To improve the communication clarity and reduce the 2D drawing maintenance overhead, many manufacturers are looking for ways to communicate sheet metal product and manufacturing information (PMI) in 3D using model-based definition (MBD) as an alternative to the traditional 2D drawings. In this article, we will walk through the key dimensions, notes and tables using the NIST example.

Figure 1. A sheet metal part example. (Image courtesy of NIST.)

First of all, it’s important to emphasize that you can define a sheet metal part or assembly in a way similar to other 3D models using PMI tools such as DimXpert and reference dimensions. Despite several specific requirements that we will address shortly, sheet metal models are only one type of 3D model. Therefore, typical PMI capabilities can support sheet metal models well. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate several examples. The geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) definitions not only satisfy the NIST test case requirements, but also recognize manufacturing features such as the slot shown in Figure 2. This was discussed in more detail in “Design for Manufacturing: How to Define Features Directly.”

Figure 2. DimXpert GD&T definitions on the sheet metal main body.

Furthermore, the DimXpert feature control frames automatically create and visualize the coordinate systems according to the datum references to ease the design interpretation as shown in Figure 3. Please refer to the “PMI Enhancements in SOLIDWORKS MBD 2016” for more details.

Figure 3. DimXpert GD&T definitions on the sheet metal flange.

After these general 3D PMI definitions, let’s dive into the specific sheet metal requirements. Bend line locations are often needed to indicate where to fold a sheet during fabrication. Figure 4 shows the flat pattern with bend lines and their location dimensions. The key is to use the reference dimension tool to pick up the bend lines, which are sketch entities, rather than features. In this case, the reference dimension tool is more flexible for handling sketch elements than DimXpert. DimXpert can also call out these dimensions, but you’ll just need to create some reference geometries associated with the bend lines for DimXpert to pick up, as explained in “What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: MBD.”

Figure 4. Use the reference dimension tool to define the bend line locations in a flat pattern.

As shown in Figure 5, the same reference dimension techniques can be applied to define the bounding box to estimate the raw sheet material sizes.

Figure 5. Use the reference dimension tool to define the bounding box in a flat pattern.

As you may have noticed, Figure 5 also shows two bend notes indicating that “90 degree up” is the appropriate bend angle and direction, which will be useful for fabricators. These can be added using the notes command as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Use a leader note to specify the bend angle and direction in a flat pattern.

In 2D drawings, a bend table is often inserted to group the key bend parameters, as shown in Figure 7. However, in MBD, an automatic bend table function is not yet available, but here are some workarounds that require a bit more steps.

Figure 7. An automatic bend table per the flat pattern on a 2D drawing.

First, you can insert an automatic bend table on a 2D drawing as shown in Figure 7. Then save this table as a Microsoft Excel table rather than a bend table template, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Save a 2D drawing’s automatic bend table as an Excel table.

Now open this Excel table and copy all the cells with the bend parameters, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Copy the bend table cells from the Excel spreadsheet.

Finally, inside SOLIDWORKS, paste these cells as shown in Figure 10. This is actually an embedded Excel table and you can double-click to edit it using the Excel commands.

Figure 10. Press the Ctrl+V key combination to paste the bend parameters.

With one more step, you can also insert the data as a general table, as shown in Figure 11. Just make sure the numbers of columns and rows are larger than the Excel table in order to carry over all the cells. Now you can edit this general table using the table commands. Another benefit is that you can save this table to be reused in the 3D PDF template editor later.

Figure 11. Copy and paste the cells into a general table.

Although these workarounds are less than ideal and don’t maintain the associations with the existing bend notes and sheet metal parameters, they can collect and present the key fabrication requirements in a well-organized table for the shop floor to execute. I hope the software can add a more automatic bend table command in the future.

Before concluding this article, I’d like to share several free resources for you to better understand the sheet metal support in the software. Here is a tutorial to walk you through defining the 3D PMI on a sheet metal part. Similarly, a sheet metal assembly tutorial is also available. They are part of an online series of 12 free learning modules including videos, click simulations, quizzes and sample data sets. I highly recommend this series to anyone new to MBD. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementation, please visit the product page.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise and smart manufacturing.

In this article, I’ve had the opportunity to take a closer look at what’s new with SOLIDWORKS Surfacing. Recently, non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) surfacing has become sort of a lost art; but now with technologies such as 3D laser scanning becoming more popular and accessible, surfacing has turned into a renewed passion of mine.

Here’s a quick look at some of the new features that I will be reporting on:

• Improved wrap features that let users create geometry on multiple surfaces, as well as drag and drop geometry onto surfaces and wrap it as an emboss, a deboss or even use the geometry for a different function altogether, such as a 3D curve
• New offset options that enable users to offset a 3D curve on a surface, as well as offset edges or complete surfaces
• The ability to define a suitable offset value, as well as use the new 3D curve as a reference for new features

Creating Geometry on Multiple Surfaces

First, let’s have a look at the new ability for SOLIDWORKS users to create geometry across multiple surfaces. Previously, several steps or workarounds were necessary to create geometry on surfaces that weren’t circular or conical faces. Now, this can be done in a couple of easy steps using the improved Wrap feature. Just drag, drop and project geometry onto your surface.

For example, let’s have a look at this boat hull. With the Wrap feature, I can create or import a 2D-sketched logo or bracket and project it onto multiple surfaces as shown in Figure 1—with one command!

Figure 1. A boat hull is a complex surface, but the improved Wrap feature enables users to drag and drop a logo and thereby avoid complex workarounds.

Once this is created, I have the option to emboss (Figure 2), deboss, or use the resulting 3D curve for something else.

Figure 2. The 2D sketch is shown projected on the boat's hull.

Offsetting 3D Curves

Another new feature for the 2017 release is the ability to offset a 3D Curve onto a surface. Users will have the option to offset just the edges or the complete surface face.

For instance, let’s take a look at the guitar body in Figure 3. In this example, I can offset the outer surface perimeter directly onto the inner contoured surface in one command.

Figure 3. A guitar body with the outer surface perimeter offset onto the inner contoured surface.

This can be extremely useful for automating the creation of detailed inlay work, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The ability to offset 3D curves could come in handy for automating detailed inlays such as this guitar design.

In Figure 5, users will notice a more complex example of where an offset value can be used to create a curve. The new curve can then be used to create dual-extruded letters on these domed surfaces. This holds potential to be useful in a range of industries, including novelty jewelry design.

Figure 5. Using offset values to apply letters to a curved surface on this novelty jewelry

After applying the letters to the curved surface using the offset value, users will be able to generate renderings of their designs. Figure 6 shows the final renderings of the jewelry.

Figure 6. Final renderings of 3D-printable urban knuckle jewelry, originally designed for rap music artist Wiz Khalifa's effort to raise awareness of this technology to inner city youth.

What’s Next?

One of the noticeable things about the SOLIDWORKS 2017 release in general is that it was designed on the foundation of user requests and recommendations. Therefore, it makes sense that much of the new technology and features surrounding curves and surfacing are designed to promote a simpler workflow. It’s easier than ever for users to reference surfaces and curves directly.

With technology such as 3D scanning and point cloud meshes becoming popular tools, I can’t help but wonder what the next move for SOLIDWORKS will be in order to take the user experience one step further. Currently, to sketch on a mesh, it needs to be converted into a suitable file. Will we be able to sketch directly on a scanned mesh as we can in SOLIDWORKS’ big brother CATIA?

This ability would help out tremendously when it comes to reverse engineering existing physical objects. If we could eventually sketch directly on scanned meshes, then we could define surface boundaries in a uniform and more meaningful manner.

For more information, check out the new release on its launch website.

About the Author

Jeffrey Opel is a professor of CAD/CAM and 3D printing at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas. He is the owner of NCS, which provides turnkey CAD and 3D printing systems to clients in the United States. Opel has more than 25 years of experience in the field of computer-aided design and 3D printing.

In design communications, there are many technical documents needed besides the 3D models. As a result, the U.S. military standard MIL-STD-31000A:2013 proposed a term called a technical data package (TDP), which includes models, drawings, associated lists, specifications, standards, quality assurance provisions, software documentation, packaging details and so on, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The hierarchical breakdown of the data and possible documents in a TDP. (Image courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense.)

In order to build a TDP to comply with this military standard, manufacturers in the defense supply chain have been attaching documents to the 3D PDF file as a container using a wide variety of tools. The good news is that the free Adobe Reader supports adding attachments as comments as shared in this blog post, but the problem is that it only allows selecting one document per comment. In a TDP, there could be many documents to go into a package, so attaching them one by one could be tedious, time consuming and error prone.

Now in MBD 2017, you can select multiple files at the same time to attach to a 3D PDF on the publishing dialog as shown on the left in Figure 2. In the Adobe Reader window on the right, you may see the list of attachments inside a 3D PDF container.

Figure 2. Select multiple files to attach to a 3D PDF in the publishing dialog.

By the way, as shared in a previous article, “What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: MBD,” you can also check the box “Create and attach STEP 242” at the lower-left corner of Figure 2. STEP 242 is a neutral format published as the ISO 10303-242:2014 standard, which paid special attention to supporting 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI). So this new checkbox in MBD 2017 allows a corresponding STEP 242 file to be created automatically in the background and attached as part of the technical data package.

After the publishing step, let’s take a look into the published document content and explore several display improvements. As discussed in an earlier article, SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDF supports multiple configurations captured in multiple 3D views in one document. However, the problem with the previous releases was that when you switched between the views representing different configurations, the independent viewport updated to display the matching configuration, but the configuration-specific properties didn’t update in the viewport or on the text-based sheet areas. Therefore, there could be mismatches between the model and its properties, leading to miscommunications. This issue was discussed in a forum topic and has been a key gap for some manufacturers.

MBD 2017 now promises a solution. The key is first to capture the configuration-specific properties in notes or tables as 3D Views in SOLIDWORKS MBD and then to populate them in the independent viewports into a 3D PDF document. Figure 3 shows a side-by-side comparison between two configurations in two viewports. Please note the configuration-specific properties such as material, mass and approval date in the note and table are updated on the right to match the new configuration, while generic properties such as “Part number” and “Drawn by” stayed the same.

Figure 3. Display configuration specific properties in a 3D PDF.

It’s worth noting that these property texts must be displayed in viewports to update properly in response to configuration changes. They won’t update if they are on the sheet areas outside of viewports.

Speaking of viewport displays, in addition to the models, notes and tables, supplementary geometries such as center axes, sheet metal bend lines, exploded lines and profile sketches are often important to present to facilitate technical communications. As shown in Figures 4, 5 and 6, the 3D PDF published by MBD 2017 can display these supplementary geometries as gray sketches. As you may notice, these elements are solid lines rather than dashes or dotted lines. This is due to a limitation today with the Adobe Reader 3D content, which doesn’t support these line styles yet.

Figure 4. Center axes display in 3D PDF.

Figure 5. Sheet metal bend lines display and the model tree sketches in 3D PDF.

Figure 6. Exploded lines display in 3D PDF.

As suggested in Figure 5, all the display elements in the viewport bear their corresponding model tree nodes in Adobe Reader, such as the sheet metal bend lines and bounding boxes, which provides a nice tool to match and locate a large amount of display content thanks to the cross-highlighting capability. You can also control their visibilities by checking or unchecking the boxes in front of the tree nodes.

To further assist the usage of this model tree tool, MBD 2017 has added a neat improvement to incorporate the DimXpert tree node names into the 3D PDF model tree node names as shown in Figure 7. The goal is not only to preserve the user inputs from SOLIDWORKS to 3D PDF, but also to comply with industry or company standards whose naming conventions may require 3D annotation names to be descriptive and meaningful for clearer communications. You may have noticed that the sequences of the annotation nodes as shown in Figure 7 from left to right don’t exactly match yet. I hope it will be addressed in future releases.

Figure 7. Inherit 3D annotation names from SOLIDWORKS to 3D PDF.

Now let’s wrap up this article with a quick summary in Table 1. To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementation, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

Table 1. New 3D PDF features and benefits.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) definition is the foundation of model-based processes. One of the 3D dimensioning tools in SOLIDWORKS is DimXpert. Traditionally, this tool focused on defining features, so it requires a mentality of thinking in 3D that takes some ramp-up time, especially for most engineers who are used to 2D drawing practices. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 added several new enhancements to provide better flexibility and ease this transition from 2D drawing to MBD.

For example, in 2D drawings, dimensions are often derived from and anchored at edges that are very easy to select. In 3D PMI definition, many engineers have been looking for the ease of edge selections. In response, the MBD 2016 release first enabled the single edge selection as discussed in this article, “Design for Manufacturing: How to Define Features Directly.” Now in the latest 2017 release, this ease of selection has been expanded to multiple edges, similar to 2D drawing conventions as shown in the animation in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Dimension to multiple edges similar to 2D drawings.

This way, you don’t have to rotate and zoom the model constantly to select the desired features. Based on the selected edges, the software now intelligently infers the most probable features indicated by the edges and then presents the callout. Please don’t underestimate this seemingly tiny feature. It not only caters to daily job practices to ease the transition towards MBD, but also leverages the advantages of 3D feature definitions to pave the path for downstream manufacturing activities.

Another example to ease the transition is basic dimensions. DimXpert didn’t provide a manual basic dimension command initially because a 3D model itself is basic. If needed, basic dimensions can still be created automatically for geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) feature control frames as discussed in article, “Tips and Tricks for Dimensioning and Managing Hole Callouts with MBD.” However, in MBD implementations, many engineers challenged this approach because 2D drawings can add basic dimensions very easily. Now in MBD 2017, you can add a basic size dimension manually as shown in the animation in Figure 2. This new feature is a follow-up after the manual basic location dimension feature in the MBD 2016 release.

Figure 2. Manual basic size dimension.

Besides easing the transition from 2D drawings to MBD, the new release also enhanced the DimXpert auto dimension tool to make 3D PMI definition more productive. One example is to pick existing datum symbols in the auto dimension scheme as shown in the animation in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Select existing datum symbols in the auto dimension scheme.

In the previous releases, every time you launched the auto dimension scheme command, you also had to reselect the datum features, even if these features had been assigned with datum symbols. This compromised the purpose of the symbols because they are called out explicitly to represent datum features in the first place. This also made the selection more difficult and more time consuming. Now with this new 2017 feature, the problem was addressed.

The auto dimension scheme had another gap in the previous releases when defining polar dimensions, which are often used to specify circular hole patterns. The polar dimension option was only available in the plus and minus tolerance type, not in the geometric tolerance type. Now this gap has been filled in MBD 2017 as shown in the animation in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Define the circular hole pattern diameter and distribution angle using the geometric tolerance type in an auto dimension command.

We touched upon the enhanced support to define drafted parts in a previous article. This can be very helpful for casted and forged products where draft angles are often used for easier separation between a part and its mold.

Another frequent use case is that drafted cylinders (holes or shafts) can be used to support tapered bearings or gear holes, where these conical surfaces are referenced as datum features. Unfortunately, cones weren’t recognized in DimXpert datum feature definitions in the previous releases. Now this gap is closed. You can define a drafted cylinder, or a conical surface, as a datum feature in the MBD 2017 release as shown in Figure 5. Please note the draft angle and the opening diameter of the highlighted datum feature B. This enhancement works for both manual and auto dimension commands.

Figure 5. Reference a conical hole as a datum feature.

Overall, there have been many seemingly small but handy and delightful enhancements in the MBD 2017 release. It made solid progress in filling the functionality gaps between 2D drawings and MBD. Table 1 summarizes the new DimXpert features and benefits.

Table 1. New DimXpert features and benefits.

To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

Two years ago, I worked with a tower crane manufacturer that was experimenting with the model-based definition (MBD) process. One of the challenges was that the 3D annotation texts looked too small and almost illegible in the context of its huge crane assemblies in a 3D PDF document. Figure 1 shows one example where the 118-ft (36-m) height callout and 180-ft (55-m) width callout on the dimension lines could hardly be found.

Figure 1. The illegible overall size dimensions of a tower crane assembly in 3D PDF.

The problem was that despite the largest text scale set in the 2015 version’s assembly, 50:1 as shown in Figure 2, it was still not big enough to appear legible in a published 3D PDF.

Figure 2. The largest annotation text scale available in SOLIDWORKS 2015 and 2016 was 50:1.

“Why can’t we customize the text scale? No matter how many predefined text scale options are shipped with the software, it will fall short in some extraordinarily large or small models designed by more than three million users around the world, ”I was thinking as I faced the unusable display shown in Figure 1.

Now you can customize text scale. In the MBD 2017 release, the text scale can be customized as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The customizable annotation text scale in SOLIDWORKS 2017.

Therefore, the annotations look much clearer in the 3D PDF published in the 2017 version as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The annotations look much clearer in a SOLIDWORKS 2017 3D PDF.

Ideally, the text scale should adjust automatically according to the model size in Adobe Reader. That way, you wouldn’t have to customize a text scale in SOLIDWORKS, publish a 3D PDF to check out the result and then go back to the software to make further adjustments if needed. In fact, you wouldn’t have to worry about the text scale at all if the tools can take care of it for you. I hope Adobe Reader can provide this capability in the future.

Another challenge with the tower crane was its 3D PDF file size. The SOLIDWORKS assembly model contained a large amount of details. The published 3D PDF file was around 60 MB and it took almost one minute to open the file on a typical computer. This particular manufacturer actually didn’t care too much about the accuracy of the 3D PDF. Its main goal was to email a 3D PDF file to its clients, who might not have SOLIDWORKS installed, to convey the appearance of the 3D product model along with the overall size dimensions. The 60-MB file size was too large for an email attachment and the one-minute file loading time could easily frustrate clients before the product even showed up.

I’m glad that MBD 2017 now provides multiple accuracy options on the 3D PDF publishing dialog as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Multiple accuracy options on the SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 3D PDF publishing dialog.

Table 1 summarizes the high-level interpretation of the accuracy options. You can find more technical specifications on the Adobe compression help page and the TechSoft 3D PDF Converter User Guide.

Table 1. The high-level interpretations of the accuracy options.

One point worth noting here is that 3D PDF as a derivative format published from SOLIDWORKS doesn’t keep 100 percent data fidelity from the software’s model. When 100 percent fidelity is needed, it’s always best to use the native models. For a 3D PDF file, the key question is how accurate it can be compared to its SOLIDWORKS model. As noted in Table 1, the difference can be controlled within 0.001 mm at the maximum accuracy, which makes the 3D PDF model accurate enough for most machining and inspection use cases. The other point is that the difference estimations shown in Table 1 are conservative. In a test as shown in Figure 6, the differences are actually much smaller. The designed radius in the software was 9.87654321 mm as indicated in the black annotations. Then the actual 3D PDF radiiper different publishing accuracy options are measured in red. As you may notice, even the radius per the low accuracy with lossy tessellation compression reached 9.877062 mm as shown on the left side of the figure, which was accurate to the second decimal place of 1 mm.

Figure 6. Actual 3D PDF differences from the designed radius in SOLIDWORKS.

Coming back to the large 3D PDF file size issue with the tower crane assembly, I published a new 3D PDF with the low accuracy option plus the lossy tessellation compression using MBD 2017. The file size now is about 6.5MB, which represents a 90-percent reduction from the previous 60-MB size—and is much friendlier for emails. It took about 10 seconds to load the file, or an 83-percent reduction from the previous one-minute loading time. Of course, the visual product presentation and the 3D callouts are unaffected.

I hope you find these two new 3D PDF features relevant and helpful. I’d love to hear your test results in the comment area below. Table 2 summarizes their capabilities and benefits.

Table 2. Two new 3D PDF features and benefits.

To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise and smart manufacturing.

Create multi-distance chamfers in a single command. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Chamfer Updates Reduce Features, Design Times

To kick off the release, SOLIDWORKS has improved its Chamfer tool by adding many of the powerful features that you find in the Fillet tool. One of the most important additions to the Chamfer toolset is the new Look tool that gives users the ability to create multi-distance chamfers in a single operation. All a user has to do is select an edge, click the corresponding parameter dialog and key in the desired distance.

With the ability to set multiple chamfers in a single command, designers can cut the number of features in their feature tree all the way down to one. Not only does that make future interrogation of a design much easier, but it can also make it importing a part into a simulation software or geometry conversion tool much easier and less computationally intensive.

Beyond multi-distance chamfers, 2017 also includes a tool to make creating variable chamfers quick and easy. To create a variable chamfer users can simple select two face sets and the edges of a component, define a hold line and then hit “Okay.” With this new tool, the amount of work that was previously required to create the same feature can be tossed to the wayside. Variable chamfers are now simple to create.

Need a Fillet Where That Chamfer Used to Be?

Another powerful addition to this SOLIDWORKS update is the ability to change any chamfer to a fillet and vice versa. With this tool, any round or edge can be converted by defining a few variables.

Now, at face value, that might not seem like a huge improvement. However, if you’ve ever had to go back through a feature tree, change a fillet to a chamfer and watch many of the subsequent features crash, you know that this kind of quick and easy substitution can be a huge time-saver.

As an aside, whenever possible, save chamfers and fillets for the final features in a design. By doing so you can save a lot of headaches down the line, and it’s just sound modeling practice. That being said, it’s great that 2017 now has an escape hatch for those who are stuck toggling between chamfers and fillets.

Advanced Hole Enhancements

Complex holes can be created using a single command. They can also be saved for later use. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

The Advance Hole tool up close. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Another useful new modeling features in 2017, the engineers at Dassault Systèmes have added a powerful new tool for creating complex, multi-diameter holes.

In previous versions of the software, if a designer needed to create a hole that had multiple diameters they’d have to create multiple features, or a complex revolve cut, to achieve their desired result. Well, in SOLIDWORKS 2017, users can create multiple diameter hollows within a single hole command.

Armed with a new fly-out pane, the Advanced Hole tool puts several types of hole definitions (tapped, counterbore, counter sunk, etc.) at a designer’s fingertips. Regardless of how many transitions a hole needs to undergo during its path, designers can add additional steps to the hole definition, changing the way the hole will be bored through their design. Regardless of whether a hole needs to taper or expand, the Advanced Hole tool can make that happen.

Though simplifying hole creation is valuable, the most powerful aspect of the Advanced Hole feature is its ability to save time. Because this new tool can group all of the diameters of an advanced hole into a single feature, that feature can then be saved as a “favorite” in the Advanced Hole fly-out so that it can be called out later in the design process.

If complex holes need to be repeated in a design, all a user has to do is call upon one of their tried and true favorites.

My Takeaway from SOLIDWORKS 2017

The latest edition of SOLIDWORKS has some great new features and most of the changes are refinements suggested by users. This alone points to the fact that SOLIDWORKS is a refined CAD package and the company realizes that it needs to continue to improve with every release.

However, relying strictly on incremental improvements is not good enough. While it’s important for a company like DS to address what its users need—after all, users are the best at road-testing a piece of software and delivering keen insight—it isn’t necessarily enough just to answer requests for enhancements.

It takes more than that to do something innovative. Software development teams should be taking a visionary approach to CAD modeling, imagining new paradigms and creating a deeper view of the future.

To that end, DS has been looking at the entire design-to-manufacturing process and how it can be improved. The company is focused on providing tools not just for design, but for what DS calls the entire design-to-manufacturing ecosystem.

For example, take a look at the new 3D Interconnect tool in SOLIDWORKS 2017. It allows users to use native CAD data from other 3D CAD systems directly inside SOLIDWORKS, meaning it's possible to build an assembly or make a mold from parts and components from various CAD systems. Previously, these files had to be converted, but because they can stay in their native format, updates made to non-SOLIDWORKS parts will be automatically updated in SOLIDWORKS.

It's also worth noting that the software is committed to MBD, which is useful for users who are moving away from 2D CAD drawings. Product design doesn't end with 2D drawings anymore, so design software needs to be much more than a tool for creating geometry. It needs to allow integration with all aspects of design and manufacturing. MBD, which has its own set of enhancements for 2017, enables users to make design changes late in the product development cycle and have those changes ripple through to manufacturing. This will help free designers up to make continuous improvements on a design right up to the last minute. Design and manufacturing tools need to be more integrated, more flexible and faster to incorporate these changes.

The bulk of the improvements in 2017 are loaded into improvements in simulation, drawing, PCB design and much more. With those improvements, Dassault Systèmes is building out an end-to-end product design tool. And who can blame the company? End-to-end CAD software is the future and 2017 is making good strides at being the be-all-end-all for product designers and manufacturers.

I do hope, however, that as new tools like virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) begin to grow in popularity, they aren’t ignored. Adding that type of user interface and feature control could be groundbreaking for the design industry. We’ve seen the start of this integration with the introduction of VR in eDrawings this year, but hopefully we’ll begin to see the big names in CAD like Dassault addressing this emerging wave of technology in the more complex modeling stages in future releases.

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.

The tool, which is a standalone product in partnership with PCB software developer Altium, is closely integrated with core SOLIDWORKS and now matches the look and feel of the parent product. This is not an entirely new product—Altium has been around since the 1980s—but instead is built on the backbone of Altium Designer, which has been a preferred SOLIDWORKS Solution partner for a number of years.

SOLIDWORKS PCB offerings. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

The full suite of electrical design tools now includes the core SOLIDWORKS, which includes CircuitWorks and electrical routing by default, and an additional five software products: PCB, PCB Connector, Schematic Standard/Professional, Electrical 3D and Electrical 3D Pro.

This array of tools has been collected to address the unique concerns of ECAD (electrical computer-aided design) compared to SOLIDWORKS core MCAD (mechanical computer-aided design), and some of the items were standalone partner tools before Dassault Systèmes bought them up.

Having standalone tools obviously leaves some gaps in communications. CircuitWorks has also been around for a few years to control schematic design but never reached the full functionality required to solve all board design. PCBWorks also helped out, along with third-party solutions such as those from Altium. But these projects left room for improvement especially when it came to collaboration.

SOLIDWORKS PCB in action. The collaborative workflow is shown on the side. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

In keeping with the style of Altium, PCB is the central focus of the new tool, but it puts emphasis on the importance of collaboration. Component layout, routings and board layout will all be familiar to users, but the integrated collaborative workflow should help when communicating with other designers on the project who are not working on PCB.

SOLIDWORKS PCB is designed to improve collaboration across departments because, as many designers know, even the slightest modification to a PCB design—for example,the addition of a mounting hole—can create a significant amount of rework on the board. A fully integrated engineering change order process is a major step in improving workflows across departments, as all of the underlying data is driven off one set of data. Now updates and changes can be proposed from either tool and accepted by other designers once they have validated the impact.

Electrical and Electrical 3D further allow for integration of board and wire design into standard 3D models. There is some significant lifting that must be done by the processors to execute this and simplify models and design. Consider that a single embedded system board can contain enough components to turn even the simplest of IoT devices into a large assembly, and you start to understand the reason why it took so long to get these tools talking to one another.

That heavy lifting is not lost though.Full simulations are available down to the component level. Things like flow simulations and electric cooling can greatly impact the time to market and reduce failures, and the marketing material for these tools is quick to point that out. In addition, the ability to render electronics and wire harnesses into presentations is improved once you eliminate the need to model dummy data just for 3D.

In addition to mechanical data, SOLIDWORKS PCB is also well-connected downstream through the supply chain. This means that accessing supplier catalogs, getting component data and even getting a quote can all be done from within the same design environment. It is still hard to imagine that a novice will be able to do a full board layout—you still need to know what to look for—but this level of data integration opens the doors to further improvement in optimization using machine learning techniques.

Unfortunately, the biggest change for SOLIDWORKS in 2017—the introduction of term licenses—does not extend to add-on components. That means that if you have a short-term project that requires PCB or electronics design, you need a perpetual license (at or above the Pro version) to get access to all of these tools.In time, that will change, as the company has said that“the rest of the product line will be available as Term License sequentially in future releases.”

Expect to hear more about PCB design directly from resellers and value-added resellers (VARs). During the beta, users and VARs were able to report feature bugs and ideas to amass points.

Users who are eager to dive into the details of PCB design, and there are many, should look out for a reseller event. More on SOLIDWORKS PCB can be found on the company website. And if you are from one of the 12 industries formally supported by SOLIDWORKS Electrical Design Solutions, let us know the projects you are working on in the comments below.

Some of these enhancements will benefit PDM users, while others will benefit PDM administrators. Some of these enhancements apply to all levels of PDM, while others apply to PDM Professional.

Latest Version Overwrite

Users can now choose to overwrite the latest version of a file when they checkin, or transition (change state) a file. This can be useful when:

• There are minor and/or unimportant changes;
• You are checkingin files at the of the day;
• You are updating the version of files to the latest version (i.e. 2016 files to 2017) and
• There are automatic operations that would normally generate a new version, such as a transition action.

A column labeled “Overwrite Latest Version” has been added to the Check-in and Transition dialog boxes. This allows a user to identify which files will have their versions overwritten.

Overwriting version during checkin.

The latest version of all files can be overwritten by right-clicking inside the Check-in or Change State dialog box and choosing “Overwrite the Latest Version on all Files.”The same can be accomplished by pressing the Ctrl-R keyboard combination.

In the file history, an overwritten version is denoted as shown below.

File checked in with version overwrite.

Copying Group Permissions and Groups

When creating a new group, group permissions and members can be copied from an existing group. Existing groups are available from the “Copy from Group” pull-down menu. This enhancement can reduce the amount of time needed to create new groups and, more importantly, helps to ensure that members and permissions are configured correctly.

Copying permissions and members on group creation.

Rolling Back a File with References

If a user has rollback folder permissions, they can now rollback a parent file, such as an assembly, with its child references (parts and subassemblies). The rollback option is still located in the history of a selected file, but it has been modified to include a Rollback column and Rollback Point column. The rollback point will indicate which state the selected file will be rolled back to. This allows a user to see which versions of the referenced files are being referenced by the parent file, and which are being rolled back.

Rollback options in PDM 2017.

In previous releases of PDM, there was no option to rollback a file with its references.

Rollback options in PDM 2016.

Also, in previous releases, parent references were removed.

Warning that references will be removed.

When there are configurations in the files that are being rolled back, the same configurations will be referenced, if they exist. If the configurations do not exist, the last active configuration will be used.

Server and Client Service Pack Compatibility

The PDM client and server no longer need to be on the same service pack. This will greatly help administrators, as they can update the server to address fixed bugs without having to worry about updating the clients as well.

Many companies hold off updating to the latest release of PDM until there have been a few service packs. They do this to avoid being forced to perform an update in order to correct a potentially critical issue in an earlier service pack. Now companies can jump in early in the release cycle to take advantage of new functionality.

It is important to note that while a majority of issues are corrected on the server side, there can be issues that would still require updating the clients.

This service pack compatibility only applies to service packs within the same major version—it does not extend between major versions.

Searching Local Files

Files can be added to the local vault view while in the offline mode. These files are not added to the network vault and are known as local files. In PDM 2017, you can now search local files by right-clicking inside the file’s folder.

Searching local files.

The ability to search local files is controlled in the user settings of the PDM Admin tool. The option to search local files can be added to users’ PDM interface from the Menus tab of the User Settings dialog box.

Adding “Search Local Files” to the user interface.

Changing a Category of a File

When logged in, the administrator can change the category of a checked-in file. This can be done from the Modify pull-down menu in the local vault view or by right-clicking on a file.

Change Category from the Modify pull-down menu.

Change Category from the right-click menu.

Adding Custom Columns

Custom columns can now be added from within the Transition and Get dialog boxes. Custom columns can be added by right-clicking on any column heading and selecting “More.”

Adding custom columns by right-clicking on any column heading.

Custom columns can also be added by right-clicking within the dialog box and selecting Columns>More.

Adding custom columns by right-clicking in dialog box.

A dialog allows the user to choose which columns they wish to add.

Adding custom columns.

The available custom columns available reflect the variables contained within the vault. Custom columns can be reordered and resized. These changes are remembered for each PDM user.

Local Vault Preview Enhancements

With Display>Options in the local vault view set to “Show Full UI in SOLIDWORKS,” the exploded view of an assembly can be displayed in the preview panel.

Option to show exploded view from full UI.

The card preview on the right of the preview panelcan now be turned off and hidden.

Preview panel with card preview.

Card preview turned off.

In the Windows Explorer, this is controlled from Display>Card Preview.

Controlling Card Preview.

In the file viewer, this is controlled in View>Show Files.

In the item explorer, this is controlled in View>Card Preview.

MBD 3D PDFs from Convert Task

The Convert task can now generate SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDFs. The option for generating these PDFs is available on the Conversion Settings tab. Themes can be specified for both parts and assemblies. These themes include the 3D PDF theme path, the 3D views to be included and the primary views. As with other tasks, the administrator can determine if a user can change these settings. Tasks are only available with PDM Professional.

3D PDF—MBD conversion settings.

New Tasks to Convert to PDF

PDM Professional ships with new tasks that convert Office files and DWG/DXF files to PDF.

Microsoft Office 2010 or later must be installed on the computer that will be running the task to convert Office files to PDF.

For DWG/DXF to PDF, the task requires the application programming interface that only ships with DraftSight Professional or Premium. Therefore, DraftSight Professional, or Premium, must be installed on the computer running the task.

The PDM add-in in DraftSight must be disabled for the task to be completed.

The executables for these tasks are in the same location as the Convert and Print tasks. This would be in the installation directory for PDM in the Default Data folder. Importing any task is completed by right-clicking on the vault in PDM Admin.

Below are the available conversion settings for DWG/DXFand Office options.

DWG/DXF conversion settings.

Office option settings.

Vault Database Replication

Archive replication has always been available in PDM, but a single common database has always been used until the latest release. While a single common database can still be used, databases can also now be replicated between multiple locations.

Database replication requires Always On Availability Groups (AOAG) from MicrosoftSQL Enterprise edition 2012 or higher. Each AOAG has a single read/write database and multiple read-only secondary databases. The secondary SQL servers are updated periodically by the primary SQL server.

Since secondary SQL servers are read only, only the read operations are directed to these servers. Write operations are still directed to the primary SQL server. Nevertheless, significant gains should still be realized.

For additional information on AOAG, please click on this link.

Web Portal and Web2 clients cannot take advantage of a secondary SQL database.

Web2 Download Permissions

By modifying the configuration node of the web.config file, download permissions can be controlled for users and groups as follows:

Web2 Viewer Enhancements

Dynamic previews are now supported in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safariwithout loading plug-ins.

For more information, check out the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch page.

At a quick glance, you may notice several new buttons on the editor command bar: Cut, Copy, Paste, Format Painter, Align, Group, Order, Rectangle and Lock.

Figure 1. The updated 3D PDF template editor command bar.

These buttons are self-explanatory, so I’ll just illustrate three of them with quick examples. First, Figure 2 circles five headers in different text styles. Obviously they will look much more consistent and professional if they share the same style.

Figure 2. Inconsistent text styles.

The format painter comes in handy here because you don’t have to tweak the font, size, style, justification or any other style setting individually and manually. You can just pick the header you want, click the format painter and apply all its style settings to your selections. This command stays active until you cancel it, so that you can paint as many text boxes as needed without having to re-launch it.

Figure 3. The format painter gives all the headers a consistent style.

Rectangles have been a common request among MBD users to categorize and contain information. Let’s compare two text sections in Figure 4. The texts within rectangles on the left clearly look more organized and easier to navigate.

Figure 4. A comparison between texts within rectangles (left) and without rectangles (right).

Now you can draw rectangles and adjust its properties to surround and organize the texts as shown in Figure 5. The one I like most is the corner radius option because it allows you to replace the stressful sharp corners with more natural and polished fillets. By the way, you may need to send a rectangle to back to reveal the texts inside using the Order button. More discussions on the need of display orders can be found in this MBD forum discussion.

Figure 5. Draw a rectangle and adjust its background color, border, border thickness and corner radius.

Now with all the text styles, rectangle properties and their placements on the template, it will be a good idea to lock them as shown in Figure 6 to avoid any unintentional edits. Multiple selections are supported, so that you can select all the controls and lock them together.

Figure 6. Lock multiple controls to avoid unintentional edits.

Now you can’t even move them, let alone change their properties as shown in Figure 7, which is great to protect your edits from before. Of course, you may unlock to continue the fine-tuning.

Figure 7. Property settings are disabled and an unlock option is available.

Speaking of moving these elements, aside from the typical drag-and-drop operations with a mouse, you can now move them using arrow keys to achieve more accurate and consistent placements and adjustments.

Another neat usability polish is the placement of a text box. In previous releases, a newly inserted text box was always placed on the upper-left corner on a template sheet, which is “almost always the undesirable spot” as explained by an MBD user. Now when you insert a new text box, its placement will follow your mouse cursor as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. A text box placement follows your mouse cursor.

In addition to the ability to edit on one sheet, there are also other enhancements on the sheet arrangements. For example, for client-facing documents, on the first page, you may want to display a high-quality product image as a cover sheet, but you may not want to include any 3D model viewport or the predefined view strip yet. Another common use case is to declare certain statements upfront on the initial pages. For instance, in the U.S., defense-related documents are required to declare the international traffic in arms regulations (ITAR) statements upfront. Similarly, some companies require the intellectual property (IP) or confidentiality statements to be acknowledged on the first page of a technical document. Any party who is not the intended recipient of this document should not look further into it.

In the previous releases, it wasn’t possible because the template architecture required the primary viewport and the view strip on the first page. Now it’s more flexible as shown in the cover sheet in Figure 9.

Figure 9. A cover sheet of a high quality image with no viewport or pre-defined view strip.

You can also drag and drop the sheets to resequence their orders as shown in Figure 10 to avoid unnecessary page deletions and recreations. Renaming sheets is now allowed as well in order to identify their content more clearly.

Figure 10. Drag and drop a sheet to resequence its order.

Overall, the 3D PDF template editor is much more user-friendly in the 2017 release to help you produce more professional and polished 3D PDF documents. What do you think? Please feel free to leave comments below.

Now let’s recap the new features and their benefits in Table 1.

Table 1. 3D PDF template editor new features and benefits.

Here are two 3D PDF samples published using the latest templates: a Myomo assembly and a spindle shaft. The links may open the PDF files directly in your web browser, but if you download them and open them using Adobe Reader, you will be able to see the 3D content. This blog post, “How to Use 3D PDF?” will walk you through several reminders and the basic 3D capabilities in Adobe Reader. Another blog post, “How to Publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD,” will show you the key publishing steps. To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

I'm sure the tools have evolved a lot in the past 16 years, but the challenge is still there. Oftentimes in design collaborations and data migrations, CAD formats get in the way of the design. This is the first problem.

What did I try doing to work around this barrier? First, I identified a common subset between the export formats of the CAD tool and the import formats of the analysis software: STEP, IGS, SAT, x_t, x_b… you name it. As a young and naïve engineer, I didn't know what each format meant. They all looked like black boxes to me, but I didn't care that much, either, when I was desperately hunting for a common language that both of my tools spoke. Then I tried each and every one of them, exporting from one tool and then importing into another with my fingers crossed.

After being overwhelmed by all kinds of warning sand missing or redundant geometries during hours of exporting and importing, I finally found a neutral format: x_t, a Parasolid file that presented my model seemingly well from the CAD tool into the analysis software. But that was based purely on my visual comparison between them. Who knew what could go wrong under the hood? By that time, I really didn't have much confidence in the translated model or the analysis results. So here was the second problem. 3D exports and imports lose data fidelity and can compromise an engineer's confidence.

By the way, the analysis was supposed to guide my design iterations and optimizations. What would happen if I modified the design? I would have to run the exports and imports all over again, which was the third problem. The associativity between the original design and derivatives was broken.

These three problems have been bothering many more common workflows. For example, you design with SOLIDWORKS, but often need to bring components such as a pump in the Creo format by a supplier into the software's assembly. Or you can run an engineering service firm and will need to read a CATIA V5 engine model to guide your tooling design. Or you will need to reuse one of your legacy Solid Edge models.

SOLIDWORKS 3D Interconnect in the 2017 release is designed to solve these three problems. 3D Interconnect allows you to read all major 3D proprietary CAD files into the software and use them the same way as native SOLIDWORKS files. It bypasses the entire data translation process, opens 3D CAD files directly and updates the 3D references along with surrounding software's designs upon external changes. 3D Interconnect assists in collaborations with customers and suppliers regardless of the CAD tools. It also allows you to leverage legacy design data in a wide variety of CAD formats. The specific formats and versions supported are as follows:

• PTC
  •     PRT and ASM for Pro/ENGINEER 16—Creo 3.0

• Autodesk Inventor
  •   IPT for V6—2016
  • IAM for V11—2016

• Siemens Solid Edge
  • PAR, ASM and PSM for V18—ST8

• Siemens NX
  • PRT for UG 11—NX 10

• CATIA V5
  • CATPart, CATProduct for V5R8—V5R2016

Now let's illustrate this new functionality in a practical workflow where we will reuse an Autodesk Inventor battery assembly in SOLIDWORKS as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Reuse an Autodesk Inventor battery assembly in SOLIDWORKS

Now the Insert Component dialog includes all the above proprietary CAD formats as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Insert components from third-party proprietary CAD formats.

Then as shown in Figure 3, the Inventor battery assembly was inserted as actual solid models, not just visual representations. Let me just remind you that we didn't do any format exporting or importing here. So the struggle I experienced with the second problem described earlier was out of the picture.

Figure 3. The Autodesk Inventor assembly was inserted and mated in place.

Here I'd like to call your attention to the feature tree as shown in Figure 4. First, please note that the icons all include a green arrow pointing to the left, indicating that they are referencing an external source. The key distinction here is that you are not creating any file copies of the original design. It's a direct reference, which avoids the file duplications, multiple files or even conflicting files for the same design and data management hassles. Second, the top tree node actually carries over the Inventor assembly file name with the IAM extension. Lastly, the entire assembly structure was respected and presented. Of course, you can mate this assembly into place using its geometries and SOLIDWORKS geometries in a way similar to native components.

Figure 4. The feature tree of the inserted Inventor assembly.

Now let's tackle the third problem noted earlier. What should we do if the design changed in the external source as shown in the revisions in Figure 5? The individual battery is bigger, the housing is thicker and there are now only six batteries needed in the pack rather than eight.

Figure 5. Design revisions of the Inventor battery assembly.

To reflect these changes, please rebuild the SOLIDWORKS assembly and notice that a refresh circle has been added to the Inventor assembly icon indicating that a new revision is available. Now you just need to click on the Update Model command in the context menu as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Update the model upon a new revision.

The software then automatically updates not only the battery pack subassembly, but also mates with surrounding components such as the battery retainer bracket, countersink holes and rivets as shown in Figure 7,which can be compared to Figure 3.

Figure 7. The Inventor subassembly and surrounding mates are updated automatically.

The above quick workflow demonstrates how SOLIDWORKS 2017 3D Interconnect can solve the common problems engineers are facing today as summarized in Table 1. To learn more details about 3D Interconnect, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

Table 1. The problems solved by 3D Interconnect.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

As a CAD manager, I am always excited about new releases. What features or enhancements will be added, which ones will be improved and how can they add value to what we are doing in terms of accuracy, ease of use and increased efficiency?

SOLIDWORKS is one of the main CAD solid-modeling software packages we utilize at our drafting and design firm Advanced Technical Services in Lincoln, Nebr. SOLIDWORKS definitely provides our CAD design technicians with the tools and functionality needed to create 3D models of everything from simple parts to complex assemblies containing multiple parts and weldments. Modeling is only the first half of our workflow, however. Those modeled parts, weldments and assemblies still need to be manufactured, built, assembled, etc.

The manufacturers, builders and assemblers that will be doing that work all need to have instructions to do so. What parts get holes, slots and bends? What are the sizes and locations of those features? What gets welded and what size and type of welds are used? What are the dimensional tolerances, materials and finishes, etc.? All this information is detailed and called out on drawings. The quicker my team can provide accurate and informative drawings, the quicker our client can have a finished product. So let’s look at some of the new enhancements with regards to drawings in SOLIDWORKS 2017.

Section Views

You can now emphasize or bold the outline of section parts. This adds clarity to the section view, allowing you to communicate the internal workings of a part more clearly—no more squinting to see where there are hollow spaces, edges and material at any given section plane.

A regular versus a bolded section view. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Detail, Crop and Broken Views

To help clarify and differentiate detail, crop and broken views, SOLIDWORKS 2017 gives you the ability to show their outlines as jagged. The intensity of the shape can be altered as well to suit your needs. This can really help to lessen confusion on the manufacturing shop floor as to what the view is trying to communicate and how it is different from other views on the drawing. It also helps to differentiate the outline of the detail from the actual edge of the part.

A detail view with jagged edges. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Multisheet Property Edits

For quite some time in SOLIDWORKS, users have been able to make changes to a drawing’s properties by utilizing the right-click menu. However, making changes to multiple drawings meant you had to repeat that process for each sheet you wanted to change. SOLIDWORKS 2017 has enhanced this feature by allowing you to make changes to properties such as scale, projection type, format and size to multiple sheets all at once. You just select the sheets you want to make the changes to within the dialog box and hit “Apply Changes.” A huge time-saver!

Mirror View

You can now produce a parametrically mirrored drawing without having to create the actual 3D part for the mirror. Just copy an existing drawing and use the Mirror View feature to select the parent view. The subsequent mirrored views are then created, including all the annotations and dimensions.

BOM Tables

In SOLIDWORKS 2017, you can now lock bill of materials (BOM) tables at the template level. They’ll remain locked when placed in a drawing. This will go a long way in helping to maintain consistency in your drawing sets by controlling things such as column widths and row heights that now can’t be changed by individual users creating different drawings within the set.

Another great feature regarding the BOM tables is that notes can directly reference data within any BOM cell(s). Clicking the specified BOM table cell while creating the note allows you to reference data such as part number, description, quantity, etc. This is a very handy feature to help call special attention to important data.

An example of a BOM table locked in a drawing. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

These new and improved drawing features within SOLIDWORKS 2017 will definitely help users create clear and concise drawing sets more efficiently, quickly and accurately. These features will also help keep drawings consistent across the drawing set when multiple users are involved.

Another thing worth noting is that term licensing is now available in SOLIDWORKS 2017 in addition to the current perpetual license option. This is huge for SOLIDWORKS customers with smaller budgets as it gives them the option of scaling up or down based upon their project workload and needs. Term licenses have lower upfront costs due to the absence of included maintenance and are available in quarterly or annual options. SOLIDWORKS 2017 subscription customers will also have access to online services through the MySolidWorks portal.

SOLIDWORKS is available in three different platforms:

• SOLIDWORKS Standard is the basic entry-level platform that allows you to create parts, assemblies and 2D drawings. There are specific tools for sheet metal, weldments, surfacing and mold tool and die.
• SOLIDWORKS Professional adds to the standard platform with file management tools, advanced photorealistic rendering, automated cost estimation, eDrawings Professional collaboration capabilities, automated design and drawing checking, as well as a sophisticated components and parts library.
• SOLIDWORKS Premium adds powerful simulation and design validation to the capabilities of SOLIDWORKS Professional, as well as ECAD/MCAD collaboration, reverse engineering and advanced wire and pipe routing functionality.

About the Author

1. Define 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) with greater flexibility
2. Organize 3D PMI more efficiently
3. Publish 3D PDF with better ease of use and closer regulatory compliance
4. Streamline enterprise-level processes

Now let’s drill down.

1. Define 3D PMI with Greater Flexibility

In a previous article, “Design for Manufacturing: How to Define Features Directly,” we illustrated that SOLIDWORKS MBD was focused on annotating comprehensive features rather than basic geometries. While defining features matches the actual manufacturing processes more closely, many engineers would also like to define supplemental geometries besides features.

For example, one designer told me that they need to call out the distance between the center of mass on a robot and the ground level in a factory where the machine is to be installed. The higher the center of mass is, the more likely the robot could tip over; and so, the stronger the mounting structure needs to be. However, center of mass is not a feature. It’s a theoretical geometry. The ground level is an external reference plane, certainly not a feature on the design either. So, clearly there is a need to dimension to reference geometries. Another consideration is to follow 2D drawing conventions. In the 2D world, we can dimension to centerlines or reference planes very easily. Many engineers want to carry over this flexibility into 3D PMI definitions.

Now MBD 2017 includes this flexibility. As shown in Figure 1, you can select the center of mass and a ground-level reference plane to call out the vertical height. Similarly, you can call out the horizontal offsets between the center of mass and the center of the supporting base mount. These are all insightful indicators of an object’s risk of tipping over. Of course, as the robot arm moves, these distances update upon a model rebuild, so that you can monitor these parameters dynamically and optimize the design accordingly.

Figure 1. The vertical height and horizontal offsets of a center of mass.

Another challenge many engineers experienced before was defining drafted parts that are very common in casting and forging processes. As shown in Figure 2, the tricky point is that the 2-degree draft angle generates different diameters at different lengths from left to right on the highlighted extrusion. In other words, one size doesn’t fit all here. To address this challenge, MBD 2017 now assists you in creating intersection circles between the drafted cylinder and reference planes at selected section locations. Then these circle diameters and locations can provide accurate and context-relevant measures to describe a drafted part. The animation in Figure 3 illustrates these quick steps.

Figure 2. Define the diameters and locations of intersection circles on a drafted part.

Figure 3. Steps to create a reference plane and an intersection circle to describe a drafted extrusion.

2. Organize 3D PMI More Efficiently

As we discussed in a previous article, “How to Present the MBD Data of a Gear Box Assembly,” people do judge a book by its cover. So it’s extremely important to present MBD data in a consumable, actionable and professional fashion. In MBD 2017, more tools are available to help organize 3D PMI.

For example, a blog post summarized a handy tool, 3D View, released in MBD 2015. In this new release, 3D View has been enhanced and can now be resequenced by a simple drag-and-drop operation as shown in the animation in Figure 4. The benefit is that you can first capture a group of random 3D Views and then easily adjust their order later. Because of this freedom, you don’t have to be overly concerned about their initial sequence. It also allows designers to fine-tune a storyline inside MBD to guide downstream consumers in a more concerted and structured way.

Figure 4. Resequence 3D Views.

In the 3D PMI presentations between multiple revisions, the most actionable insight is the changes. A tolerance change can drive many critical decisions. For instance, a 0.05-inch tolerance can probably be achieved in house, but a 0.001-inch tolerance probably has to be outsourced at 10 times the in-house cost with many scraps. PMI changes, or essentially requirement changes, affect many areas of the manufacturing process such as the resource planning, the production routing, the tooling and fixtures, speeds and feeds, the inspection setup and reports, costs, the cycle time and so on.

In order to quickly identify the 3D PMI changes in a consumable and actionable way, MBD 2017 provides a new tool called 3D PMI Compare as shown in the animation in Figure 5. The changes can be reported in a separate HTML file for data consumers who may not have SOLIDWORKS installed, such as inspectors, sourcing managers or suppliers.

Figure 5. Compare 3D PMI differences between two revisions.

3. Publish 3D PDF with Better Ease of Use and Closer Regulatory Compliance

3D PDF lowers the communication barrier and so is an important communication tool in MBD processes. MBD 2017 greatly enhances the 3D PDF template editor so that you can produce more professional documents more easily. The animation in Figure 6 shows several handy tools such as alignment, grouping and display order. Please check out the new release to look into more nice additions such as richer text formatting, the format painter and rectangles to organize texts.

Figure 6. Edit the alignment, grouping and display order on the 3D PDF template editor.

It’s also worth noting that you can now resequence sheet orders with a simple drag-and-drop operation. Furthermore, the first sheet doesn’t have to contain a 3D viewport anymore. For companies that must show certain regulatory statements, disclaimers or warnings on the first page of a 3D PDF, this enhancement is exactly what is needed.

4. Streamline Enterprise-Level Processes

With all the above setup, including PMI definition, organization and PDF publishing, now it’s time to visit the model-based processes at an enterprise level. MBD 2017 brings along several key improvements in this regard. First of all, the 3D PDF publishing step has been added as a SOLIDWORKS PDM task as shown in Figure 7. Now you can simply pick a 3D PDF template and the views to include and then kick off the automatic publishing for multiple files, rather publishing individual files manually one by one.

Figure 7. SOLIDWORKS PDM 3D PDF publishing task.

Second, MBD 2017 can now publish the STEP 242 neutral format with 3D PMI based on the ISO 10303-242:2014 standard as shown in Figure 8. Even better, when publishing a 3D PDF, you can check the box “Create and attach STEP 242” so that you don’t have to worry about missing or mismatched attachments in a 3D PDF package.

Figure 8. Publish STEP 242 (left) and automatically attach STEP 242 to a 3D PDF (right).

Last but not least, eDrawings 2017 can display 3D PMI from STEP 242, Creo (Pro/Engineer) and CATIA V5 formats as shown in Figures 9 and 10. Many suppliers to the aerospace and defense enterprises such as Boeing, Airbus and Gulfstream can benefit from these enhancements. In recent years, these large enterprises are sending out 3D models with PMI to replace 2D drawings, so the small manufacturing firms in their supply chain urgently need a tool to read the critical PMI and requirements from the models instead of 2D drawings.

Figure 9. STEP 242 3D PMI display in eDrawings 2017.

Figure 10. Open Creo (Pro/Engineer) and CATIA V5 formats with 3D PMI in eDrawings 2017.

We touched upon several new features in SOLIDWORKS 2017. Table 1 lists a quick summary. To learn more about how this new release can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit the SOLIDWORKS 2017 launch site.

Table 1. Examples of SOLIDWORKS 2017 new features.

About the Author

Oboe Wu is a SOLIDWORKS MBD product manager with 20 years of experience in engineering and software. He is an advocate of model-based enterprise (MBE) and smart manufacturing.  

SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2017 builds on previous iterations and adds a lot more, enabling more efficient workflows that are in-line with the processing power offered by multi-GPU setups that are commonplace in today’s design and engineering environment. Because why have a superfast computer if your workflow is sluggish, right?

Instantly Switch from Static to Nonlinear Study

Static studies are easier and quicker than nonlinear studies in SOLIDWORKS Simulation. But I had often wondered why I had to create a new study and input all my parameters again from scratch if I wanted to run a nonlinear study on the same mechanical component. The parameters are all the same and the resulting plot types are basically the same. So why can’t I just press a button and get a more accurate nonlinear study from the same input? Apparently I was not the only person wondering this, because Dassault Systèmes has done just that. In Simulation 2017, it is very simple indeed.

How simple? Well, you run your static analysis, right-click the Study tab at the bottom of the main window and press “Convert Study.” A Convert Study menu box will appear and ask you to select the source study to convert (so you select your linear study—whatever you have renamed it). After selecting your destination study type (nonlinear, for example), the new study will appear onscreen, with your predetermined boundaries imported from the previous study intact. No more goofing around adding gravity or other forces, or materials!

Because there is a new automatic solver switch included in nonlinear studies, the software will select the most optimum solver method. All in all, this saves the designer a lot of time by reducing the steps required to convert studies. And that means increased productivity!

Display Simulation Results

Previously, when running finite element analysis on assemblies or multibody parts, it may have been preferable to isolate critical parts and run the solver on those isolated parts, for reasons of time and computation power. The problem is that when these parts were isolated and the simulation was conducted, the isolated part simulation result was not shown within the context of the wider assembly—it just appeared as a fragmented part of the whole.

Simulation 2017 changes this. Now it is easy to isolate those parts and then make the rest of the assembly visible with the simulation remaining in situ, located where it should be in the main assembly. This is particularly useful for monitoring displacement plots, during which a user may wish to see how a particular component will deform under load and how that interacts with the housing of a component. Of course, stress and strain plots and other traditional studies can be used in this way too. Here’s a video showing how easy and useful this new feature can be:

The deformation plot of an isolated component (left) and within the assembly (right). (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Improvements to Blended Curvature Mesher

In previous releases prior to 2016, meshes were created with a uniform mesh pattern over the part (called the standard mesh). This had the tendency to overlook fine parts unless a finer mesh was applied. But then in the case of a finer standard mesh being used, the number of nodes increased significantly, which was considered overkill. Why use a uniformly fine mesh just to pick up on small details if the bulk of the part didn’t require such high resolution?

There were two ways of dealing with this. Either manual mesh controls could be used (which was time-consuming) or the curvature mesher could be applied, which would automatically mesh the item and vary the mesh distribution according to the features. However, this could still result in a high number of nodes, especially if a large number of smaller features such as fillets was present.

In Simulation 2016, a blended curvature mesher was introduced, which allowed a varied mesh to be applied to the part while reducing the number of nodes.

Nodes? Where we’re going, we don’t need nodes! (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Simulation 2017 improves this process further by adding h-adaptive and p-adaptive methods to the blended curvature mesher, where these adaptive methods were previously only available for standard and curvature mesh types. The h-adaptive control allows the solver to vary the size of the mesh for smaller parts automatically, and the p-adaptive control allows optimization and control of the mesh polynomial in order to improve accuracy (because first-power polynomials create basic [linear] tetrahedral node cells, and second-power polynomials create parabolic tetrahedral, which yield higher quality results).

In short, the addition of p- and h-adaptive control adds a lot more flexibility with regards to the blended curvature solver accuracy and computation time.

Solver Dialogs

One other welcomed update to Simulation involves the dismissal of dialog boxes. In previous iterations of the software, the simulation solver would keep running even though it had displayed a warning dialog box, often resulting in the failure of the simulation. This used to cause much frustration, especially if, like me, you were using an older PC and it was taking hours to run the simulation.

This issue regarding the redundancy of these dialog boxes has been resolved in Simulation 2017. Users can select the option to acknowledge and dismiss the dialog box after a specified period of time (five seconds, for example).

And There’s More

Those are just a few highlights of the enhancements made to Simulation 2017, but they are by no means an extensive list of the improvements. Other additions include:

• Detecting stress hot spots
• Editing multiple contact sets
• Improving the arc length control method for nonlinear contact analysis
• Macro recording in simulation
• Automatic updating of beam joints and remote loads and mass for beams
• Probing results at selected nodes

As you can see from this article, there is a lot of focus on increased usability as well as enhanced functionality. So please feel free to click on the videos above: You will see how easy some of these new functions are, and hopefully they will help you hit the ground running when SOLIDWORKS 2017 goes live very shortly!

In 2012, the major announcement was support of a mobile eDrawings app, which was the first step for the company into using CAD on the go. Then, in 2014, the addition of a My.Solidworks.com viewer that allowed for eDrawings review directly in a browser further expanded the potential for sharing and collaborating across devices. Since then, the updates have slowed down somewhat. In 2015 the new feature was an update to make the measuring tool use file-specific dimensions rather than just defaulting to millimeters.

In 2017, eDrawings is causing a stir again. The excitement lands somewhere in the middle; it is sure to grab a few headlines thanks to the first mention of a major buzzword in the design and 3D world. Even though other core features will likely get most of the press, the updates to eDrawings for 2017 offer a glimpse into the future with broadened file support and the first use of the words virtual reality (VR)!

An exploded view of an assembly in eDrawings. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

The tagline for eDrawings (“The easiest way to share 3D data across multiple CAD Environments”) rings truer this year. One of the major features is the added support for additional file types. In total, there are now 22 native CAD file formats supported. Another four formats cover the world of 3D printing, including OBJ, STL, AMF and the potential new standard 3MF.

While the professional version of eDrawings still requires a paid license, the support for additional file types makes the free version of the viewer even more powerful. Adding support for CATIA V5 and Autodesk Inventor certainly helps, but also exciting is the support of IGES, OBJ, and 3DXML formats. Now not only will the core SOLIDWORKS package import nearly every CAD file type, even its viewer is becoming agnostic as to where the original design files came from.

Expanding the file types supported also begins to open up the market to new users. The Pro version already allows for mobile app support of augmented reality (AR), where models can be overlaid onto real world objects and moving the mobile device around gives the feeling of physically manipulating a design. Now, though, SOLIDWORKS is introducing its first native support for anything VR.

Looking at an assembly using the mobile app's VR support. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

This VR support uses the software’s mobile app to break out multiple views. It is unclear whether or not true parallax viewing is enabled, where each view is from a slightly different angle, or if it is the same viewpoint displayed twice. What is also unclear is the exact display rate possible during viewing. Google Cardboard, the easy-to-use viewer for which the new eDrawings is designed, does not put explicit restrictions on quality like headsets such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive do.

Rendering geometry for 3D viewing can be very intensive on a graphics card and one of the major hurdles for an “immersive” VR experience is that a drop in frame rate can ruin the experience. While Oculus and HTC require apps to run at a minimum 90 frames per second, Google Cardboard is reliant on the display rates of mobile phones.

Granted, most of those limitations will be device-specific—but users should expect that super-heavy models and large assemblies will have issues. However, eDrawings files are significantly smaller than their CAD counterparts and the ability to shrink and email a file is one of the key features.

In addition to the improved viewing support, eDrawings includes a number of markup tools, but those have been around for years. For other renderings, other add-ons, including Visualize, are still necessary and the core SOLIDWORKS program can output formats such as 3D PDFs that can be shared.

It’s worth noting that eDrawings still lacks a full workflow that logs comments and versions for a PLM system. This fact causes the feature to function as a useful utility but leaves it squarely in the “nice to have” feature set that can be worked around if necessary. Even so, the professional package includes an API that allows it to be built into custom webpages and optimized for firm-specific design reviews—assuming you have the time and need to go through such troubles.

Overall, the news for eDrawings is a part of the larger announcement of other developments in the electrical package, PCB design and simulation tools. Still, any time a new technology such as VR starts creeping its way into updates, folks should take notice. The new support of a variety of file types is certainly helpful, but it may not be enough to push users over the edge into getting a full license. If SOLIDWORKS starts supporting full designing, dimensions, simulation and collaboration on a full VR headset, though, that could certainly cause things to change. I for one am excited to keep an eye on what is next to come.

About the Author

Chris McAndrew (@CbMcAndrew) is a product development and marketing executive with nearly a decade of experience bringing concepts from the idea stage to market release in a variety of industries. He is a trained mechanical engineer, with a B.S. from Tulane University, and he is completing an MBA program at UCLA Anderson School of Business (’16).

In the past, SOLIDWORKS has had a fairly comprehensive suite of mating options, allowing for a variety of different solutions including static mates such as distance, angular, concentric, to more dynamic mechanical mate types such as gear, hinge and cam-follower mates.

Magnetic Mates

In previous releases, in order to create mates in SOLIDWORKS, the user would have to load parts into the software’s assembly mode, click on the features that they wished to be mated together and then repeat that process over and over again, which could be tedious for large assemblies. SOLIDWORKS 2017 introduces a new feature called Magnetic Mates, which simplifies the mating process significantly by allowing drag-and-drop mating.

In this example, the purple dots show the connection points. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

In order to use the magnetic mates, the user opens the Magnetic Mates Asset Publisher panel by going to the design tree and right-clicking Published References > Edit Feature. Then, the user defines the ground plane (plus any offset required) for the part to ensure that all subsequent components to be mated are at ground level. Then, after the ground level is defined, the direction of the mate and the connection points are defined. This can be performed at the part level as well as at the assembly level, meaning that once the part has had its magnetic mate points defined, it can simply be opened in the assembly with its mating references intact.

After this, it is a simple case of dragging the part over to the assembly, where it will snap into position relative to the other parts. Connection points appear as little purple dots, allowing the user to quickly identify parts that have predefined connection points and are therefore eligible for magnetic mating. Pressing the Tab key will rotate the part around its X/Y axis while keeping the part on the same ground plane. Parts can be repositioned simply by dragging and unsnapping the part away from the assembly, whereas previously, the mates would have to be suppressed or deleted from the mates’ Reference box.

The Asset Publisher view, showing how to add connection points. (Image courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)

Additionally, the magnetic mates’ references can be retained in the SpeedPak functionality, so assemblies can be constructed so that they retain their physical appearance while reducing the actual part geometry. This of course aids to reduce rebuild time and keeps RAM clear for other processes. All in all, magnetic mates are the biggest change to the mating process in SOLIDWORKS 2017 and you can see how easy this feature is to use in the following video.

Orientation of Components During Mate Operations

You may also recall that in previous versions of the software, mating in large assemblies with components spaced out over a large area could often result in the part to be mated appearing at the boundary of the assembly, rather than adjacent to the part intended to mate with. I can personally attest to this fact and indeed, it was a headache.

Imagine you are trying to mate an M5 screw into a hole within the geometric center of an assembly that measures 2 m x 2 m x 2 m. Often, the software would indeed align the screw concentrically, but it would be located at some seemingly arbitrary point within that large volume envelope, requiring the user to zoom in and out to locate the screw in order to add another mate to properly locate and fix it at its intended destination.

This is now, happily, a thing of the past, as SOLIDWORKS 2017 will move the part much closer to its desired location in the first instance, keeping both items to be mated within the same view. This small enhancement to the product can reportedly result in greatly improved performance. Every little helps.

References Maintained

Sometimes it is desirable to convert an assembly file into a part file in order to insert that sub-assembly into a bigger assembly. Previously, the feature IDs could become lost during the conversion, resulting in a loss of references which would require the mates to be redefined in the assembly. SOLIDWORKS 2017 does away with this nonsense and now the various face IDs will be retained and will be recognized in the new assembly, allowing the user to focus on design rather than retracing steps that have already been performed.

Using Non-SOLIDWORKS CAD Data Without Converting the File

In older releases, when importing non-native CAD data into SOLIDWORKS, the software would need to convert the non-native data (such as a Pro/ENGINEER, NX or Inventor file) into a SLDPRT file before being fully functional within SOLIDWORKS. This was a time-consuming task and often resulted in a loss of mate references, feature references and ID data.

Now in this most recent update, the new 3D Interconnect capabilities allow the imported CAD files can be imported without the need for conversion, while retaining mate, drawing and feature reference information, which is good news if your company relies on different CAD formats from other vendors.

The Bottom Line

All in all, it seems that SOLIDWORKS has been listening to customer feedback and has made changes to the package that are designed to increase productivity and cut back on repetitive tasks.

SOLIDWORKS 2017 boasts over 250 new improvements in the CAD package alone and 520 new enhancements over the whole range of packages (including simulation, PhotoView 360 and drawings). According to the company, 90 percent of these new improvements are driven entirely by the feedback of users—which would seem to emphasize the old adage that the customer is always right, or at least has the right idea when it comes to necessary improvements.

About the Author

Phillip Keane is currently studying his PhD at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His background is in aerospace engineering, and his current studies are focused on the use of 3D-printed components in spaceflight. He previously worked at Rolls-Royce and Airbus Military and served as an intern for Made In Space and the European Southern Observatory.