project, bringing together their strengths in Electronics, User Experience, Industrial Design and Product Engineering.”

Figure 2 Wing-box under construction (Image credit: 3DEXPERIENCE Lab.)

The more keen-eyed among you may have noticed an image of a metal aircraft wing box being assembled in the pictures. This is part of another cool project (cool to me, because I’m an aerospace engineer) which is being undertaken in the Lab.

“We are really excited about the assembly of the Zenith CH 750 Cruzer in our premises” says Bali. “Zenith Aircraft Company is a SOLIDWORKS customer and has used the software to design the plane assembly from scratch. The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is running a cross-collaborative exercise around assembling the entire plane by involving over 300 Dassault Systèmes employees, partners, Customers and user groups in the coming months. We have ‘build sessions’ thrice a week in which we invite a cohort of 10 participants who have never held a rivet gun or touched a toolset in their life, in the lab to co-work and assemble one small part of the plane at a time. They of course go through safety instructions training and are supervised thoroughly at every step of the 1-hour long training exercise by Terence McCabe, our Engineer-in Chief for the project.”

And let’s not forget the accelerator part of the program. The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is not only focused on providing the tools for students to create awesome new products, but what is innovation without a market application? It is the very definition of innovation- to create new applications which have value in the marketplace. So, for budding entrepreneurs with an innovative streak, 3DEXPERIENCE Lab has it covered as well.

“The Accelerator program extends the footprint of the highly successful program in 3DEXPERIENCE Lab Paris to the across the Atlantic in the United States” says Bali. “The program is highly selective, with over 300 startups having applied to it over the past two years and only a handful getting selected for incubation. The idea is to have 4 to 6 US-based startups that can truly shift the scales of innovation around the 6 themes of Life, City, Lifestyle, Internet of Things, Ideation, and Fab Lab. The startups will be selected through a rigorous Open Innovation-based process with Dassault Systèmes’s in-house domain experts along with the CEO, Bernard Charlès. They will evaluate each startup for couple of months leading up to a quarterly Innovation Committee Event in company’s Global Headquarters at Velizy in France. The next event will be held in September 2017 and we can expect the first lot of startups in the Boston Lab around that time. These startups will get full access to 3DEXPERIENCE Platform’s tools, state-of-the-art Fab Lab, physical co-working space and technical mentorship for two years without having to give away equity or IP rights”. Dassault Systèmes are not content to rest on their laurels either, and have their eyes firmly focused on the horizon.

“While we have a plan in place to make the Lab a center for Digital Fabrication excellence (3D Printing, Laser Cutting, CNC Milling and Routing), we also want to build expertise in domains of Electronics and Robotics” says Bali. “The idea is to foster ways of cross-pollinating expertise across domains to power low-investment to high-impact projects along upcoming domains such as Internet of Things, Social Robotics and so on. When we talk about expanding radially, we want to continue involving more and more partners, stakeholders and users in the process of ‘digital maker-ship’. The 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is already connected to a global network of over 1000 Fab Labs through Fab Foundation. We aim to become a super node in this network in coming years and host classes and interactions of Fab Academy Coursework which is a rigorous 6-month coursework taught by Neil Gershenfeld (Professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms) himself”.

Figure 3 Building an aircraft in the Lab (Image Credit: 3DEXPERIENCE Lab.)

So there you have it. The 3DEXPERIENCE Company is investing heavily in cultivating minds and facilitating training and incubation to students and startups, as well as providing an enviable experience for students wishing to taste the full product design journey for themselves.

If you’re part of a startup(or just plain curious) and are interested in the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, feel free to reach out for more information and for applying to the Accelerator program. The link is: www.3dexperiencelab.com

To learn more about Dassault Systèmes, please visit: www.3ds.com

Devin Hamilton in studio working with SOLIDWORKS from a desk of his own design. (Image courtesy of CADimensions.)

Engineering firms often tout the fact that the work they’re doing is “changing the world”. You hear it in commercials, you read it in industry publications and there’s no point in denying that it’s at least partially true—engineers really are reinventing the world to make life easier and fairer. Large companies and corporations aren’t the only ones in this domain. Often times, some of the most profound changes have been envisioned and built by lone individuals who isolate a problem and decide to solve it.

That’s very much the case for Devin Hamilton.

It’s an understatement to say that Devin Hamilton is a remarkable engineer, let alone a remarkable human being. Since early childhood, Hamilton has had Cerebral Palsy, a physical disability that effects the communication between the brain and muscles making it difficult to control the movement of one’s body. For Hamilton, who describes himself as someone who’s “always been interested in building things, taking other things apart and putting them back together”, the challenges of Cerebral Palsy have made interacting with the physical world difficult. This led Hamilton to have to constantly ask if other people could help him explore the world around him.

Fortunately, these challenges didn’t stop Hamilton from pursuing his ambition to be an engineer.

While growing up on the family farm, Hamilton and his dad were constantly devising solutions so that he could stay engaged in an active life on the farm. Whether they were designing tractor seats, plows or hitches for his wheelchair, Hamilton learned early how he could use engineering to transform his world. “Growing up on a farm with a disability and a supportive, encouraging family created the perfect storm for my passion for engineering” Hamilton says.

Hamilton working with SOLIDWORKS using an eye tracking interface. (Image courtesy of CADimensions.)

But even with his activities at the farm, one big issue remained. Hamilton had trouble building on his own. Then, Hamilton was accepted into the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

The Liberating Influence of CAD

Once at RIT, Hamilton says that he was immediately drawn to CAD, realizing its potential to give him access to a design space that he could interact with on his own. Using an eye tracking interface, Hamilton quickly learned how to sketch and model with Dassault Systèmes’ SOLIDWORKS and that changed everything.

“Learning SOLIDWORKS opened a whole new world for me.” Hamilton said. “I didn’t need any help anymore building things, I could just make a model. SOLIDWORKS became my hands.”

But, now that Hamilton had hands, what would he build?

Plenty. And the stories of what Hamilton has invented just kept rolling off his tongue. “Recently I wanted to make a way to hold spice and pill bottles so that they were more accessible,” Hamilton explained.“After I came up with an idea, I modeled it and ran a simulation on a magnetic spice clip.”

Now, let’s just step back for a minute.

Hamilton’s ability to create a model with the blink of an eye is amazing in and of itself, but he is doing something profound. Most of us engineers take for granted the very simulations that gave Hamilton unprecedented access to the physical world.

We all know that simulations are just a quicker, easier and more universal method for looking at how a model would behave in the real world. For Hamilton, simulations represent one of the only ways he can understand how his models will work while still being able to work on his own.

“Because I can't physically feel the forces required to put a clip on the bottle, I used simulation to obtain the information that one would normally get by feeling,” Hamilton explained.

Launching RapAdapt

The bottle clip is just one of many examples of how Hamilton has used engineering and SOLIDWORKS to transform and improve his world.

A few of Hamilton’s assistive technology inventions. The control panel he designed helps him control his robot and makes it easier to eat. (Image courtesy of CADimensions.)

“Engineering has improved my life in many ways,” Hamilton said.“I use engineering to overcome many of the obstacles having a disability presents. Most of the assistive technology that I have, I have developed [personally]. Engineering allows me to simply make whatever I need. I've built power chairs, keyboard stands, shower valves, a robotic arm to feed myself, a tablet, phone and dog leash holder attachment for my power chair and numerous other devices.”

Hamilton now puts his engineering background and unique perspective to work helping others with disabilities overcome some of the same obstacles he has faced and some he has never encountered!

Since embarking on this life of invention, Hamilton has realized that he’s not the only one looking for assistive technologies to make life a bit easier. He’s decided to create his own corporation, RapAdapt, which provides Assistive Technology consulting services and product development for those with disabilities. If there were ever a case of an engineer finding creative solutions based on obstacles, Hamilton and RapAdapt seem to be a perfect embodiment of that idea.

While engineers with Hamilton’s drive may be few and far between, he represents what all engineers should strive to become, undaunted innovators. With his mastery of CAD, Hamilton has opened up new opportunities for himself, including making it possible to communicate his ideas effectively, giving himself more complete access to the world around him and, most importantly, the ability to have a positive impact on the lives of others.

Now, if only all engineers could deliver to that degree, they would truly match the often heard motto, “We make the world a better place.”

To learn more about Hamilton’s story, check out this video from CADimensions Inc.

Aerovelo’s Eta zipped past the human-powered land speed record, clocking in at a whopping 144.17 kph (89.58 mph)! Let it into the left lane, folks. (Image courtesy of Aerovelo.)

We’ve all been there, driving down a one-lane street, backed up behind a cyclist that blocks our ambition of hitting the speed limit. Seriously, bikes limp along at 10 mph and hit what—30 mph—max? Well, no. How does 90 mph sound?

That’s right. Thanks to the engineering minds of Aerovelo and its bike, Eta, cyclists could theoretically complain about passing that big bead on your high performance vehicle.

Aerovelo Cofounders Cameron Robertson and Todd Reichert lead their team of University of Toronto (U of T) engineering students and alumni to design, simulate, optimize, build and pilot this escape pod-encased bike into the history books.

After breaking its own human-powered land speed record a few times over, this little tear drop settled on an impressive 144.17 kph (89.59 mph).

“It was a culmination of years of effort,” said Robertson. “There was a lot of excitement and relief that we have taken a good path and all the choices we made showed it could be done. With Eta’s design, we showed the range of improvement. In 2000 to 2015, there wasn’t much change to the [human-powered land] speed record. It incremented 10 mph in 15 years, from 73 to 83 mph. The rate of technological change was small; it was incremental improvements. In the span of two years with Eta, however, we incremented [the record] by 6.5 mph.”

There is no wonder why the team named their bike after the Greek letter us engineers know represents efficiency. And the racing pun asking Eta’s estimated time of arrival at the finish line wasn’t lost either.

How Do You Design a Bike That Can Break a World? Use CFD Simulations!

Consistency is one of the hardest challenges when designing a vehicle to break any speed record. This is because the racing team typically only gets a few kicks at the can on official race days.

“Every day you need to execute as you will only get some days where the environment is what you want,” said Robertson. “We didn’t expect this to be a big point, but we took it based on advice from other teams that have broken records and were always on the ball. We wanted to emulate this.”

So how does one get from the snail on the road to Formula One? And better yet, how do you make the performance of this bullet consistent? The answer is computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, a lot of experience, and trial and error.

“With the bike, it was important to change the design of the outer shell and then slightly modify the simulation results to get a sense of how it performed with respect to that change. Then, we would iterate again,” said Robertson. “Todd [Reichert] did 30 different iterations on the bike’s fairings, and without SOLIDWORKS we would never have been able to do that in an informed way.”

The majority of the Eta simulations were in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. This simulation in-CAD package was a platform that the U of T alumni and students at Aerovelo were well versed in using. They wanted to investigate the airflow around the outer shell. To do this, the team would perform numerous pressure profile simulations.

“We use pressure profiles, which are accurately evaluated in software like SOILDWORKS Flow Simulation. As the air goes over the surface, you can assess the pressure at every point. You can then shape the pressure profile as you go down the bike and have the shape of the profile be maximally conducive to extend laminar flow,” explained Robertson. “From there, we expect, based on the pressure profile, the change to be positive or negative.”

The goal is to maintain laminar flow around the bike as long as possible due to its lower resistance compared to turbulence and transitional flows. One would think that ideally, the goal is to maintain laminar flow around the shell completely. However, if the flow doesn’t transition before the trailing edge then it can fully separate from the surface which will cause tremendous drag.

A red herring of sorts in the optimization and simulation of their bike, according to Robertson, was trying to determine the actual spot on the bike where the air transitions from laminar to turbulent. He said, “When that prediction happens, there is a large margin of error. It’s subject to small variations and it will be [hard] to implement in the real world versus simulation. We see some team point to a spot on their bike and say, ‘we have laminar flow until here and we predict it will run 150kph,’ and then it runs worse than their previous bike.”

This shows the importance of validating your simulation. No engineer should trust their model blindly. This has become a regular practice for Aerovelo. It performs simulations and then tests the bike to compare the turbulence and pressure profile. The team also relies heavily on its experiences and the experiences of the community of engineers working on breaking the human-powered land speed record.

How Does Eta Differ from Traditional Bikes?

So, after all the design changes, optimizations and simulations, what sets Eta apart from that bike in the garage?

“Well, it’s different from a normal bike in almost every way,” said Robertson. “First, Eta is very recumbent. The pilot is almost completely lying down. The bike is fully enclosed for aerodynamics except for controlled intakes for ventilations. Next, it’s steered using cameras on top of the bike connected to screens in front of the pilot’s face, and steering is limited to three degrees to each side. Finally, the tires are not good for turning. So, it’s clearly designed to go straight.”

Robertson also explains that the gearing for the bike is also very different. Eta uses a two-stage drive train to accommodate the bike’s top speed. Due to the reduction created by the two-stage drive train, the wheels of Eta are able to spin many times faster than anyone can spin on a traditional bike.

With the vast differences between Eta and traditional racing bikes, don’t expect to see it on the Tour de France anytime soon (unless there’s a total relaxation of racing rules). However, Robertson is interested in a biking version of Formula1 (F1), similar to Australia’s Pedal Prix, where the engineering behind the equipment is perhaps more important than the driving of said equipment. He said, “F1 is more about the engineering and could be interesting in a bike format.”

But what really interests Robertson is how this technology could affect transportation. He imagines going to work at highway speeds on a vehicle that is human powered and 300 times more fuel efficient than your average car.

“One thing we thought about is how you could use these in the future. Imagine if you were not contending with several thousand-pound cars on the road,” wondered Robertson. “It’s interesting when comparing a small power of the human engine at about two-thirds horsepower. To ride an hour and achieve 60 mph, the bike needs to be very efficient—about 9500 mpg to an average car that is about 30 mpg.”

The Future of Aerovelo’s Record-Breaking Bike Designs

The Aerovelo team is all smiles while huddled around Eta after breaking the record. But how long will they hold the title? How much room for improvement is there? From left to right Tomek Bartczak, Alex Selwa, Victor Ragusila, Todd Reichert, Cameron Robertson and Trefor Evans. (Image courtesy of Aerovelo.)

So, what is next for Aerovelo and the human-powered land speed record?

Well, Robertson believes that there are still many potential areas of improvement for Eta and similar record-chasing bikes.

Unfortunately for Eta, many of these improvements will require a completely new design and even more thinking outside the box from engineers. Two examples involve heat capture and active boundary layers.

The rule books says that the bike must be powered by humans, but does that mean it has to be powered by the legs alone? Remember, that pilot in an enclosed spot will produce a lot of heat. Capturing this human body heat could theoretically help power a bike. This might seem a little like cheating, but remember that it is still human power, and it worked well enough for The Matrix.

“You can’t use energy storage devices on the bike, but you could still drive a bike on an electric motor,” said Robertson. “So, imagine if the driver provides power to the drive train. Humans are 20 to 30 percent efficient on converting energy and the rest goes to heat. Capturing that with some efficiency using heat recapturing tiles or heat pumps could theoretically increase the energy output.”

To test out this theory, engineers at Aerovelo could create a heat transfer simulation of Eta’s replacement and use that data to crunch the electromechanical numbers.

“Simulations would also play a role in active boundary control, which is used to extend the laminar flow around a vehicle,” explained Robertson. “Active boundary control senses and manipulates the boundary layer in order to allow longer runs of laminar flow than would be possible otherwise.”

Active boundary control can be done in two ways: using either wave theory or clever ventilation.

“When air transitions from laminar to turbulent, energy and unstable waves oscillations grow to a point where the stable smooth conditions turn into the chaotic movements,” noted Robertson.“The technology senses the oscillations in the air and then introduces more waves to cancel out those waves that are promoting the turbulence transition.”

Another active boundary layer method would add a system that sucks in the nearly turbulent boundary layer of air. The air is sucked in can then be used for ventilation. However, more importantly, the surrounding flow would fill the gap made by the pre-existing boundary layer. This would effectively give the bike a new laminar boundary layer.

Unfortunately, this method would need precise knowledge of the transitional point. As previously mentioned, this would require simulations with questionable accuracy in this particular application.

Similar to the heat capture option, active boundary layer does use up energy to work the sensors, oscillators and/or pumps and any other equipment. The question is will you get more energy out of the rider than you waste on this added equipment?

“Everything we do is about system design,” noted Robertson. “We look at how we can do more with less or get more from what we have. Reduce the weight and increase strength—that is an important mind-set.”

While keeping part files and subassemblies properly named and organized in a folder is one thing, loading and rebuilding large assemblies is extremely taxing on system resources and can test even the most seasoned of users' patience with lagging performance issues. Thankfully, there are ways of managing your large assemblies, ranging from optimizing software settings to working in different modeling modes, that enable you to work only on particular parts of an assembly without loading all component files.

Whether you're a beginner just getting started with your first large assembly or are a seasoned vet looking to brush up on the basics, here are five proven techniques for getting a handle on those large assemblies in SOLIDWORKS.

Changing display settings is a quick and easy way to conserve system resources.

1. Optimize Software Setup and Display Settings

It's important to remember that hardware has a direct influence on the performance of all computer applications. Taking this into account, no matter how well a piece of software is tuned to your needs, it will always be limited by the hardware it is running on. That said, there area number of setup and display setting tweaks that can be made to optimize the performance of SOLIDWORKS on your machine for large assemblies.

One of the fastest ways to go about this is to go Tools > Options > Performance. Here, there are a number of options that you can adjust to your liking, but for an immediate impact on performance, you can turn off options for both retaining high quality transparencies and reducing the level of detail used for curvature generation.

Once these simple changes have been made, go one more item down in the list to Tools > Options > Assemblies and navigate to the Large Assemblies section of the menu. Here, you have the option to set the component threshold for when Large Assembly Mode automatically turns on. When this threshold is met, the software automatically makes changes to the settings that optimize certain performance qualities, including levels of detail, shaded modes, certain display styles and smooth dynamic motions, when zooming in and out. For users with limited hardware capabilities, it's worth playing with this threshold to find a sweet spot for what you're used to working with.

Depending on the task at hand, you can choose to open a SOLIDWORKS assembly in a different mode that’s optimized for working with a large assembly.

2. Work in Lightweight Mode to Conserve System Resources

In Lightweight mode, which can be chosen from the Mode drop-down menu when opening an assembly in the Open dialog box, users still have access to many of the normal assembly commands. However, each component is loaded with the least amount of data, as symbolized in the Feature Tree with a feather.

When the assembly is opened in Lightweight mode, individual components can be modified if they are set to "Resolved" in the right-click menu. When a component is resolved, users can then edit the individual part and make any necessary design changes without loading all components within the assembly. Ultimately, while this doesn't reduce the actual file size on your hard drive, it can significantly reduce the amount of memory the software uses to perform minor adjustments to individual components without loading an entire assembly.

While there are other options in the Mode drop-down menu when opening an assembly in the Open dialog box, including Large Assembly Mode and Large Design Review, Lightweight mode retains the greatest amount of functionality while reducing the amount of system resources required.

Using SpeedPak will keep the context of an assembly while only preserving data necessary for the job at hand.

3. Use SpeedPak to Simplify and Use Only What You Need

When working with top-level assemblies, oftentimes all that is needed are simplified representations of subassemblies such as specific faces or bodies for mating rather than entire memory-taxing subassembly structures.

Thankfully, SpeedPak lets users create simplified configurations of an assembly without losing references. Not only does this significantly improve performance while working in the assembly and its drawing, but it can also streamline the file-sharing process by enabling teams to send the least amount of necessary reference data while working within larger projects that have many subassemblies.

To create a SpeedPak, locate the Configuration Manager tab, then, under Configurations, right-click an existing configuration and select "Add SpeedPak." From here, select the faces and bodies that you want to be selectable in the SpeedPak configuration, either for yourself or for another team member, and confirm your selections. Once the SpeedPak has been made, only the faces and bodies that were selected for the SpeedPak will be visible and selectable when your pointer is moved over the assembly.

Setting Task Scheduler to run repetitive tasks overnight can save hours at a time.

4. Use Task Scheduler for Repetitive and Resource-Intensive Tasks

Depending on the task at hand, it might make sense to use Task Scheduler to perform certain jobs automatically during off-peak hours.

While Task Scheduler does have its limitations, it is a surprisingly powerful tool for automating repetitive resource-intensive tasks such as rebuilding large assemblies or converting CAD data to be more usable in your design system. Additionally, Task Scheduler can also be used to perform a specific task repeatedly on a daily, weekly or monthly basis if you have regularly occurring tasks.

While Task Scheduler is a part of the SOLIDWORKS software package, it is a separate application and can be found in the application folder.

Many viewing capabilities that are found in SOLIDWORKS are also found in the free eDrawings viewer for sharing a design with clients or other stakeholders.

5. Leverage Large Design Review Mode and eDrawings to Your Advantage

For simple design reviews, opening up a fully functional assembly model is oftentimes unnecessary and can slow down communication due to system crashes or memory lags. Thankfully, options exist for both performing a design review within the softwareas well as sharing an assembly witha non-SOLIDWORKS user.

For quickly sharing an assembly for a design review directly within the software, enabling Large Design Review mode at the Open dialog box when opening an assembly enables users to quickly open, navigate, measure, comment, section, save edit notes for later and even selectively open and edit a part or subassembly while reviewing, among other functionalities. While working in Large Design Review mode can be extremely beneficial when presenting to others, it can also be an optimal way to work when reviewing your own work and making notes for edits that can be done at a later time or automated through Task Scheduler during off-peak hours.

Alternatively, users who want to share their large assemblies with non-SOLIDWORKS users can share eDrawings files that can be viewed within the eDrawings Viewer. The free viewer, which enables collaboration without the need for software compatibility, lets stakeholders communicate in 3D with the original assembly file for creating markups, notes and presentations—and even perform tasks on the go with a number of different apps. Additionally, a new augmented reality feature lets users experience the 3D model directly in front of them in the context of the real world.

Of course, every situation is different based on varying hardware setups and assembly file complexities, but familiarizing yourself with the above workflows can save a lot of time and headaches down the road.

So whether you’re about to dive into your first large assembly or just brushing up on the tools available to you, just remember that managing large assemblies in SOLIDWORKS is possible in most cases, and it’s usually just a matter of approaching a problem from different angles to get your desired outcome.

About the Author

Simon Martin is a writer and industrial designer in New York City.

A 3D SOLIDWORKS CAD model of a Haiku fan. A Haiku fan embeds the fan light and uses airfoils instead of planks to move air around the room. The result is a sleeker, more optimized design. A sleek design optimized to perform its task efficiently should be enough reason to buy the product. IoT is just a cherry on top. Engineers need to understand that this is often the case. Start with a good product and add IoT. IoT doesn’t make a product good; it just adds to it. (Image courtesy of Haiku Home.)

Often, the best-designed products just blend into reality and are taken for granted. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. When it comes to fans made by Haiku Home from Big Ass Solutions (yes, that is its real name), the company uses its expertise of blowing air around to not only optimize the design of fans, but also to add them to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Starting with a Good Disconnected Product Is the Key to a Great IoT Product

“If you don’t get the product right then, you might as well not bother with the smart piece,” said Landon Borders, director of Connected Devices at Big Ass Solutions. “If done correctly, adding connectivity to the product is just an incremental improvement.”

He explains that the start of any good IoT product is the product itself. You can’t just slap connectivity to any old design and call it a day. You need to think how you have improved the product for your customers. Not all products lend themselves to the IoT. Similarly, no amount of connectivity features will improve a bad design.

“A lot of the challenges with designing an IoT device comes down to not having a playbook,” said Borders. “A lot of this is very new and we’re all learning as we go. But it starts with the product. I see so many smart devices out there, and they are really not solving any problems for anyone. I shake my head sometimes. So one of the challenges is learning what customers want and translating those needs into specifications and requirements.”

When it came to classic fan designs, there were many things Haiku Home discovered it could improve upon from a user perspective. First, take those noisy motors. Borders explained that Haiku works on brushless motors that reduce the noise and improve the life of the product.

Next, the dangling lights and chains often associated with ceiling fans had to go. The chains were always confusing to use, they fail or break frequently, and they are difficult for those who aren’t especially tall to use. And the dangling lights could become a literal headache inducer for those who are tall. These interesting design changes were all crafted in a SOLIDWORKS CAD model.

Control for the fan went to an IoT app, while the lights were replaced with LEDs that are built into the fan’s sleek frame.

To really see how much energy Haiku Home puts into the design of its IoT products, before even adding IoT, look no further than the blades.

Traditionally, the blades on fans are a little more than a plank. However, Haiku Home designs its blades into airfoils. The company even performs computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to optimize the fans’ design. These simulations are also used by Haiku Home’s sales team to ensure that a fan is properly sized for a room and the contents within it.

“We also simulate the air movement and how light is distributed into a facility,” said Borders. “Our design engineers can simulate the air movement and then calculate how a specific pitch or angle on a foil might produce a particular cubic foot per minute (CFM) [flow], and this is normally spot on when we get to the physical prototype.”

In other words, Haiku Home wanted to make a product that people would want because it was already an optimized stand-alone product. Adding IoT just became the cherry on top.

I Have a Good Product Design. How Do I Make It a Great IoT Design?

“A lot of people get caught up in the connectivity and interoperability piece,” mentioned Borders. “But If I were the one designing the product, I would think first about use cases and what the customer would want accomplished that they don’t have today. Ask what sucks about a product, and figure out how to make it suck less. But in our case, we blow air.”

In fact, Borders noted that adding the connectivity to a product itself isn’t the big challenge when designing IoT products. After all, many products already incorporate electronics.

“Electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and industrial designers have been fighting over space in products for years, and that hasn’t changed,” explained Borders. “The only exception to that might be antenna placement, which often leads to material decisions."

Therefore, answering why your product needs IoT is a lot harder and more important than answering how you will add the connectivity in the first place. As an example, ask yourself, will your product need to be a part of a larger IoT ecosystem? Will the user experience of your fan improve if it can talk to the stove and know to speed up to help cool the kitchen while you are cooking?

“It’s one thing to be connected, but it’s another thing to have something to say,” said Borders. “I think about these things in terms of ecosystems of products. Your blender and your fan and thermostat really don’t have much to say. They can be connected, but they don’t need to be connected to one another. When I think of our ecosystem of comfort and energy conservation, I’m thinking about products that have something to say to one another, and when they do, they can sense environmental conditions and react accordingly.”

Communication between products on the IoT can become complicated. Take ecobee’s smart thermostat. It has coin cell battery sensors located around the home and a wall-mounted thermostat with a battery backup. Due to these power limitations, the thermostats will need to be strategic when communicating data. In contrast, Haiku’s fans are plugged in and do not have a limited power supply. As a result, they are continuously connected.

“For us, that means we can only pull the smart thermostat for information at certain intervals and because of that there is some latency. This latency isn’t that perceptible to our customers, but you do have to think [during the design] how this latency affects the user experience.”

I Have a Great IoT Design. What Do I Do with All This Big Data?

“People see value in data, but they don’t know what it is,” remarked Borders. “Oftentimes, they will jump to ‘How do I monetize this?’ But that’s not how we look at it. For us, the data gives us insights into how our products are being used at a macro level.”

Borders joked that they don’t have an employee looking at the data come in like some operator in the Matrix movies. Instead, Haiku Home aggregates the data, sterilizes it from personal information, and looks for patterns in customer usage.

“Looking at the data at an aggregate view gives you an idea of how products are used and how you can make them better and create new features for customers,” explained Borders.

For instance, Borders explained that by looking at the data, the company discovered that over 90 percent of the time users were using their fans at 60 percent of maximum speed. In other words, the vast majority of the fans were over-engineered for their purpose.

As a result, the company was able to design a fan with a smaller motor and lower profile without affecting the performance expectations of users. The added benefit is that this design translated into cost benefits for both Haiku Home and its customers.

I’m Collecting This Useful Big Data. Now How Do I Secure My IoT Connection?

Security is dependent on the product and the service it provides. As a result, engineers need to take into consideration the product and what might be on the network it is connected to. They then must theorize what might go wrong in the event of a hack.

In other words, security means something different for those who are designing IoT deadbolt locks than an IoT fan. But once that fan connects to the deadbolt, then things can get fishy.

“People look at the scenario at Target, which was a very high-profile security breach,” said Borders. “There was a lot to lose there, and I can’t believe how there was a loophole where the hackers hijacked the air conditioning and somehow ended up with a bunch of credit cards.”

“That was a massive failure on many fronts, not just smart devices,” he added. “Security means a lot of different things, and you need to think of the consequences if someone hijacks the control of a smart [device]. They might turn on and off a light and it might be annoying, but if someone hacks a security system, the repercussions are a lot greater. So we look at security at a bunch of different layers at the security stack.”

Another thing Borders notes is that security and privacy are not the same thing, although they are certainly connected. When collecting customer data from the IoT, it is important that the data that goes to sales is different from the data that gets to the design engineers. Engineers don’t care about your name and zip code. They care about how you use the product. As a result, it is best to use firewalls to separate this data to ensure the privacy of the users and to ensure that their personal information is secure.

To help ensure that no alarming errors exist in an IoT product’s security, Borders suggests that a company use third-party security audits on a regular basis. The last thing you want is to release a product that accidentally saves the Wi-Fi log-in information in plain text somewhere in the system. Mistakes like this can happen if you are not careful and you don’t look into your system. Performing regular audits of the product and company will help reduce the likelihood that these vulnerabilities will occur. So get in contact with a good white hat.

Finally, Borders suggests that security doesn’t rest solely on the engineers creating the products; users need to think about their own security as well. He suggests that users should use Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) 2 encryption for their networks and ensure that their passwords are complicated enough to limit hacking. He explained that it’s difficult for hackers to crack such an encryption. And if they can’t get into the network, they can’t control anything. He said, “WPA 2 is very important. That’s a layer of security that you just can’t overlook. So there is some fear mongering in the media.”

About the Author

Shawn Wasserman (@ShawnWasserman) is the Internet of Things (IoT) and Simulation Editor at ENGINEERING.com. He is passionate about ensuring engineers make the right decisions when using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and IoT development tools. Shawn has a Masters in Bio-Engineering from the University of Guelph and a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

To get to know the company, the first thing you should be aware of is that OPEN MIND produces CAD/CAM software as well as postprocessors for the design and manufacture of complex molds and parts. The company offers 2D solutions packed with features for milling standard parts and software for five-axis simultaneous machining, among other products.

hyperMILL for SOLIDWORKS

OPEN MIND has an integrated CAM solution that you may find useful for high-performance engineering as well as tool and mold manufacturing and design. The central idea behind making a product like hyperMILL for SOLIDWORKS is to empower users to transform their CAD designs into numerical control (NC) code for machining without leaving SOLIDWORKS and worrying about interoperability issues or any other hiccups a user can experience transferring design data to third-party CAM software.

Not having to leave your design environment has several advantages. As an integrated process with universal data models, the production process is more transparent and secure. The obvious general productivity benefit of using a familiar design interface is that more people want to use it. Additionally, an entirely new software doesn’t need to be learned or taught, which also can simplify operations and increase efficiency in a given production process.

OPEN MIND Technologies accomplished something pretty remarkable by creating one user interface in SOLIDWORKS with 2D, 3D, high-speed cutting (HSC) and 5-axis machining strategies, as well as a mill turn module. With these options available  in the popular CAD software from Dassault Systèmes, users have simple yet sophisticated choices to create the best machining strategy. The better the strategy is, the less users find themselves spending time on programming and machining, which increases efficiency and productivity. This counts big time for everyone concerned with keeping costs down and getting new products, parts, molds and tools to market on time or even a bit early.

Standardizing and Automating CAM Tasks

One of the goals OPEN MIND has strived to accomplish with hyperMILL is to make the programming of 5-axis tasks as easy and familiar as 3D programming. Avoidance features and collision checking help make this possible with 5-axis tasks and hyperMILL automatically calculates tool positions with one preference angle inputted by the user. Machining strategies and tools can be combined, stored and retrieved from a graphical database, which is useful when users are creating CAM programs.

Checking the programs built by users is easy with OPEN MIND Utilities, because it amplifies the ability to make changes to tool paths right up to and including the last phase.

With hyperMILL, users can:

• perform multi-axis machining
• machine surfaces
• use hole feature recognition
• machine on surfaces
• perform milling and turning in one operation
• program and execute 5-axis drilling and mill and turn in one integrated operation.

For manufacturing operations, this means reduced cycle times.

Tangent Plane Machining in hyperMILL with Conical Barrel Cutter

OPEN MIND hit the whiteboards pretty hard and came up with a totally new kind of milling tool geometry to machine faces with minimal curvature using a conical barrel cutter. If you aren’t familiar with barrel-shaped tools, they use a portion of their circumference to allow for a 500-mm cutting radius.

The conical barrel cutter was integrated by OPEN MIND for hyperMILL to enhance what the company calls its tangent plane machining strategy. In order to spend less time machining vertiginous and bottom surfaces, the conical barrel cutters employed in this strategy cut machining time by 90 percent during tangent plane machining.

A conical barrel cutter using hyperMILL’s tangent plane machining strategy cuts into a structural part. The 500-mm radius is much larger than that of a ball end mill. (Image courtesy of OPEN MIND Technologies.)

Depending on what type of machining you’re doing, you may use a general barrel cutter or a tangential barrel cutter, but if you’re machining steep or flat planes in undercut situations, the conical barrel cutter will work best. hyperMILL also automatically aligns and nestles the conical barrel cutter to avoid collisions and mistakes that will cost you time and money.

Replacing the Traditional Ball Mill with the Conical Barrel Cutter

hyperMILL’s automatic alignment and nestling of barrel cutters is part of what OPEN MIND calls the “MAXX Machining” strategy. This coined term signifies the ability of users to automatically support the geometry and perform collision checking of conical barrel cutters as well as tangential barrel cutters and lens tools.

The CAM industry’s reaction to the MAXX Machining strategy has so far been cautious but optimistic. With any new change in machining strategies, the main issue is convincing cutting tool vendors to get on board and produce a tool that only displays a circle segment of the cutter. Quickgrind was one of the first to get on board. For other tool producers, a really important thing to remember for customers who want to keep their machine shop as up to date as possible is the following: Manufacturing a cutting tool with a shank diameter of only 15 mm can create a large radius of 500 mm.

The reason this is important is because it greatly increases the overall machining area, helping reduce cycle times and higher step-over rates without altering scallop heights. It not only allows users to create great surface finishes, but also diminishes tool degradation because it uses a larger surface area of the tool.

Besides increasing the machining area and reducing tool wear, the new strategy can protect users from suffering annoying deviations from spindle growth or heat warping.

Comparison of MAXX Machining with a Conical Barrel Against a Standard Ball Nose

At a recent technical seminar in the United Kingdom, a comparison demonstration took place to test the surface finish performance of the MAXX Machining strategy. The setting was the Mazak Technical Centre. The machine was the Mazak i-400 multi-tasking machine tool. The cutting tools were supplied by Quickgrind.

The contest was between a ball nose tool with a 10-mm diameter and a conical barrel tool with a radius of 500 mm on a 10-mm shank. Using a small step-over strategy of 0.2 mm, the ball nose tool compared poorly with the conical barrel tool, which had a 3-mm step over. This resulted in a tool path distance of 100 m for the ball nose tool. The barrel tool, by comparison, came in at slightly less than 7 m!

The difference in machining time was even more disparate and exaggerated: 39 minutes for the ball nose tool. It only took the barrel tool three minutes!

Conical barrel cutter in hyperMILL empowers a new wave of capabilities for machine shops. (Image courtesy of OPEN MIND Technologies.)

The ability of the MAXX Machining strategy to produce a 500-mm radius can certainly be scaled up as OPEN MIND hits the drawing board with cutting tool specialists. With MAXX Machining, the key takeaway is that a larger tool radius equals a larger step down.

Imagine what machine shops could accomplish with a 1,500-mm radius tool on a shank size from 5 to 20 mm in diameter. This allows customers and users to sync up the tool radius by matching it with the accuracy of the machine tool. Simply put, this is possible because a smaller radius amplifies the inherent precision of the machine tool by stabilizing and maintaining positional tolerance without rolling over the edge. This depends of course on the level of precision in a given machine tool.

However, it also yields a simple maxim for scalable improvement using barrel tools and hyperMILL’s MAXX Machining: the larger the radius, the greater the advantage.

About the Author

Andrew Wheeler is an optimistic skeptic whose lifelong passion for computer hardware has led him to 3D printing and his latest technological passion, Reality Computing.

Well, maybe it’s not that simple.

In the end, if a designer wants to change a variable on a model, he or she has to negotiate through all of the input boxes in his or her models, punch in the x-factor that drives each parameter and move along to the next step. It’s still a bit time consuming, and if you’re not the person who originally created the model, or you don’t have good instructions on which parameters need to be reconfigured, you might even miss a critical variable.

However, if you’re using SOLIDWORKS, there’s a solution that will make building configurations easy. Its name is DriveWorks Pro and, not for nothing, it’s also a SOLIDWORKS Certified Gold Product.

Assembly Automation in a Snap

The DriveWorks Pro workflow.

Put simply, DriveWorks Pro is a set of tools that allows engineers to build and manage their own design automation and sales configuration technology. Using four different modules (DriveWorks Pro Administrator, DriveWorks Pro User, DriveWorks Pro Live and DriveWorks Pro Autopilot) DriveWorks Pro has built a simple solution for automating configurations. So, how does it work? Let’s take a look.

To begin with, users will kick off the automation process with DriveWorks Pro Administrator. With Administrator, engineers can design input forms, create rule sets that will define product configurations and control access to who can edit those rules. Essentially, DriveWorks Pro Administrator creates the infrastructure for every other DriveWorks Pro module and configuration.

A screen capture of DriveWorks Administrator.

While DriveWorks Pro Administrator gives a single user the ability to build configuration architectures, DriveWorks Pro User expands the scope of who can manipulate those configurations. With DriveWorks Pro User, anyone working in a firm can grab a model preconfigured with DriveWorks Pro Administrator and begin building out a customized product. Although users other than the administrator have access to configurable models, DriveWorks Pro User
does not grant access to rules, so there’s no worry that any of the hard work done in DriveWorks Pro Administrator will be undone by a clumsy member of a team.

With a configuration infrastructure in place and a means for multiple engineers to work with those configurations, the next module in the DriveWorks Pro suite helps deploy a company’s hard work across the web. Using DriveWorks Pro Live, teams can build online sales and product configurators that are easy to use and nice to look at … but more on that later.

Finally, to make sure that all configurations are processed in due time, DriveWorks Pro has built the equivalent of a render farm for product configuration. With DriveWorks Pro Autopilot, configurations don’t have to wait for a seat of SOLIDWORKS to open up before they can be built. With Autopilot, any configuration job that’s been added to the DriveWorks Pro queue can be processed along with all of its relevant documents.

And that last point brings me to something else.

DriveWorks Pro’s automated modeling abilities are impressive, but its abilities to automatically create manufacturing documents from the models it has churned out can also be valuable to companies.

For most complex assemblies, creating drawings represents a necessity, and it is an extremely time-consuming process. Because DriveWorks Pro can do all of this work on its own, valuable man-hours can be saved and bottom lines can be lowered—and that’s just good business.

Automation is a Boon for Sales

Aside from being a time saver for the design department, DriveWorks Pro can also be of some help to the sales team, especially if DriveWorks Pro Live is deployed.

With Live’s ability to churn out product configurations in a matter of seconds, customers can get real time previews of the products that they’re considering. What’s more, they have the freedom to see as many different versions of a company’s product as they’d like.

A screenshot of a DriveWorks Pro Live app.

Personally, when I sat down to play with the DriveWorks Pro Live tool, the benefit that stood out to me was its ability to make an operation seem more professional. As a customer looking at business from the outside, if I were presented with a tool based on DriveWorks Pro, I’d think that the company in front me was run like a well-oiled machine. Because of that, I’d be inclined to throw some of my business its way. That’s not a bad ace to have up your sleeve.

Final Thoughts

For engineering firms that rely on parameterized assemblies and plug and play parts as their bread and butter, applications like DriveWorks Pro are a no brainer if maximum efficiency is what’s desired. However, for firms that rely on more individualized designs, DriveWorks Pro might not make that much sense.

In the end, DriveWorks Pro delivers a simple solution to a vexing problem: how to make parametric models easier to configure. That, in and of itself, is pretty amazing.

About the Author

Kyle Maxey is a mechanical designer and writer from Austin, TX. He earned a degree in Film at Bard College and has since studied Mechanical and Architectural drafting at Austin Community College. As a designer Kyle has had vast experience with CAD software and rapid prototyping. One day he dreams of becoming a toy designer.

(*Most simulation engineers don’t work 24/7.)

The Chainsaw is the tool you use to cut models in half and then only solve that half. This is applicable whenever parts have symmetry, which they usually do, sometimes even two points or axis symmetry. I know people tend to think of cutting models in half as extra work, but it really isn’t. Consider this: Imagine a model of symmetrical shape, like a rectangle, that has 50,000 nodes. If all loads and fixtures are the same, then the displacements and reactions on the 25,000 nodes on one side will be identical to the other. However, the solver doesn’t know that, so it will assume you need all nodes solved. This means while the program is crunching through the last half of the nodes it actually already has that data solved! Imagine applying that to anything else. I’m asking you, would you like more solve time, or less? Pick less! As for setup, making an assembly cut could not be simpler, and then you just apply a symmetry condition as a fixture on the cut face. Done.

Virtual Reality is the tool you use to simplify difficult-to-mesh connecting hardware such as bolts, bearings, springs or any parts you are not interested in but need the mass effect (remote mass). Virtualizing parts has many benefits. Firstly, you don’t have to mesh them, so that saves time. Secondly, virtualization removes interferences. It is common for things like bolts, pins, bearings and other connectors to interfere due to being modeled larger than the holes they fit into. This makes simulation difficult, as meshing with interference is not possible. Also of benefit is the ability to add in virtual loads, such as a bolt preload or a spring K factor. Lastly, bolts and pins are actually nonlinear in their factors of safety, and thus the most accurate way to calculate them is with the polynomial equation inherent in the virtual connector.

The Transmogrifier is the tool you use to make a model work for finite element analysis (FEA). This means making modifications, configurations and simplifications in order to make simulation feasible. The motto is, “If a simulation model doesn’t work . . . MAKE it work!” For many users, this appears to be a huge obstacle. However, simplification is your friend and is actually quite easy. The trick is mastering the use of configurations, as it will make less of a headache for you, the user. Remember that configurations of parts can be used in a configuration of an assembly, so an FEA configuration of an assembly, referencing FEA versions of parts with modified dimensions, is really all you need. As for the modifications themselves, they usually involve eliminating interference that is created as a result of stacking tolerance in virtual parts, or the opposite (gap). While gaps can be handled easily, interference cannot. Other things include simplifying unnecessary features, such as cosmetic features, or features that serve a purpose other than what is currently being simulated (for example, heatsinks don’t serve any purpose structurally, just suppress them for your strength test and deal with them at a later time).

The Doctor is the tool you use to check on the health of your study. The Doctor comes in many forms, but mostly when simulation engineers talk about health, they mean mesh health. This can easily be determined with the mesh aspect ratio plot, found in the mesh tools. An ideal aspect ratio is 1, which means all sides are equal. Stretched elements, such as tall, skinny ones or short, wide ones, lead to inaccurate force calculations. However, no simulation can have a uniform aspect ratio of 1 or it would be too mathematically complicated to run; instead, we look for ratios ranging between 1 and 10 for good accuracy, 1 and 5 for great accuracy and 1 and 3 for near-perfect accuracy. Another tool you can use is the Energy Norm Error plot, which is a standard stress plot. This result shows where probable errors in the iterations are accumulating and usually coincide with poor mesh; the difference is that this also shows you how the forces are reacting, even in areas with mesh that looks good but is still not refined enough for the amount of energy transfer. The Doctor should realistically always be utilized.

The Reverse-3D Glasses is the tool you use to simplify 3D models into a 2D or even a 1D version that retains their accuracy, while making meshing much, much simpler. Many elements of designs, such as sheet metal, have very thin cross-sections over large spans. Since we have to mesh by the lowest common denominator, making meshes for sheet metal in solid is overly complex. To solve this unnecessary complexity, we have the option to remove a dimension from constant cross-section models and solve only their spans. We also have the option to turn things like beams into 1D models, only solving for length. These assumptions are almost always valid; sheet metal and beams are very often constant cross-sections, and as long as we virtualize it properly, the results will be the same as if it was solid. Also, we have in Sim Pro and above the 2D Simplification tool, which allows us to analyze an entire 3D model as only a 2D cross-section and extrapolate the results; this has the obvious advantage of minimizing mesh complexity. The idea behind it is very similar to the mentality of the Chainsaw, in that if the cross-section is constant, and one slice of it is solved, they really all are solved and you are just repeating the same number crunches over and over.

The Jedi Mind Trick is the tool you use to remove unnecessary parts and replace them with virtual forces. This is different than virtual reality, which deals with things like bolts and other connectors; instead, this is a question of how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? For example, we could analyze a design on a laptop satchel to make sure it has a good factor of safety. To do this, we could model the entire satchel, with the laptop, and the person’s shoulder as the strap hangs from it, apply gravity and let it run, but that would take forever to set up and get parameters for. Instead, we can simply run a simulation on one connector, with a fixture, and a force that is close to the force from the scenario above. The cascade model can also be used here. The idea behind the Jedi Mind Trick is to use, for lack of a better term, telekinesis — invisible forces as opposed to complicated contacts and assembly interactions, which will result in the same boundary conditions. Also, I’m aware this is not technically a Jedi Mind Trick (it’s actually Force Move Object or Force Push), but this was a better name. I’m willing to bet you’ll remember it now.

Let’s see some examples of these tools:

Bolted plate

Here we have a simple bolted plate test. We want to know how much force can be applied to that single plate as it is put into tension by a fixture on one side and the plates on the other side tearing it apart. We are assuming the bolts, which are grossly oversized, are not of interest. Having said that, we can use a number of tools on this: the Chainsaw, the Doctor, the Reverse-3D Glasses and the Jedi Mind Trick. The Chainsaw is obvious. We can just cut it in half lengthwise and save on simulation time. We can also take away the thickness of the plate using the Reverse-3D Glasses so we do not have to mesh across the thin cross-section. Lastly, we can eliminate the bolts entirely and just replace them with a force via the Jedi Mind Trick.

Mesh of the bolted plate

You can see how simple this model turns out to be. Notice the symmetry fixture on the edge that is cut; this will make it so results can be extrapolated later and also prevent the model from violating that line of symmetry. Another thing to be wary of when using the Chainsaw is using forces; you have to cut forces in half, as the program will not automatically update like a pressure load would. This is not the case if you use the “Force per Item” option, however, because you’ll have fewer items and thus the same amount less force. As for the Doctor, let’s see a comparison of health versus error.

Checking aspect ratio on a low-quality mesh

Following is a low-quality mesh, with some high aspect ratios. Compare it to the percent error.

High error induced by poor aspect ratios in the mesh elements.

The error plot shows a lot of elements with large errors near that hole. For comparison, our high-quality error looks like the following. Note that the scales are the same, 0 to 15 percent.

Error plot for a higher quality mesh with more appropriate aspect ratio.

Much better. We can trust these stress results because of the low error. As a bonus, the high number of nodes allows us lots of probe points, and thanks to our tricks, the solve time is still only four seconds (the high-quality solid, with mesh one-quarter of this density, took 30 seconds).

Let’s look at a more complicated example.

Thread pull test

In this case, we are interested in seeing if these threads will survive a pull out test. However, this model is not fit for simulation as of now. The threads don’t actually touch each other, and the inside of the female thread has fillets whereas the stud does not, which will cause interference. Let’s use the Transmogrifier tool to help that. It’s not so complicated, really. Just make an FEA configuration.

Adding an FEA configuration

Then change the features and dimensions in any parts you need. In this case, we only need to change one.

Focusing on the right features

Simplifying the threads to 2D

Now that we have our model correctly made for FEA, we will use our Reverse-3D Glasses to make a 2D model, as 3D threads are a real nightmare.

Using the 2D simplification

We use the 2D simplification tool with axi-symmetric selected. This will give us an infinitely thin slice to work with. Now we need to assign no penetration contacts between the teeth; bonded will result in too strong a part to accurately compare it to real life.

Configuring connections

Since the parts are directly touching, we can just set component contacts to global. Let’s see the results from this test.

Results from the 2D simplified mesh

This test looks good. No tooth is at or above yield. However, let’s use our Doctor tool to verify.

Error on the simplified 2D thread mesh

The error in the top and bottom tooth sections is very high, over 25 percent. Clearly, we need more mesh. Let’s look at it again with a fine mesh.

Thread results with a more appropriate mesh

Using this fine mesh, we can see the tip of the bottom tooth is above yield, and the majority of its body is without a good factor of safety. It is very likely this tooth will break, leading to the second tooth becoming the next in line (minus the strength of one tooth), which will also break, and so on. This bolted connection is not safe and is subject to cascade failure. This is a result we did not see in the original and illustrates the importance of a health check in a study.

Error map for the final results

The errors on the tip of the thread are removed (errors on the fixed body and underneath the threaded connection are unimportant).

Now, let’s see an example using all these tools at once.

Reflex engine

This model has a number of built-in interferences due to the hardware. Eventually, we will have to get rid of them, but remember that the Chainsaw should always be your first tool. Reason being . . .

Going to town with the Chainsaw

Now we only have two pins, one bolt and a limited number of interferences to deal with, in addition to the fact that we have less to mesh and define. The interferences are still an issue, and while we could eliminate all of them, we should try to virtualize using Virtual Reality as much as possible. Let’s start with those bolts.

Replacing bolts with a virtual connector

This bolt is now suppressed and replaced with a virtual connector. In SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2015 and above, this can be done automatically by right-clicking the Connections folder and selecting Toolbox Fasteners to Bolts. This eliminates all the interferences the bolt was causing, as well as includes the ability to add preload (something not possible in static analysis without virtualization).

Setting up virtual fasteners

The pins are defined in a similar fashion. Here, I virtualized their stiffness and resistance to movement (they have infinite translation resistance but 50 N*m/rad rotation). That takes care of the fasteners. Now let’s fix the body. Just like before, we’ll make a configuration and adjust dimensions.

Configuration for the body

More configuration setup

This also applies to subassemblies.

Taking care of the shaft

Interferences eliminated

Transmogrification complete. Now to reduce as many thicknesses as possible, use Reverse-3D Glasses.

Mesh of the reflex engine

Notice we did not make one of the blocks a shell. That’s because if you check the above screenshot, you will see the plug part fits into a recess. That recess can’t be modeled with shells (everything has to be constant, remember), so we bite the bullet and run it as a solid. As opposed to putting in complicated pressure loads from flow on the inside of the pipe, instead, we will use thermal expansion to control the displacements from a worst-case scenario.

Calculated deformations for the reflex engine

Here’s our super-deformed model with displacements. Let’s do a health check using the Doctor.The Doctor visits the reflex engine mesh

Our shell mesh looks mostly good, but some elements in that plug are very bad. However, this is acceptable. The reason why is that plug is significantly far away from the areas of large displacement, and in reality, we could probably get rid of it entirely. (It does have heat load applied to it; switch the heat load instead to the faces it directly touches — there’s our example of the Jedi Mind Trick.) We kept it in this case because it has the other hole for the bolt and thus is necessary for our pre-load.

Losing what’s not critical to the analysis

Our error is low. Lastly, thanks to virtualization, we can get results from those pins.Final results on the reflex engine

This is a result that is not easy to get from other studies. It can even predict failure from a factor of safety criteria. This type of operation we just performed is typical for simulation engineers, and these tools along with practice will help you think just like they do about how a problem should be handled in FEA. These are the tools you’re looking for.

About the Author

Michael Kalin has been teaching simulation since 2012. He regularly does presentations for simulation at conventions such as SOLIDWORKS World and SOLIDWORKS User Groups. In his off time, he enjoys building his own 3D printers, playing Shogi, traditional archery and Ghostbusting.

How to Add Topology Optimization to SOLIDWORKS?

ParetoWorks is a SOLIDWORKS add-in that allows engineers to perform topology optimizations on their parts based on stiffness or strength. This software uses simulation and optimization algorithms to lightweight parts without sacrificing the structural integrity of the parts.

ParetoWorks can automate the lightweighting optimization of a part based on stiffness and strength. (All images courtesy of SOLIDWORKS and SciArt.)

The software imports the SOLIDWORKS geometry as an STL file. The program then runs a finite element analysis (FEA) solver and a design optimization engine to give engineers an idea of how to reduce the weight of a part. Though ParetoWorks operates within the SOLIDWORKS framework, it is also a cloud technology available through a browser.

“Design optimization lies at the heart of modern engineering,” said Krishnan Suresh, mechanical engineering professor and CTO of SciArt, makers of ParetoWorks. “It is critical in reducing cost, reducing material, reducing weight and increasing quality, and is a driving force behind innovation. [However], design optimization can be very tricky and difficult for humans to carry out manually.”

To set up the problem, the user needs to input the units of the system, any boundary conditions, the limiting variable for optimization (stiffness or strength) and the forces the part will experience. All of these inputs are made in a simplified field of entry.

“[ParetoWorks’] focus is to make sure these structural loads are done right,” said Praveen Yadav, director of engineering at SciArt, makers of ParetoWorks. “We have the capability of handling thermomechanical loading, transient loading, modal analysis and buckling analysis. We include all of these analyses in the optimization for multi-constrained, multi-material and multi-load optimizations.”

The optimizations can also take constraints into consideration when assessing the part. Some of these constraints include:

• Maximum volume fraction
• Stiffness and displacement constraints
• Manufacturing constraints like casting draw direction
• Assembly constraints like which surfaces to maintain

The Benefits of Subtractive Topology Optimization to Additive Topology Optimization

ParetoWorks isn’t the only topology optimization software out there. However, many of them are based on additive optimization of the part as opposed to subtractive optimizations.

Though additive can give engineers a good starting point for a part based on a design space and loads, it does take a lot of data to perform this optimization. Subtractive optimization, however, requires less data but it will need to start with a part before the optimization can be performed.

Instead of mapping the whole design space, ParetoWorks uses subtractive optimization to modify the geometry, saving data costs.

“[Additive optimizations] try to map out the entire design space, this requires the storage of a lot of data, which gets expensive as you get new designs and you compare to the existing stored variable,” said Yadav. “ParetoWorks, on the other hand, attempts to stay as close as possible to the optimality front. This reduces the requirement of storing data.”

“All we care about is where we are right now and where we are headed,” Yadav clarified. “Based on that, we can choose a suitable search direction and make small increments to update the geometry. Once the geometry is updated we also perform fixed-point filtration to make sure it is robust and stable in that region.”

Since the entire design space isn’t mapped out, engineers might wonder how ParetoWorks handles the constraints. When performing this optimization, if the part hits a constraint made by the engineer, the software will reassess the step size for subsequent iterations in the optimization. This will slow down the changes made to the part and allow for a more detailed localized search for the best design in that region.

For more on ParetoWorks, read this ENGINEERING.com article. To learn more about structural optimizations using simulation, follow this link.

About the Author

Shawn Wasserman (@ShawnWasserman) is the Internet of Things (IoT) and Simulation Editor at ENGINEERING.com. He is passionate about ensuring engineers make the right decisions when using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and IoT development tools. Shawn has a Masters in Bio-Engineering from the University of Guelph and a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Let’s face it. The Internet of Things (IoT) can be a distracting place. Phones, tablets, computers are sucking our attention enough as it is. Do we really need smart devices on the IoT grabbing even more of our attention?

Yves Béhar, founder of the Fuseproject and world-famous industrial designer, doesn’t think so. At SOLIDWORKS World 2016, the award-winning product visionary said, “There’s a huge conflict between our tech tools and living in the moment. Our screens have become giant attention-sucking monsters. We’ve become prisoners of our displays and phones.”

Béhar has a big problem with the so-called “distraction hell” being created with current IoT designs. He suggests that engineers and product developers should aim for a more invisible interface. Something so natural and instinctive that you don’t even realize it’s there until you need it.

“People confuse using the phone with being distracted and not in the moment,” said Béhar. “We all experience the social tension caused by the screens and displays that control the information we can’t live without. The alternative is to think about how that information can be transmitted in subtle and invisible ways. As humans, we have five senses—so why are we just focused on sight and screens to comprehend the signals that technology sends us?”

This idea might sound crazy, but think about it. Béhar argues that humans experience invisible interfaces constantly when interacting with nature. Who needs a weatherman when you can step outside, look at the sky, feel the temperature and moisture on your skin? The goal is to mimic these subtle cues to drive the future of IoT devices.

“IoT need to be discreet, to disappear and be a part of the way we wear or live with something—which is a really big challenge,” explained Béhar. “Technology was never a field that was easy for everyone to get into, it wasn’t discreet or the background with invisible signals and pretty designs integrated into fashion. This has been a big shift in the past few years.”

The Importance of Industrial Design to Advance IoT Technology

To bring these subtle notifications into our IoT devices, Béhar noted that we need to pay attention to industrial design early in the development cycle.

“I think back to when designers were called in last-minute to make something look pretty. It’s completely impossible to think of a good user experience that late in the design cycle,” expressed Béhar. “If you don’t have the user experience and design at the forefront you won’t be able to catch up at the end. You can’t just redesign at the end of the process.”

At SOLIDWORKS World 2016, Béhar jokes about how ignoring design in favor of technology led to Microsoft’s initial failed attempts at creating a tablet computer. Apple, however, took the idea and made it marketable.

To demonstrate why design is so important to technology, Béhar compared the failure of the early Microsoft tablets to the success of Apple’s iPad years later.

“In the mid-90s, Silicon Valley did not think design was important. Technology was mostly in enterprises and hidden from view. It wasn’t something people were using in their everyday lives,” joked Béhar. “Of course, Microsoft has done a lot of work on design lately so this is a slightly older slide but it still works.”

This is a great lesson for IoT designers to pay attention to. After all, a classic complaint made against Apple is that the company repackages inventions and innovations of others into more marketable products. But who is really to blame here? The company that made the innovation and couldn’t design it to sell? Or the company that picked up the bright idea and made millions off of a sleek design?

“Technology today is commoditized. It’s not about specs anymore. Instead it’s really about the experience,” argued Béhar. “Technology is the raw feature before design gets to it. When design gets hold of that raw feature, what we do with it to shape and mold it to our needs and lives is the job.”

Data Collection Lessons from a Smart Device that Predates the IoT

Designing subtlety into an IoT products is a challenge but it isn’t impossible once you get your head out of the box.

Béhar’s Learning Shoe was one of the first smart connected devices before the IoT was a concept.

Forget about onboard displays or phone apps. Think about how we need to interact with the product. Think about how you can make it look and feel like the traditional product.

Béhar noted the subtlety in one of his earliest smart devices, the Learning Shoe. The shoe collected data about how a user walked. Their pronation, weight and heart rate were all recorded.

The data was collected in an attempt to change the relationship between the user and the shoe maker. Béhar said, “I wanted that relationship to be continuous. I didn’t want it to be about a single product that I purchased for one season. It should be a product made smarter. It should give people a reason to go back to the manufacturer. I was interested in a customized fit and how the product is designed and made just for me.”

The challenge at the time was how to transfer the data to the manufacturer so they could make the custom shoe. When Béhar worked on this shoe, it was before the widespread use of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the IoT. But was this an advantage in disguise?

“Back then the data was collected on a chip and the chip was removed and then the shoe recycled and a better shoe made from this data,” explained Béhar.

The point is that the users and the designers were not inundated with data as the tests were being conducted. The user just continued on their routine, walking around. The data wasn’t transferred or even considered important until the moment it was needed.

Béhar’s Learning Shoe collects data discretely.

Though this custom-made shoe didn’t take off, it sparked Béhar’s interest in the idea of making technology more discreet, wearable, fashionable and personal. And given the wearable trends of the IoT industry, he wasn’t the only one interested.

Using Camouflage to Hide an IoT Interface Until It is Needed

Some IoT devices are not just about collecting data. At times, users will also need to give some IoT devices feedback and instructions.

However, having this interface constantly available will naturally steal the user’s attention—even when that attention isn’t needed. The best strategy is to hide the interface until the user chooses to interact with it.

hive thermostat blends into its surrounding by hiding its interface in a mirror when not in use.

Béhar noted that an IoT device he worked on that used this strategy was the hive thermostat. The device uses camouflage to blend into the home environment by hiding the user interface behind a one-way mirror coating. The interface will then come to life as soon as the user needs it.

This device is unique in that it doesn’t attempt to distract people from the world around them. In fact, it reflects that world as a means of hiding from the user.

“As IoT products enter our homes they have to be designed with the home in mind; an environment where you don’t want distraction and you don’t want complexity,” said Béhar. “[Design] isn’t just about making things pretty or work. It’s about shifting our perception of the world and making new experiences by pushing the limits of what’s possible.”

What if You Don’t Realize an IoT Design Interface is Even There?

Contrary to popular belief, not every IoT device needs a visual interface after the initial installations or even for the odd tweaks and troubleshooting. Some devices work best when you forget they are even there. They just do their job.

August smart lock gives users subtle clues as to the status of the locking mechanism.

Béhar notes that one such example he worked on is the August smart lock. This tiny little robot fits into your door and unlocks itself when it recognizes the phone in your pocket. The user just walks up to the door and feels a vibration from the phone signaling that the door is now unlocked.

Though the user can add chimes and lights to help add cues to express the status of the lock, these are not necessary. The user just needs to toss out their clunky keys, walk to the door and open the door as if the lock isn’t even there.

“Imagine if this level of attention to user experience, design and brands went into everything: your car, appliances, the things we interact with every day,” said Béhar. “It would transform technology from being something that needs to be learned to something that integrates seamlessly into our lives.”

“Technology in the home is typically installed by a ‘tech person’ and then everyone else hates it,” Béhar added. “When you install something in the home everyone has to love it or it will fail. If only one person knows how to use it or get it into the home, you’re in trouble so it’s a different bar to reach compared to a computer or a single-use tech product.”

To read about the industrial IoT (IIoT), click here. To learn about designing an IoT device that makes beer, click here.

About the Author

Shawn Wasserman (@ShawnWasserman) is the Internet of Things (IoT) and Simulation Editor at ENGINEERING.com. He is passionate about ensuring engineers make the right decisions when using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and IoT development tools. Shawn has a Masters in Bio-Engineering from the University of Guelph and a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Artist rendering of Space Elevator. (Image courtesy of Japan Space Elevator Association.)

The space elevator concept relies on tethering an object to the ground and letting the rotation of the earth keep it up. Way up. Over 20 miles up.

The “elevators,” or climbing pods, would ride up and down the tether, taking cargo and people from the earth’s surface through the atmosphere and into the realm of near-zero gravity. From there, the payloads and people could launch into deep space to colonize other planets, mine for minerals—or snap some awesome selfies.

Talk about a lofty goal.

The space elevator concept has been around for over a hundred years and was more recently popularized by the venerable Arthur C. Clarke in Fountains of Paradise. However, it continues to be a dream.

But for every sci-fi reader who has twirled a weight around his or her head to mimic the seemingly simple concept of a space elevator and wondered why not, there may be an engineer shaking his or her head because that isn’t how it works.

Why an Elevator?

Leading the most recent initiative to bring the space elevator to life is Shuichi Ohno, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA). Ohno, who presented at SOLIDWORKS World 2016, leads with what he considers the compelling economic reason for the space elevator. Rockets are such a waste, he said.

“If we are going to travel to space on a regular basis, we need a reliable and economic form of transportation,” said Ohno. “Anywhere from 75-90 percent of the weight of a rocket is consumed by fuel. Physics places a limit on how efficient a rocket can be, so we cannot rely on them as transportation.”

“But if we have a space elevator, we can travel to geosynchronous orbit or high-earth orbit relatively economically,” Ohno added. “If we were to build a space station there, flights to more distant destinations like Mars can be launched without having to overcome the gravitational pull of the earth.”

Manned Space Elevator Climber (concept) designed by Shuichi Ohno, JSEA. Designed and rendered in SOLIDWORKS. (Image courtesy of JSEA.)

Lack of Materials Makes for an Uncertain Future

“Does anybody take you seriously?” asked David Pogue, former tech writer for Scientific American, during an interview with Ohno onstage. Pogue spoke for the many engineers in the audience, who no doubt were desperately searching for some frame of reference.

Is there anything at all even remotely like a space elevator in the real world, something that has worked and can prove the concept? The space elevator relies too heavily on “centrifugal force,” which leaves many an engineer skeptical about its success.

Perhaps the biggest engineering challenge is the strength limit of current materials. The tether would need to be stronger than anything we have ever built. The space elevator was practically grounded without a material breakthrough.

This material breakthrough came in the form of carbon nanotubes, which are 100 times stronger than steel.

According to Devin Jacobsen of the JSEA, “The tether needs to be made of carbon nanotubes. There is potential for this material to be light and strong enough for the cable. We don’t yet know how strong we can make materials. To achieve this strength, we will need to be able to generate materials at the molecular level, but there isn’t a clear path to a chemical process to make such a carbon nanotube cable.”

A space elevator would also require that these nanotubes become much longer than current versions. The longest carbon nanotube so far? According to IEEE, reporting from last year’s International Space Elevator Consortium, it would “barely reach a child’s knee.”

The Great Escape

The current method for moving objects into space relies on escaping most of earth’s gravity by achieving escape velocity, a mind-boggling 25,000 mph (11 km/s). The space elevator preempts the need for expensive rocket fuel and throwaway fuel tanks and engines by lifting its cargo to a point where gravity isn’t nearly so strong.

Testing to 1 Kilometer and Beyond

The JSEA claims it is putting the concept to the test with its annual competition. It has been able to test space elevator components, primarily the climbers that will carry payloads into space. In this case the role of the space station is played by weather balloons, which allows for small-scale testing of climbers.

Climber carrying payload up to a weather balloon.

The balloon system has a tether that is approximately ¾ of a mile (1.2 km) long. When you allow for sagging, the height that the climbers reach is approximately 1,094 yards (1,000 m). The following video shows several teams competing to achieve maximum height, maximum speed and maximum payloads.

Since 2009, more than 100 space elevator climbers have been built. These experimental devices climb a belt-shaped tether made of Teijin's Technora para-aramid fiber. According to Shuichi, “the fastest climbers can climb at up to 150 km/hr,” and “can carry their own weight of around 15 kg, plus perhaps 10-20 percent more. One team carried a payload of 100 kg, but it did not make it to the top.”

The current climbers tend to use off-the-shelf components such as lithium-ion battery packs and electric motors to stay within their self-imposed budget constraints. Shuichi said that the typical total cost for a climber is in the range of $3,000 - $5,000.

Climber for Space Elevator Competition designed in SOLIDWORKS.

Jacobsen said battery power won’t work for a real space elevator, which will have to go 20 times the distance of any tests. He spoke of an “IR laser or microwaves to send energy through the atmosphere. Unfortunately, this system would lose up to 95 percent of the energy on the way to the climber.”

Political and Financial Challenges

The next major milestone for the space elevator project will be a tethered balloon system that floats 3-5 km above the earth. Unfortunately, such a system is not legal in Japan, which brings Shuichi and his team to Nevada, where regulations are relaxed along many fronts.

That 3- to 5-km balloon test will allow for incremental experimentation with more height and more payload.

Shuichi Ohno said that the lack of a legal system is a big barrier to funding.  “There is an international space treaty and the current treaty may not allow a space elevator. We would have to create some sort of exception for a space elevator and a new legal entity.” He explained that a project of this magnitude will require a lot of funding.

The JSEA team testing its space elevator design.

When Can We Get a Ride?

Don’t expect to be elevated up to space any time soon—or even in your lifetime. There is no expected date for a real space elevator. When pushed on the subject, Jacobsen replied, “It’s not possible to predict a feasibility date or whether it is, in fact, feasible. Before the end of this century we should know whether the space elevator is possible.”

About the Author

John Hayes is the president of ENGINEERING.com.

The process of brewing beer has been known for thousands of years. So when you add the Internet of Things (IoT) to the process, one needs to wonder how connectivity can really improve the process?

Meet the Brewbot, an IoT-enabled beer production device. (All images courtesy of Brewbot.)

One area in which IoT can help brewing is in the automation of smaller-scale productions.

Though large-scale brewing operations might have this automation down pat, any microbrewer and homebrewer will tell you that automating systems on their scale, while trying to make a consistent product, isn’t as easy as you might think.

“Brewing beer is a manual and messy process. We take this out of the equation,” said Samuel Khamis, chief science officer at Brewbot.

Khamis explained that brewing beer can take about 4.5 hours. Traditionally, this time is spent measuring water, grain and hops, and continuously checking the water temperature. The Brewbot, however, does a lot of this work for you. It will:

• Fill the tank with water
• Heat up the mash and brew while maintaining temperature
• Prompt users to add pre-measured ingredients
• Prompt users to test the specific gravity in the fermenter
• Transfer all of the fluids to where they need to go

The system communicates to the user through the Brewbot app. The app also offers a shop where users can buy brew master–approved beer recipes and ingredients. Order them on the app and they will be sent to you in premeasured amounts. All you have to do is follow the app’s instructions when making the brew.

“With our robot, you can make any beer you can make in any other brewing system,” said Khamis. “We have partnership with 40 different breweries and we are adding more all the time. Or you can make your own recipes or tweak them on your own.”

As a result, this system should save quite a lot of money and energy in shipping. After all, shipping the dry solids to make the beer is a lot easier and lighter than shipping the beer itself.

“That whole distribution network represents $24 billion a year,” said Khamis. “Just to ship glass and water around!”

“Let’s say you travel the world and you taste a beer you would like to get at home, but you can’t get it at the bars around you as they are not on the distribution for that beer. Or it doesn’t taste the same after it’s been shipped. There is no reason for that,” Khamis said. “With Brewbot, you download the recipe for the beer you want and you brew it on site where you want to serve it.”

You might then wonder, what’s in it for the company that makes the beer? Well, as Khamis explained, “they’d rather people have the beer, whether it’s coming from their bottle or through the Brewbot. A lot of the recipes on our network come from our partnership of 40 breweries.”

One key drawback to the Brewbot is that the water used in the process will have a significant impact on the results from many beer recipes. However, by assessing the data collected by the system over the IoT, the team can better assess the local water quality. This will allow for recipes to ship better water conditioning tables in the future to ensure the beer’s quality.

Designing an IoT Beer Brewing System Takes a Lot of Work

Brewbot and its phone app.

A lot of intellectual property went into the Brewbot, according to Khamis.

A team of about 20 engineers was split between designing the hardware and software of the brewery.

“Every time you set out to design something that seems simple, a lot of issues come up,” said Khamis. “From how to automate it, how you will measure out the right amount of water, how you get the feedback for the temperature. A lot of things just to make it work, then make the user experience nice and then to make it smart.”

For instance, a lot of the design went into the safety of the product. “None of the outside surfaces get hotter than about 30°C [86°F],” Khamis explained. “Nothing is exposed to the user where they can actually get hurt. The high temperature is in one process: the boiling of the water. Once that is done, there is no high temperature or high pressure process.”

To ensure these safe operational temperatures, the engineers needed to verify their designs using mechanical, thermal and flow testing. When the team got into trouble with these tests, Khamis said that they got a lot of help from the team at SOLIDWORKS.

“We used SOLIDWORKS for everything,” he said. “We get great support from them. There is no other design tool in-house, and all of our suppliers link up to that network.”

Another key part of the design came when deciding where to automate the system. Currently, all the mixing, adding of ingredients (except water) and post-brewing processes still have a human in the loop.

“Where we made the initial decisions is [in] places where people can make the biggest error,” explained Khamis. “When you are measuring out the water, the speed at which you add it and the temperature at which you add it can all affect the final quality of the beer immensely, so we try to reduce human error on anything that is mission-critical to the user process.”

However, commercial users of the Brewbot, such as microbreweries and restaurants, will want a turnkey system. To assess this, the team is looking into creating more IoT devices to connect to the brewery.

“We are working on a new product, which will be a smart fermentation vessel,” noted Khamis. “Currently, we use a standard fermentation, where you monitor the number of bubbles in the airlock. This new device will work with our brewing system and app to tell you when it’s done and what the specific gravity is.”

Khamis hinted that one day they will be able to automate the whole microbrewery system over the IoT. After all, large breweries have been able to automate much of their production cycle.

He added, “We’re working to make a system akin to Lego blocks that is fully expandable. You can buy modules and plug them in. Maybe you will want a brewing system and three fermenters or ten fermenters and no brewing system so you can hook it up to your own. All our future devices will be completely compatible with all the technology out there.”

To see more on the design of the Brewbot, watch this video:

Brewbot’s Benefit to Microbrewer Is Clear, but Fizzy for Homebrewers and Large-Scale Producers

One big question about Brewbot that seems to be confusing is, who are they are trying to market this device too?

Brewbot presentation shows off their custom beer for SOLIDWORKS World 2016.

During their presentation at SOLIDWORKS World 2016, homebrewers, microbrewers and even large-scale brewers were all mentioned, at least in passing.

Khamis said, “With Brewbot, we have democratized the beer making process, making it accessible to homebrewers, restaurants, bars and large-scale breweries.”

For the large-scale breweries, the Brewbot would really only work for pilot plant purposes, to test out new recipes. The system maxes out at producing 45 liters (11.9 gallons), and most recipes only make 25 liters (6.6 gallons). This is simply not enough for large-scale operations. And, besides that, many large-scale operations have already automated much of the process, so Brewbot doesn’t offer them much benefit with the IoT feature.

As for homebrewers, the trial and error of the process is 90 percent of the fun. Learning on the fly. Do it yourself. Making bad beers. And laughing about it. The idea is to get better by yourself until you get it right. Brewbot takes away this experience.

Additionally, the $10,000 price tag of the brewing system is rather prohibitive for the homebrewer. This is especially true when a homebrewer needs little more than a large pot, thermometer, carboy/bucket (fermenting vessel with an airlock) and some tubing to perform the same overall function of Brewbot, sans the IoT element.

As a result, the Brewbot is really only economical when working on a microbrewery or restaurant scale. Using a simple back of the napkin calculation, a brewer can break even from buying the Brewbot in about 28 batches. This calculation ignores water, electrical and kegging costs and tax. The equation also assumes recipe costs of $60 per batch, making 25 liters a batch (6.6 gallons/batch) and selling beer at $8/U.S. pint.

Since each batch will need about a week or two of fermentation time, you might want to stagger out this process with multiple fermentation tanks. To break even in about a year at this rate, you need to sell about four pints a day.

Again, this volume doesn’t seem feasible for a homebrewer operation.

However, Khamis did hint at a product called the Brewbot Core. This will be an app that can apply much of the software IP collected by Brewbot into any brewery system. If so, this will be a good way to tap into the homebrewer market and perhaps even some of the larger-scale operations that have yet to set up much of their automation.

About the Author

Shawn Wasserman (@ShawnWasserman) is the Internet of Things (IoT) and Simulation Editor at ENGINEERING.com. He is passionate about ensuring engineers make the right decisions when using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and IoT development tools. Shawn has a Masters in Bio-Engineering from the University of Guelph and a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

CMU's connected Coke machine

Sometime in 1982, a seemingly innocuous conversation occurred in the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Computer Science Department. Programmers logging long hours in the labs were frustrated by their long walks to the Coke machine, only to find it empty or, much worse, filled with warm soda.

You see, around the halls of CMU, caffeine wasn’t just a substance, it was a driving force. Something needed to be done about these errant trips to the machine.

Soon, conversation spun into action. The CMU Coke machine was filled with a number of microswitches and connected to the Internet. And soon, its contents and their temperatures could be found by anyone who could reach the IP address: 128.2.209.43.

Although it didn’t seem like much at the time, the moment CMU’s Coke machine came online, the Internet of Things (IoT) was born. Within a generation and a half, IoT would transform into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and become a driving force for business and manufacturing innovation across the globe.

What Is the IIoT?

IIoT (sometimes referred to as “Industry 4.0”) was first coined as a way to talk about the union of big data, machine-to-machine communications, machine learning and sensor information. The kernel of the IIoT idea was that the more sensors you could pack into a machine, the more valuable data you could get about its performance. Over time, tracking this data could give engineers insight into the performance of a machine and when it needed to be serviced, exchanged or reloaded with material, among other things.

Expanding this vision out a bit further, a manufacturing landscape filled with sensor-laden machines could link warehouses with manufacturing facilities and shippers in a seamless electronic conversation.

Today, the vision of IIoT has extended well beyond its initial idea and the notion that it would be a manufacturing-side enterprise. Most proponents of IIoT see a future where all types of machines and sensors, whether they’re industrial or consumer, are communicating with one another. This can offer predictive prescriptions and solutions to problems such as downtime, supply shortages and overages, consumer demand and much more.

What Are the Benefits of the IIoT?

Although increased operational efficiency is one of the principle benefits of a broad IIoT, the paradigm might also have other knock-on effects across industries that aren’t immediately apparent. One of the biggest impacts IIoT may have is that it will force companies to develop products in a different manner, focusing on software and experiences rather than product redesigns.

Today, consumers aren’t as interested in buying new models of products as they were in the past. Instead, they want a product that will grow with them and provide an evolving experience that can be updated and upgraded via software as time passes. With the IIoT, companies will be able to read more into consumer demands by reaching the data being generated by consumer sensors. This data can then be translated into product innovation. As companies become better adapted to this manner of product development, updates and upgrades may start to appear faster and faster. It might even be possible for companies to understand their customer’s wants so well that they can develop new user-specific product lines for more immersive and satisfying experiences.

Heading back the industrial space, IIoT could spark a change in the way humans and machines interact with one another, bringing them closer and shattering the notion that “the robots have arrived to vanquish the human workforce.”

According to the World Economic Forum’s analysis of the IIoT in 2015, human-machine workforce collaboration will be a key factor in improving workplace safety and diminishing workplace errors and more. According to the report:

“This new blend of labor combines human flexibility and contextual decision-making with robots’ precision and consistency to deliver better output. With its recent acquisition of Kiva Systems, for example, Amazon now operates one of the world’s largest fleets of industrial robots in its warehouses, where humans and robots work side by side, capable of fulfilling orders up to 70 percent faster than a nonautomated warehouse. While robots perform picking and delivery, human workers spend more time on overall process improvements such as directing lower volume products to be stored in a more remote area.”

In another example of successful human-machine interaction, the World Economic Forum’s report highlights how Marathon Oil employees working at its refineries wear multigas sensors that detect any exposure to harmful chemicals. With these sensors constantly moving around the facility, plant managers can get a high-resolution picture of the air quality and safety of the refinery. If levels of gas become dangerous, workers can be evacuated from an area quickly. Because of the machines they wear on their bodies, Marathon’s employees are much safer.

What Are the Hurdles for IIoT?

The first large hurdle before the IIoT is breaking down the language and protocol barriers that exist between machines. Due to the fact that manufacturing systems have always been developed in proprietary silos, it’s often the case that interoperability between differing machines is difficult. Creating a translator for machines, or a universal standard language for machine communication, will be critical for the IIoT.

Although a universal language for machines is a major hurdle to the success of the IIoT, that task is dwarfed by the need for incredibly tight security. If the Stuxnet controversy of yesteryear is a bellwether of what hackers can do with an industrial system, then I can image the likes of the oil and gas industry, utility companies, medical facilities and others will do much more than tap the breaks on IIoT if there’s even a hint of cyber insecurity.

With that in mind, its incumbent on those developing IIoT to build robust, multilevel security features, system checks and the like into the DNA of the project.

Finally, data propriety could also be an issue for those braving the early IIoT wilderness.

If the idea behind IIoT is to improve customer outcomes, production cycles and decision-making by leveraging massive amounts of data, it makes sense that companies may have to develop new methods for sharing data with other firms. This might mean that new encryption technologies, business models and hardware need to be developed to facilitate a broad exchange of data. It’s possible that third-party businesses might pop up to facilitate this type of trusted communication between firms, but if not, the prospect of developing or joining a robust IIoT infrastructure could appear exceptionally daunting to companies large and small.

Where’s the Industrial Internet Headed?

At the moment, the industrial Internet is still in a protean phase, and there are a number of concerns that surround the project. But in a few years, we might begin to see glimpses of what Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, described as a “sensor-aware planetary computer.”

Although that notion may still seem fairly blue sky, just take a second and look around you. Imagine how many devices in your home, office or even pocket are loaded with sensors capable of sending information back to complex machines and analytic engines. With that type of granular data available to industrial, civic and commercial interests, it’s only a matter of time before Smarr’s idea becomes good and the industrial Internet becomes a fluid machine delivering goods and services and possibly innovation on a perfectly scheduled basis.

What’s even more incredible is that all of this—the machine intelligence, the cross-industrial connections, the ability to control devices from half a planet away—all came about for the want of a cold Coke.

About the Author

Kyle Maxey is a mechanical designer and writer from Austin, TX. He earned a degree in Film at Bard College and has since studied Mechanical and Architectural drafting at Austin Community College. As a designer Kyle has had vast experience with CAD software and rapid prototyping. One day he dreams of becoming a toy designer.

After all, electronics need to fit into these small devices and these small devices need to protect our electronics.With new Internet of Things (IoT) products emerging all the time, more and more mechanical designs will be driven by electronic constraints and vice versa.

Anatomy of an IoT product doesn’t leave a lot of space for the electronics. (All images courtesy of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS.)

As a result, “the software we use to design these products, mechanical CAD [MCAD] and electronic CAD [ECAD], need to drive what is happening in the real world,” said Louis Feinstein, product manager at Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS. “Geometry, spacing and tolerancing all have tight constraints in IoT. Blending the MCAD and ECAD makes it easier to design for these constraints.”

The transfer of data between ECAD and MCAD users is nothing new. Various tools use industry standards to translate data from one format to another. However, this data transfer becomes complicated when users have to deal with multiple software products, versioning and metadata issues.

To address these issues, Dassault Systèmes and Altium have teamed up to create the SOLIDWORKS PCB (SW PCB) and SOLIDWORKS PCB Connector powered by Altium. Unlike other MCAD/ECAD communications tools, this new product aims to have one data file. To achieve this, the program employs Altium’s ECAD technology but is branded and operates as if it is part of the SOLIDWORKS system of software.

“We see this product as an ECAD for the design of smart connected devices,” said Aram Mirkazemi, CEO of Altium. “The way these products come together forms a platform for work that would accommodate things that were not possible in the past because of the fences between the MCAD and ECAD worlds.”

What a Unified MCAD/ECAD System Looks Like

Side-by-side comparison of SW PCB and a converter.

With these tools, users will be able to design their circuit boards with traditional techniques, such as ECAD schematic, routing and layout tools.Feinstein and his team hope SW PCB and the SW PCB Connector will revolutionize MCAD/ECAD integration. He explained that the former is a standalone product aimed at the ECAD market while the latter gives core Altium users the same functionality.

However, whereas these tools are traditionally in separate platforms, SW PCB will make them available in one single environment and user interface (UI). In addition, the software also offers electrical engineers the ability to see their SW PCB designs in a 3D environment. Finally, MCAD and ECAD users will be able to access a shared library of supplier components during their design.

“It will have all the power for the power users,” assured Feinstein. “But the UI changes will make the learning faster as you won’t need to jump between tools. It will all be in one space. The tool also uses minimalistic icons so it’s easy to pick up.”

Summary of SW PCB functionality.

How Users Can Better Merge Their MCAD and ECAD ExperienceSW PCB uses a UI similar to SOLIDWORKS 2016, a release that saw significant UI changes designed to simplify workflows. But given the reaction of the SOLIDWORKS community to the 2016 user interface, SW PCB may want to allow the user to select a “classic” SOLIDWORKS interface in a future release.

How Users Can Better Merge Their MCAD and ECAD Experience

Layout view of ECAD data.

To access the ECAD drawings in SOLIDWORKS, SW PCB users need to push their changes to the mechanical engineer through an imbedded instant messaging service. SOLIDWORKS users can access this service through an included plug-in.“We are not relying on a translator, which allows us to get tighter coupling of the information into one unified data file,” said Feinstein. “We are moving native data between the SOLIDWORKS collaborative server, but it is working in a database. It’s not translated data; it’s the data. And the MCAD and ECAD engineer can access that file at the same time.”

The mechanical engineer has the option to accept or decline the changes. If accepted, the changes are automatically updated into MCAD drawings. If declined, the ECAD drawings are sent back to the electrical engineer.

Once the mechanical engineer is finished with their work, they can send their changes to the electrical engineer through the same messaging process to ensure proper collaboration.

“Traditionally, you would have to do this all with translation type files [IDF, IDx etc.] and generate the final files through a translator,” explained Feinstein. “You don’t need a translator here. So you don’t have to do any extra work.”

Traditionally, users have relied on Windows File Explorer and subdirectories, third-party software or a more primitive “throw-it-over-the-wall” data exchange between electrical and mechanical design teams.  While admitting that the SW PCB product data manager may be a little clunky, Feinstein sees a future with SW PCB data management that approaches the highly-integrated and automated data management systems like the ones MCAD users enjoy.

What Are the Benefits of Merging ECAD and MCAD?

3D view of ECAD data.

“Once you bring ECAD into the ecosystem, we can bring in all the inner layers, materials and geometry downstream,” said Feinstein. “This allows you to do any type of simulation with higher fidelity and accuracy—from thermal to electronic cooling flow and structural simulations.”Since the ECAD and MCAD data is all available in one SOLIDWORKS-compatible file (not Parasolid, but a file format specially created for SW PCB), engineers will be able to bring that data into the SOLIDWORKS system of products.

Feinstein explained that this merger between MCAD and ECAD can open the door to various simulation options that are traditionally hard to produce with ECAD alone. “Electronics simulations typically are done with a 2.5D field solver: methods and moments sliced into integrals,” he said. However, since the ECAD models are now in a SOLIDWORKS-compatible format, the door to native 3D electronics simulations is now open for a higher fidelity model.

The benefits don’t end at simulation. Engineers will be able to use the model-based definition (MBD), tolerancing and inspection tools available from within their MCAD/ECAD model. “Often these tools are associated with MCAD, but now we are blurring the lines between MCAD and ECAD,” said Feinstein.

The Future of SOLIDWORKS’ ECAD Portfolio

Upon its release, “SOLIDWORKS Powered by Altium” will replace Altium’s PCBWorks. CircuitWorks, on the other hand, will still be maintained due to its popularity in the industry. In fact, Feinstein hinted that SW PCB capabilities may be passed on to CircuitWorks whenever possible.

The cost of SW PCB is still to be published. We expect its price to be set at around $5,900, matching the price of SOLIDWORKS Electrical Schematic Professional.

Are you excited for this new program? How often will you be using the 3D ECAD functions? Comment below.

About the Author

Shawn Wasserman (@ShawnWasserman) is the Internet of Things (IoT) and Simulation Editor at ENGINEERING.com. He is passionate about ensuring engineers make the right decisions when using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and IoT development tools. Shawn has a Masters in Bio-Engineering from the University of Guelph and a BASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

The advent of CAD-embedded FEA resulted in a change in analysis productivity. Solid modelling gave instant visual feedback of geometry. SOLIDWORKS, integrating with the FEA package COSMOS, became a leader in the field. The command line approach was becoming a thing of the past. I didn’t miss the tedium of typing in all those commands but I did miss having the granular control of the FEA model that I was accustomed to. I started seeing the limitations of the all-GUI approach.

Enter the API

I had been working on a shell-based FEA model in SOLIDWORKS Simulation and had multiple unique shell thicknesses to be defined. The GUI wasn't getting the job done. In scouring the help file, I noticed "commands" that could be used to define model parameters. This API approach looked like a way to have the best of both worlds, a powerful GUI and command line control. This article looks at an example of this technology based on my experience with learning the SOLIDWORKS Simulation API.

Hello World

Regardless of one's experience in CAD or programming, picking up the SOLIDWORKS (or any high-level) API can be daunting. I will start with the SOLIDWORKS GUI interface and step through how to get started writing your first API macro.

Launching the macro environment is found in the SOLIDWORKS menu Tools à Macro à New, which will create a blank macro template as shown in Figure 1. What is better than creating a "Hello World" for starters? Our macro and the code in Figure 1 do that.

Figure 1. VBA code for “Hello world.”

This simple code ensures that all the support and reference files are in place to continue building more advanced macros.

Another way to check and make sure all the components are installed is to go to Tools à Reference. The appropriate references should appear similar to Figure 2.

Figure 2. VBA reference libraries.

Getting Started

Surface models (as opposed to solid) are very efficient when using FEA. Figure 3 shows a cantilever bracket surface model. It currently has zero thickness in the FEA environment.

Figure 3. Cantilever bracket model.

We will be defining the bracket thickness programmatically. First, we will review some common steps in all Simulation API routines by stepping through the code block below.

The following is an explanation of the steps corresponding to the above code block numbers:

1. These lines get a reference to the Simulation objects. CWObject and COSMOSWORKS represent the root level objects for the SOLIDWORKS Simulation API interface, allowing further access to all of the functions of the Simulation API.
2. This set of lines gets the reference to the actual study we want to work with. Working backwards, the Study object is retrieved by calling GetStudy on the StudyMngr object. The StudyMngr object is created by calling the StudyManager property of the active Simulation document. The active Simulation document is initialized by setting the ActiveDoc property of the COSMOSWORKS to the variable ActDoc.

This lays out the common groundwork for setting up a macro. Our goal is to programmatically set the thickness of the surface model. Figure 4 shows the current setting for the shell thickness in the UI. Because it is a surface model in the CAD environment, it begins a zero thickness shell in the Simulation environment.

Figure 4. Simulation shell definition dialog.

This example assumes that a static study has been initialized. We will change the shell thickness from 0.0" to 0.50" using the API.

Where to start? Searching the API helps show that there is a property in the Simulation API called ShellThickness. Below is a partial screenshot of the help file.

Working backwards, we can see that the ShellThickness property is accessed through the ICWShell Interface, so we need to create an ICWShell (Shell) object. The documentation for the Shell interface reveals that its accessor is ICWShellManager::GetShellAt, so we need to create a ShellManager object.

Almost there . . .

To create the ShellManager object, we see from the help (Figure 5) that its accessor is the ShellManager property of ICWStudy. We have previously defined an ICWStudy object in the variable Study.

Figure 5.

The following is an explanation of the steps corresponding to the code block numbers above (steps 1 and 2 were discussed previously):

1. The API interface for accessing shells is ShellManager. shellMgr is the object that we will use to get the shell by calling the method GetShellAt(NIndex, errCode). NIndex is a zero-based index of the shells in the FEA model. We only have one surface body, so NIndex is 0 for the first (and only) shell.
2. This block sets the actual numeric value of the shell thickness to 0.25. It is important to note the ShellBeginEdit and ShellEndEdit commands flanking the thickness definition. Many API functions follow this pattern. Modifications for load, boundary condition, geometry and the like are almost always preceded by a statement declaring that changes are about to begin or end. Just making the statement Shell.ShellThickness = 0.25 does not suffice.

The final few lines of code actually run the macro. After running, the shell definition dialog box (Figure 6) has been updated to our macro value.

Figure 6. Shell dialog after macro is run.

Getting Results

A great amount of time in analyses and simulation is spent interrogating and interpreting results from the model runs. While there are many tools for probing and filtering results using the GUI, the API allows for more precise control over the quantities and areas of the model in which to investigate. Also, there is the ability for the Simulation API interface to read and write from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, creating a powerful method for breaking down model results beyond the built-in SOLIDWORKS Simulation GUI.

The results for the model are accessed through the set of methods and properties exposed by the ICWResults interface. For our example, we will be extracting the maximum von Mises stress in our cantilever bracket. There is a method on ICWResults named GetMinMaxStress, and its definition is given below:

GetMinMaxStress(NComponent, NElementNumber, NStepNum, DispPlane, NUnits, ErrorCode)

The inputs to this method are defined as follows:

• NComponent is an integer corresponding to the type of stress we want returned. 9 represents von Mises stress.
• NElementNumber is the element number. 0 is typically used, which tells the method to include all elements.
• NStepNum is 1 for static analyses.
• DispPlane is the reference plane for results components. "Nothing" is typically used if there are no references.
• NUnits are the engineering units in which to return the results.
• ErrorCode is 0 if successful or another integer corresponding to an error code.

Putting It All Together

Below is the complete code for modifying the thickness of the surface model, running the analysis and returning results.

Section 6 of the code block is the stress results retrieval. As the name implies, GetMinMaxStress returns the overall minimum and maximum stress of the model. Because we have asked for component 9 in the method, we will get the von Mises stress returned to the variable stress. stress stores the results into a four-element array according to the following format:

• stress(0) is the node number of the minimum stress element.
• stress(1) is the minimum stress.
• stress(2) is the node number of the maximum stress element.
• stress(3) is the minimum stress.

Figure 7 gives the raw output results for our cantilever bracket model.

Figure 7. The output window for our macro.

Conclusion

The SOLIDWORKS Simulation API  gives access to the SOLIDWORKS Simulation engine through programming methods. It is an efficient method of changing simulation paramenters and automating simulation tasks. This article demonstrates the method of changing the shell thickness of a model programatically. In addition, loads and restraints can be modified using the API as an alternative to the GUI.

About the Author
Attilio Colangelo has more than 25 years of experience in engineering and project management in the chemical, process, ceramic and advanced-materials industries. His specialties include CAE, with an emphasis on FEA, high-temperature and heavy industrial design. His software skills include SOLIDWORKS Simulation, NASTRAN, Caesar II, ANSYS and iOS programming.

In a conversation with Marie Planchard, director of the education portfolio at Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, she brought up a story to illustrate this impact.

It was about a young man from Vietnam. One day, he decided to leave his village and go to school. There, he got a technical education with SOLIDWORKS. Like so many before him, his education gave him the opportunity to go out and do great things.

Instead, he chose to stay and make a difference in his own village. Gathering coconut rope was a very dangerous task, so to make life better for his fellow villagers, he designed a machine using his technical knowledge that would gather and spool this rope for them.

With his education, he made a difference—and he’s not the only one.

A Population in Need

Although the numbers are improving, education is still unattainable for many women and girls in Rwanda.

In 1994, Rwanda experienced a terrible tragedy. The genocide, a product of the ongoing Rwandan Civil War, ultimately left many villages destitute. With so much of the population gone, young men and women became responsible for running towns and villages so that families could survive. They became tethered to households as it were, preventing them from attending school.

Although the situation has been slowly improving, general education is still in rough shape today. According to the Fourth Integrated Household Living Conditions (2013/14) survey conducted by the Rwandan government, only 25 percent of women aged 13 to 18 attended secondary school.

Just 2.5 percent made it to tertiary education.

A Vision for the Future

As the tragic Rwandan Civil War ended, President Paul Kagame took office in 2003. This man had a true vision for Rwanda.

According to a SOLIDWORKS video about the situation in 2011, “President Paul Kagame’s dream is to move Rwanda away from a painful past and from an economy based on subsistence agriculture to peace and prosperity fueled by a design and manufacturing economy.”

In order for Rwanda to transform successfully to this new knowledge-based economy, it would need to invest heavily in training its population.

In 2006, Dassault Systèmes (DS) SOLIDWORKS began to send courseware and materials to the Nyanza Technical School in Rwanda to help with this training. The goal was to set up an engineering software program which would provide the tools for students to start their own businesses and help boost the economy.

Education is a Luxury

In 2013, seven years after the implementation of the courseware program, the numbers for female enrollment at the school were still far too low. Why?

The DS SOLIDWORKS lab at Nyanza Technical School, formerly ETO Gitarama. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

According to Planchard’s estimate, an education costs on average $300 per year—not including boarding, books or other expenses. Many of Rwanda’s young women come from families with missing or unemployed parents and, as implied by Kagame, existence was subsistence.

Although it would cost less than what most North Americans spend on a new smartphone, school was a luxury these women could not afford.

To WIN with Education

The employees at Dassault Systèmes could see that something needed to be done at the partner school—and this is where WIN came in.

WIN, the Dassault Systèmes Women’s Initiative, is a program designed to support women at the company in North America and to assist them in achieving personal and professional growth. It’s headed by Debbie Dean, vice president of the general counsel for Dassault Systèmes Americas.

Since the company was already associated with the Nyanza Technical School through its SOLIDWORKS software donations, WIN decided to establish a scholarship program designed for deserving young women in Rwanda who would not otherwise be able to afford a technical education.

Starting Small with Community Support

The women of Dassault Systèmes across North America quickly raised the necessary scholarship funds by appealing to the community. Fundraisers such as raffles and craft fairs featured items donated by employees. That first year, the initiative raised enough money to put three young women through all three years at the technical school.

The program continued into the next year with strong support from Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paolo Bassi and matching funds from SOLIDWORKS. 2015 was the program’s third year running and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Dreaming Big: WIN’s Hopes for the Future

The first (right) and second (left) sets of three women sponsored by Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

Since that first year, three young women have graduated from Nyanza Technical School. Three are currently in progress and three more will be starting soon. The graduates and current students received refurbished laptops with SOLIDWORKS licenses as part of their scholarship package.

The hope is that the technology will give the young women a head-start in building entrepreneurship and helping citizens of Rwanda. After all, as Planchard said, “Rwandans helping Rwandans is the best way to help Rwanda.”

Dean has expressed an eventual hope to fund young women through college or university as well, but there are no concrete plans for this yet.

New Opportunities

Graduate Monique Uwambajimana became an entrepreneur after her education. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

For these young women, the opportunity for an education opened the floodgates for their dreams.

One wants to be an engineer and work in construction. Another dreams of becoming a civil engineer to build new schools and hospitals in order to help orphans and push for development in Rwanda. Others want to start up their own businesses.

Like the young Vietnamese man in Planchard’s tale, these Rwandan women want to use their education to build a successful future and to help others.

Meet Monique

Monique Uwambajimana was just one year old when the genocide in Rwanda orphaned her. A bright and motivated young woman, she became one of the first Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS-sponsored students at Nyanza.

The proud entrepreneur with her wares. (Image courtesy of Dassault Systèmes.)

Now, at 22 years old, Monique is one of the program’s first graduates. After finishing her secondary schooling, she applied to university and was accepted. When she wrote to her “parents” (as she refers to several of the women in the WIN group) to ask for financial aid, she found that the initiative didn’t have the funds to help her.

In lieu of a university degree, Monique decided she wanted to start her own business to help her village. To assist, Dassault Systèmes director of marketing strategy and planning Janet Nicholas guided Monique in her search for the right business opportunity. Nicholas ultimately connected Monique with NURU Energy, a socially-driven enterprise which provides rechargeable LED lights as an environmentally sound, inexpensive and safe alternative to the kerosene lamps used in Rwandan homes. Nicholas and Dean sent Monique enough funds from their own pockets to fund the young woman's initial business start-up costs.

Monique used her start-up funds to purchase a set of 100 lights, solar-powered octopus chargers and a pedal-powered charger to allow for recharging capability when the sun isn't shining. Villagers buy the lights at an extremely low price and Monique recharges the lights for them at a fee. Overall, this cost is much lower than the cost of kerosene.

Like many other villages in Rwanda, Monique’s is completely off the grid. Infrastructure is developing in the country, but not quickly enough to bring electricity to every village in the near future.

Monique used her education to become an entrepreneur, lighting up her village with a system that will make it a greener and safer place to live—just like the story about the young man from Vietnam. It truly is impressive how a little engineering education can transform so many lives.