First of all, the SOLIDWORKS World 2018 proceedings are available to the public now. You can create an account and login as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The SOLIDWORKS World 2018 Agenda page.

Once logged in, you can watch presentation videos and download slides as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Watch the presentation video and download the slides on a session introduction page.

The proceeding site is a gold mine of insights and you can watch all of the presentations online at your own pace. Obviously this article can’t cover everything, so I’ll just drill down to several examples, one of which is “Me and My MBD; Learning to Make MBD Your Friend”, presented by Casey Gorman.

One chart I enjoyed particularly is shown in Figure 3, “Overview of the use of an MBD Model”. Gorman pointed out the importance of checking model integrity. In 2D drawing processes, you check drawings to make sure the design requirements are closely conveyed. In model-based processes, this step should not be overlooked. It is still necessary to ensure high quality model definitions, because the ultimate goal of a definition is to guide the actual production. Either conveyed in 2D or 3D, the guidance must be accurate. You can review the model integrity visually in 3D, in a way similar to 2D drawing inspection. You may also utilize software tools to help check models automatically on various aspects, such as interferences, hole alignments, and annotations.

Figure 3. Overview of the use of an MBD Model. (Image courtesy of Casey Gorman.)

Gorman shared a fun story of his handling of MBD objections 10 years ago. To make the purchasing team less reluctant, he had to provide the machine shops with 2D drawings, but his team also quietly started attaching STEP models in addition to drawings. A couple of months later, the purchasing guy came back and said, “That MBD stuff just doesn’t work. But whatever you are doing, the suppliers really like it. So, keep it up.”

In essence, what Gorman was doing was actually one way of model-based communication. Therefore MBD isn’t as far away as many people might perceive. To handle potential objections, please don’t get hung up on the name “MBD” itself. As long as there are convincing adoptions and benefits based on models, you can call it whatever you want.

Another presentation I highly recommend is “Creating a Digital Thread with SOLIDWORKS MBD” by Denise Fitzgerald, Assistant Group Leader of Mechanical Engineering with MIT Lincoln Laboratory. I was struck by her before-and-after comparison of the engineering workflows. Figure 4 illustrates the previous flow, in which heavy manual information recreation is needed. The team found out that 90 percent of the errors occur in creating and modifying drawings or generating data cards.

Figure 4. Previous engineering workflow. (Image courtesy of Denise Fitzgerald.)

Figure 5 shows the new workflow, which uses the model data to drive downstream documents and processes automatically with SOLIDWORKS PDM.

Figure 5. New engineering workflow. (Image courtesy of Denise Fitzgerald.)

The benefits are remarkable. On one frequent task to update the export control notes, it used to take three people several weeks to complete more than 500 models and drawings. Now, that task only requires one hour of human intervention and one overnight of running an automation. So, the human hours are reduced from 360 (assuming three working-weeks before) down to only one, not to mention better consistency and happier employees. I don’t know who would feel thrilled at manually and repetitively updating notes in hundreds of documents.

As you may expect, the above two presenters received lots of questions in their breakout sessions. To address more questions and facilitate a more interactive conversation, I organized a panel discussion on February 7^th (Wednesday).Casey Gorman and Denise Fitzgerald were on the panel. In addition, William Cockrell, with Raytheon Defense, and Dave Woulf, with Disney Imagineering, also joined. We were very fortunate to have the panelists share their first-hand experiences and the audience ask touch questions.

Cockrell noted that the Change Notice (CN) creations were significantly dropped from drawing-based processes to model-based processes. Plus, the suppliers are not calling (or bugging) Raytheon engineers as frequently as before, because suppliers can now spin and query the models directly in 3D PDF themselves. Reflecting on the MBD journey at Raytheon, Cockrell cautioned manufacturers on the automation efforts, as shown in Figure 6. His recommendation was to worry about automation only after proving out capabilities to get MBD off the ground.

Figure 6. Don’t let automation derail the MBD initiative.(Image courtesy of William Cockrell.)

Woulf pointed out that getting the MBD thought process going within a large enterprise, such as Disney, could be very challenging. Therefore, his advice was to make sure the groundwork is solidly prepared. For example, bring all the team members up to speed with SOLIDWORKS DimXpert (a 3D annotation tool) and build up the appropriate part and assembly templates ahead of time. The more variables you can eliminate upfront, the easier it will be.

Besides all the presentations and discussions, there was also a model-based shop floor showcase to drive the talks into actions. Figure 7 shows a shifter arm assembly commonly used in automotive gear boxes. The design requirements are annotated to the model directly using SOLIDWORKS MBD. Then it was sent to SOLIDWORKS CAM for Numerical Control (NC) programming and then SOLIDWORKS Inspection to extract the key characteristics for inspection sheets.

Figure 7. An annotation shifter arm model in SOLIDWORKS MBD.

In Figure 8, you can see the part being machined in an NC machining center. The key throughout the shop floor is that every step is based on the model, rather than 2D drawings.

Figure 8. A shifter arm being machined.

From presentations to a shop floor showcase, from talks to actions, I hope that you can gain more insights in MBD implementations from SOLIDWORKS World 2018 and its proceedings. Again, this article touched only a few points. Many more gems are awaiting your own exploration and applications. The resources are publicly available, but only you can find the most relevant and actionable information for you.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your Model-Based Enterprises, please visit its product page.

About the Author

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

However, as I explained in a previous article, reusing sketch dimensions is derived from a 3D-drawing approach, therefore it can’t realize the full potential of model-based workflows. In this article, let’s start with 3D drawing use cases and review several SOLIDWORKS techniques to serve the various need.

To begin with, as shown in Figure 1, you can check the line to Show Feature Dimensions as pointed by the green arrow. Here, Feature Dimensions include both sketch dimensions and feature dimensions. In my opinion, the categorization and naming are a bit confusing and could certainly be improved.

Figure 1. Check the command line to show feature dimensions.

The other way to control the display settings all together is the dialog as shown in Figure 2. You can invoke this dialog by clicking on the Details command line on top of the context menu, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2. Check the box of feature dimensions.

Now with all the annotations and dimensions selected, Figure 3 shows the graphics area.

Figure 3. The graphics display with all the dimension and annotation types selected.

By default, sketch dimensions, such as the 45-degree close to the shaft shoulder, and reference annotations, such as the NOTES at the top of the image, are in black. Feature dimensions are in blue, and DimXpert annotations are in green. Lastly, reference dimensions are in grey, such as the seal grove annotations R0.20 and R1 on the left.

Now with everything shown, you may find the viewport very busy and hard to digest. Let’s take the thread example on the right side and organize its annotations for easier consumptions.

First, zoom into the helixcoil feature to show its thread characteristics. As you can see, the annotations overlap on top of each other. Some are even buried in the model.

Figure 4. A messy display of the annotations.

To clean up the display, let’s hide the reference dimensions, DimXpert annotations and reference annotations by unchecking their line items as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Uncheck irrelevant annotation types to clean up the display.

Next, you can selectively hide sketch and feature dimensions to focus on the helix coil. For example, Figure 6 shows that I selected the 50 mm feature dimension of an angled hole length. You can make it invisible by clicking Hide on its context menu.

Figure 6. Hide an irrelevant feature dimension.

Figure 7 shows that I’m trying to select the 8.40 mm shoulder width sketch dimension. However, because the Instant3D feature is turned on by default, a single-click selection activated this annotation for editing because sketch dimensions are driving, not driven dimensions. In this case, turn off the Instant3D feature to avoid unintended modifications.

Figure 7. A sketch dimension is activated for modification unintentionally due to Instant3D.

Next, repeat the step as shown in Figure 6 to hide irrelevant annotations. You will find a much cleaner view as shown in Figure 7. One point worth noting is that I didn’t find a way to select multiple annotations and hide them together, so I had to hide them one by one. It’d be great if multiple sketch and feature dimensions could be hidden together.

Figure 8. A cleaner view after irrelevant sketch and feature dimensions are hidden.

Now, you may find the text size too big for this detailed view. The software provides a quick setting to always display text at the same size, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. A cleaner, more properly displayed detailed view of the thread and its sketch dimensions.

Once you are happy with the current display, remember to capture it as a 3D View so that you can quickly retrieve it later. Figure 10 shows a 3D View named as Thread_FeatureDim with a thumbnail at the bottom.

Figure 10. Capture an organized display into a 3D View.

It’s nice to see that the setting, “Always display text at the same size,” is specific to the 3D Views. We had it checked in the 3D View “Thread_FeatureDim.” You can also uncheck it and have it remembered in another 3D View. For example, in a zoomed-out overview, as shown in Figure 11, you may want a bigger text scale specific to this view.

Figure 11. The display setting is remembered in specific 3D Views.

By the way, if the text size looks too big in Figure 8, but too small in Figure 9, you can also adjust the text font sizes individually as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Adjust the sketch dimension font with multiple selections.

The good news here is that you can hold the control key to select multiple annotations and adjust their fonts together. Go to the Other tab on the property manager and clear the “Document font” checkbox to overwrite it. Then click on the Font button to modify the font.

By the way, if you need to add tolerances to certain sketch dimensions, you can modify them directly in 3D without having to edit the sketch. Figure 13 shows that a 2 mm distance is selected, and its tolerance is set to symmetric on the property manager.

Figure 13. Modify sketch dimension tolerances in 3D directly.

Now that we have fine-tuned the sketch dimensions, tolerances and display, you can export the model to STEP 242 or 3D PDF files. The sketch dimensions are supported in the neutral formats. Figure 14 shows an imported STEP 242 file in SOLIDWORKS MBD. You may notice the annotations and views preserved in the export and brought in again by the import.

Figure 14. Sketch dimensions and views are exported in STEP 242 files and can be imported back again into SOLIDWORKS MBD.

I hope that this article is helpful. It is important to point out that reusing sketch dimensions is just to serve the 3D drawing needs at the initial phase of MBD implementation. This practice doesn’t support geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) definitions. The sketch dimensions are the constructing elements of features, so they are not fully aware of the manufacturing features. Therefore sketch dimensions can’t effectively support the manufacturing automations based on semantic 3D annotations. First identify short-term and long-term goals and use cases of your MBD implementations, then you can choose the 3D annotation strategies accordingly.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your model-based enterprises, please visit its product page.

About the Author

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

We can begin by asking the question: Do you see any problem with the GD&T definition in Figure 1? In the figure, datum symbol A is attached to a centerline and then is referenced in a total runout tolerance.

Figure 1. A problematic GD&T definition. (Image courtesy of a Tec-Ease GD&T tip video.)

This actually turned out to be a million-dollar problem. The original part by a customer was a lens barrel in a space telescope on which the opening at the left interfaced with a lens, which is why the total runout tolerance was controlled tightly at 0.0006 inch. Figure 1 is a simplified illustration of the part.

A tight tolerance is fine as long as the product function justifies it. The real problem with this part is the datum label attached to the centerline on the customer drawing, because it didn’t specify which tangible feature would serve as the datum feature to inspect the tight tolerance. A centerline is theoretical and intangible. In the actual production, the supplier inspector didn’t have definitive instructions on how to hold the part. Figure 2 shows an exaggerated example of a machined part by the supplier. Clearly, the smaller cylinder on the right of the figure was misaligned.

Figure 2. An exaggerated example of a machined part.

If the supplier grabs a convenient feature such as the larger outer cylinder on the left, spins the part, and then inspects the runout, the part is good as what is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Inspecting the total runout by holding the convenient larger outer cylinder.

Unfortunately, the customer held the barrel in the way it would assemble in the lens mount. As a result, the smaller cylinder on the right should be spun to inspect the part based on the intent of the design. Now, as shown in Figure 4, the total runout is violated and the part should be rejected. This ambiguity led to a lawsuit of nearly$8 million.

Figure 4. Inspecting the total runout by holding the smaller outer cylinder.

This problem could have been easily avoided if the symbol was specifically defined to an intended tangible feature, rather than an ambiguous geometry. Figure 5 shows the recommended definition using SOLIDWORKS MBD. In this approach, you can select the smaller outer cylinder to define the feature. The software then highlights the actual face once a label is selected and automatically aligns the datum symbol to the size diameter and tolerance callout.

Figure 5. A recommended datum feature definition.

This lens barrel case demonstrates the costly downside of ambiguous GD&T definitions. Although this issue can occur in both 2D drawings and 3D annotations, some MBD software guides the definitions with built-in GD&T rules to ensure solid practices. For example, Johnson Controls estimated significant value benefits with improved GD&T practices in the CATIA MBD environment.

Similarly, SOLIDWORKS MBD follows the ASME Y14.5-2009 GD&T standard closely. For instance, according to this standard, the datum feature symbol B in the two figures when compared to Figure 6 conveys two completely different design requirements. The one shown on the left indicates that datum feature B is the width feature because the label B is aligned with the width dimension line, while the one shown on the right indicates that datum feature B is only a single face because the label is not aligned with the width callout.

Figure 6. A drawing comparison between a width feature as a datum feature (left) and a single face as a datum feature (right).

In order to avoid this common confusion, SOLIDWORKS MBD automatically aligns the label to the width feature size dimension line as shown on the left of Figure 7. If the design requires only a face as the datum feature, then you can define a face, rather than a width.

Figure 7. An MBD comparison between a width as a datum feature (left) and a single face as a datum feature (right).

By the way, a width datum feature gives the middle plane between the two opposing faces as the theoretical datum. I hope this answers the frequent question posed at the beginning of this article. You can find more about the differences between datum feature and datum here.

Let’s expand to several other examples. Figure 8 shows the datum features A, B and C on a shifter stick. A is the width size feature, B is the two coplanar shoulders as highlighted in green, and C is the pattern of two mounting holes that is supported by a new enhancement in SOLIDWORKSM MBD 2018.

Figure 8. Datum features A, B and C on a shifter stick.

In this ABC datum framework, I added the Maximum Material Boundary (MMB) modifiers to A and C, which are size features. This allows datum shifts to accept more good parts. However, if I were to add MMB to datum feature B as shown in Figure 9, the software would flag it because B is not a feature of size and maximum material boundary doesn’t apply in this case.

Figure 9. A warning message against using an incorrect MMB modifier.

You may also notice that when a feature control frame is selected, the coordinate system as defined by the ABC datum references is automatically created and highlighted in green in the graphics area. This provides an instant visual confirmation that makes interpretation easier. It also helps automate the coordinate system alignment for other downstream manufacturing software.

On this GD&T editing dialog, if a user forgets to type in a primary or secondary datum letter before a tertiary one in a feature control frame, the dialog automatically displays a warning message to alert the user as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10. A warning message about missing primary or secondary datum letters.

Besides the manual annotations, the software follows the GD&T rules in the automatic dimension creation as well. Figure 11 illustrates an error in which the two datum features in the red box share the same axis. The features are defining the same theoretical datum, so the tool catches their unnecessary duplication.

Figure 11. An unnecessary datum feature duplication caught in the automatic dimension scheme.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, when interpreting a GD&T definition, a user first needs to remember the datum references. So, a handy command is to automatically highlight the associated datum symbols and features. The 3D PDF generated by SOLIDWORKS MBD provides this command shown in Figure 12. You can right-click on a feature control frame and click on the context menu command “Highlight associated datums.” I hope that a similar handy capability can be added to the SOLIDWORKS environment in the future.

Figure 12. Highlight associated datum symbols and features for a feature control frame.

With that, let’s conclude this article with several key points:

1. Datum features are the foundation of GD&T definitions.
2. You should define datum features on tangible faces, rather than intangible ambiguous geometries.
3. SOLIDWORKS MBD builds GD&T rules into the software to help detect violations.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your Model-Based Enterprises, please visit its product page.

About the Author

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

1. Define features directly and unambiguously.

One of the requirements in GD&T practices is to define features directly rather than geometries because, ultimately, it’s the features that deliver the product function. Also in the actual production, features are what get machined or inspected. On the other hand, geometries, such as edges, centerlines or middle planes, are only derivatives of features. Some are even intangible and difficult to control.

Figure 1 illustrates one difference. The drawing on the leftattached a datum feature symbol B to a bottom line. We may be able to assume that the bottom line represents a bottom mounting face. However, we are not sure if this part should be mounted to this leg alone or to the bottom faces of all the legs. The model on the right removed this ambiguity by clearly specifying all the bottom mounting faces as datum feature B.

Figure 1. A comparison between a datum feature definition in 2D drawing and MBD.

Using SOLIDWORKS MBD, you can create a compound plane by selecting multiple coplanar faces as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Create a compound plane by selecting multiple coplanar facesto define datum feature B.

An even more confusing case is all-around profile tolerances. Figure 3 shows a comparison.

Figure 3. A comparison between 2D drawings and MBD on an all-around profile tolerance.

The drawing on the left defines an all-around profile tolerance. However, it doesn’t clarify whether the side faces on the thinner fin are subjective to this control. Two possibilities are clarified in the models. One controls 26 faces and the other controls 36 faces. The model-based approach directly specifies the exact features to be controlled.

2. Ensure compliances with built-in GD&T intelligences.

Based on the solid foundation of feature definitions, SOLIDWORKS MBD built in GD&T intelligences to provide instant feedback. A previous article, “Check Your Grammar: Verifications for GD&T in MBD,” shared several checks in the software. Let’s examine more examples here.

Figure 4 quotes a method from the ASME Y14.5-2009 standard about bidirectional positional tolerancing. It defines a rectangular tolerance zone in which the tolerances are different from one direction to the other.

Figure 4. Bidirectional positional tolerancing in ASME Y14.5-2009.

Figure 5 shows a simplified model with the bidirectional positional tolerances in accordance to the standard. The tolerance status is in green, indicating the definitions are in good condition.

Figure 5. A simplified model with bidirectional positional tolerances.

However, if I were to tweak the feature control frames as shown in Figure 6, the software would flag several issues, and the tolerance status would display violations.

Figure 6. GD&T violations flagged according to ASME Y14.5-2009.

First, the diameter symbols in the feature control frames specified cylindrical tolerance zones, which conflicted with the bidirectional rectangular zone intention. Additionally, please note that the original lower compartment.010-inch tolerance, as shown in Figure 5,didn’t include any datum references. It only refined the relationship between multiple instances in a pattern. It didn’t need datum references. In Figure 6, the positional tolerances doesn’t show 3x, so only one hole instance is defined rather than the pattern. Now the .010-inch tolerance has become independent, so it would need its own datum references. That’s why the software displayed a warning message against a missing primary datum feature, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. A warning message against a missing primary datum feature.

It’s interesting to see that seemingly tiny changes matter significantly in the definitions. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, GD&T is a language. Similar to any language, small details can convey different meanings. Therefore, the challenge is to detect and avoid violations in small details besides the complicated rules.The good news is that we can leverage the strengths of software. SOLIDWORKS MBD can help automatically monitor significant details that could be easily overlooked by human eyes.

For instance, just by looking at the model on the right without reading the warning message on the dialog, as shown in Figure 8, we may not be able to catch the violation in this simplified case.

Figure 8. A warning message against a straightness on a hole feature.

The original design intent was to control the straightness of the derived median line from the hole feature. However, in the actual definition, an important modifier—a diameter symbol—was missed in the tolerance value box. Fortunately the software caught it because straightness of a derived median line from a cylindrical feature needs a cylindrical tolerance zone. A simple fix is to add the diameter modifier, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Resolve the issue by adding a diameter tolerance zone modifier to the straightness tolerance.

Just a side note, another way to address the warning message in Figure 8 would be to delete the Maximum Material Condition modifier. But that would mean to control the straightness of the line elements on the hole surface, rather than the derived median line.

3. Facilitate design interpretations with visual aids.

As explained on the previous two points, GD&T rules are complicated and can be hard to interpret, especially when a manufacturer is working with a spectrum of suppliers at different skill levels. SOLIDWORKS MBD provides visual aids to facilitate interpretations.

For example, Figure 2 showed that when you select a feature control frame, such as the profile tolerance, all the controlled faces are highlighted. This makes the understanding much more accurate and easier. Figure 5 showed the tool to check the tolerance status, which presents a direct color scheme of how well each feature is toleranced. Then in Figure 7, when you selected a feature control frame, the coordinate system XYZ determined by the datum references A, B and C was created and highlighted automatically.

In the 3D PDF published by SOLIDWORKS MBD, you may use the context menu commands to highlight associated datums or basic dimensions as shown in Figures 10, 11 and 12. Unfortunately these commands are not yet available in the SOLIDWORKS environment. I hope they will come in future SOLIDWORKS releases.

Figure 10. Context menu commands to highlight associated datum features and basic dimensions.

Figure 11. Highlighted associated datum features in red.

Figure 12. Highlighted associated basic dimensions in red.

To summarize this article, I listed three advantages of applying GD&T to 3D models:

1. Define features directly and unambiguously.
2. Ensure compliances with built-in GD&T intelligences.
3. Facilitate design interpretations with visual aids.

Please notice that these advantages need a digital environment to take place. None of these would be possible on a static paper document. Although an MBD implementation doesn’t have to exclude hard copy printouts, a digital environment with appropriate software can certainly help realize these advantages. On the other hand, an MBD implementation doesn’t mean that you have to digitize everything either. You may identify several pilot workflows with digital software and hardware to test the water. Based on the accumulated experiences, you can gradually expand the pilot.

I hope that this article is helpful. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your model-based enterprises, please visit its product page.

About the Author

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

Then why is so much money spent on updating the original drawing when changes are made to the product? Surely, it’s better to just create a good 3D model in the first place that can be reused and updated at will, rather than spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of work hours going back, issuing a change request, waiting for approval, making changes to the drawing, and then waiting for the quality assurance loop to give it the OK. And after all that rigmarole, you still have to update the CAD model so that it fits the new drawing.

In addition to the headaches of updating redundant drawings, many engineering companies still insist on sending 2D drawings with TDG information to manufacturers, where the factory CAD technicians must then convert that 2D information into 3D data so that toolpaths can be generated for manufacturing.

Did you know that as a result of constantly transforming data between 2D drawings and 3D models, 60 percent of 2D drawings don’t match the original intended design? And according to the U.S. Department of Defense(DoD), up to 50 percent of a design team’s time is spent messing around with drawings. That’s insane!

And that is why model-based definition (MBD) is such a great thing. With MBD, it is possible to just jump straight to the 3D modeling phase, add the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) and product manufacturing information (PMI) data to the model, and then go about your day without worrying about the drawing. No more extra sheets of paper with tolerance and surface finish information. No more redline markups on printed PDFs. No more invoices to be paid for drawing updates. And, of course, the environment benefits, too.

As you are about to see in more detail, SOLIDWORKS 2018 MBD enables you do all this and more.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at how we can utilize these features in SOLIDWORKS 2018.

Opening the Tutorial

I initially created a bracket to use as an example for this article, but while searching through the SOLIDWORKS 2018 tutorials within the software, I found a much cooler model to work with for this example. And because the model is located in the SOLIDWORKS MBD tutorial section, it means you can give it a try for yourselves.

To get started, go to the menu at the very top of the screen, select HELP, and click SOLIDWORKS Tutorials in the drop-down menu. This will bring up the tutorials pane, and you can select All SOLIDWORKS Tutorials from the headings. This will show a list of all the tutorials available. I show a shortened version of this list in Figure 1. Take a look at the list and click SOLIDWORKS MBD Overview.

Figure 1. Shortened list of SOLIDWORKS tutorials.

This will open the SOLIDWORKS MBD Overview Tutorial introduction screen in the tutorial panel. Click NEXT TOPIC at the bottom right of the panel. The next screen will provide you with a link to the location of the assembly model that is stored on your hard drive. Click that link, and you will see the drum pedal assembly open in your main design window (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Drum pedal assembly model.

Once the assembly model has loaded, click NEXT TOPIC (Creating a BOM table) at the bottom right of the tutorial pane.

Creating a BOM Table

The bill of materials (BOM) table is a staple of engineering documentation. The need to constantly update the BOM is a real pain in the neck and is also a resource-intensive task for many companies.

Thankfully, updating the BOM tables becomes easier with MBD.

Go to the FeatureManager design tree panel on the left, open the Annotations folder, right-click on Notes Area and click Activate, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Updating a BOM table.

Next, go up to the ribbon at the top of the screen, click the Assembly tab if it isn’t already selected, and click the Bill of Materials icon. This will open the BOM PropertyManager in the FeatureManager design tree area on the left of the screen.

In the PropertyManager, under:

-BOM Type, select Parts only

-Configurations, select Default

-Part Configuration Grouping, select Display as one item number and Display all configurations of the same part as one item

Then click the green check mark icon. You can now position the BOM in the main display area, and resize it as you see fit (just drag the outer borders or columns/rows to resize it), as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Adjusting the BOM.

When you have finished making your adjustments, go to the bottom of the tutorial pane on the right, and click NEXT TOPIC (Adding a Display State).

Adding a Display State

Now we need to add the various display states. Display states show the orientation of the assembly and how the parts are located with respect to each other. These display states can be in the form of orthographic, isometric or any other kind of view that you want to appear in your document. We can rotate parts or make them disappear from view, and once a display state has been assigned to that situation, we can recall it at a later time without needing to manipulate the parts again.

For the first view, we want to orient the annotations so they are in plane with the footboard (the actual pedal).To do this, go into the FeatureManager design tree and expand the annotations folder. Locate the Footboard component, right-click Footboard, and select Activate and Reorient from the menu. This will show the assembly from a top-down view.

Now, we only want to see the actual footboard in this view (not the rest of the assembly), so we need to hide the rest of the assembly. To do this, go to the FeatureManager design tree, locate the PART named foot_board (see Figure 5), right-click the part, and select Isolate. You should see all of the other parts of the assembly disappear.

Figure 5. Hiding the rest of the assembly.

Next up, we want to save this display state. Click the ConfigurationManager tab in the left-hand pane (see Figure 6), then right-click on the empty space in the ConfigurationManager area. In the menu, select Add Display State. You will notice at the bottom of the ConfigurationManager that this new view has been saved as Display State-3.

Figure 6. Adding a Display State.

Now, go back to the bottom of the tutorial pane and click NEXT TOPIC (Capturing the 3D View).

Capturing the 3D View

The next step is to capture the 3D view. Go to the ribbon at the top of the screen, select the SOLIDWORKS MBD tab, and click the Capture 3D View icon, as shown below.

The PropertyManager options will open up in the left-hand pane. Here, you can rename the 3D View Name. In this case, we will keep the name as “Footboard”.

In the Configuration section, select Default.

In Display State, select Display State-3.

In Annotation Views, select Footboard.

And then click the green check mark when you are finished.

Now, go back to the tutorial pane, and click NEXT TOPIC (Copying a Tolerance Scheme) at the bottom.

Copying a Tolerance Scheme

Now we want to copy the tolerance scheme from the full assembly display state (Display State-1) to the isolated footboard display state (Display State-3).

At the bottom of the left-hand pane (ConfigurationManager) under Display States (linked), double-click Display State-1 and the full assembly will appear in the main window. Now,in the ConfigurationManager, double-click Grey. The assembly will turn grey.

Now, go to the ribbon menu at the top, select the SOLIDWORKS MBD tab, and click the Copy Scheme icon. This will open the SchemeProperties panel in the PropertyManager in the left-hand pane. We can change the scheme name here, but in this case, we will leave it as Dimension Schema 1.

In the Source Configuration section, select Default (see Figure 7). Click the green check mark, and then move to the NEXT TOPIC (Adding a Display State) in the tutorial pane.

Figure 7. Copying a Tolerance Scheme.

Adding Display State (again)

Now that the tolerance scheme has been copied, we can add the new display state. This is the same procedure that we used before, except we want to ensure that all of the other annotation views (except for Footboard) are hidden. We can do this by going to the FeatureManager, opening the Annotations folder in the design tree, and right-clicking each component annotation and selecting Hide. Make sure that the Footboard annotation is not hidden. If it is, then right-click on it, and select Show.

Again, go down the FeatureManager design tree to the actual part icons, right-click on Foot_Board part, and press Isolate. All of the other components will again disappear. As before, now we click on the ConfigurationManager tab in the left-hand pane, right-click in an empty space, and click Add Display State. This will create Display State-4.

Now that we have added the display state to the grey component, we can move to the next step. Click Next Topic (Capturing the 3D View) in the tutorial pane.

Capturing the 3D View

Return to the ribbon at the top of the screen, select the SOLIDWORKS MBD tab, and click the Capture 3D View icon as before.

In the PropertyManager area, we will rename the 3D View Name as “Grey Footboard”.

In the Configuration section, select Grey.

In Display State, select Display State-4.

In Annotation Views, select Footboard.

Then click the green check mark and go to the NEXT TOPIC.

Adding Balloons to the Assembly

In the ConfigurationManager, double-click Default and select Display State-1 at the bottom of the pane. This will recall the full assembly.

In the FeatureManager design tree, expand the Annotations folder, right-click Front and click Activate and Reorient. The view in the main area will change to the front plane, and you will see the full drum pedal assembly from the side, complete with the DimXpert annotations. We don’t want these, because we are creating a new 3D view with bubbles.

To hide the DimXpert annotations, right-click Annotations and clear Show DimXpert Annotations.

Now, go to the SOLIDWORKS MBD toolbar at the top of the screen and click the Balloon icon.

In the PropertyManager, under Settings, in Balloon text source, select Bill of Materials1. This will link the balloon text to our BOM.

Now, if you click on a part in the main view, the balloon tool will know which part you are trying to identify and will create a balloon connected to that part via a leader line. Click to place balloons as shown in Figure 8. The balloons will automatically be numbered based on the BOM you created.

Figure 8. Creating a BOM with bubbles.

Click the green check mark and move on to the NEXT TOPIC.

Capture Again

Now we need to Capture the 3D View again.

Click Capture 3D View (in the SOLIDWORKS MBD toolbar).

In the PropertyManager:

In 3D View Name, type Balloons.

In Configuration, select Grey.

In Display State, select Display State-2.

In Annotation Views, select Front1.

Click the green check mark to finish, and click NEXT TOPIC.

Exploded View

Now that we have aligned our orthographic views with the corresponding planes for the annotations, we can do an exploded view.

In the FeatureManager design tree, expand Annotations folder, right-click Isometric and click Activate and Reorient. On the SOLIDWORKS MBD ribbon at the top, click Exploded View.

Now we can click on various parts in the design window and explode them as we see fit. Alternatively, we can expand the Hardware folder in the FeatureManager design tree and select the components from there. This is particularly useful for selecting hard-to-see items, such as screws. In this exploded view, I have exploded the base, two of the screws and the beater shaft (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. An exploded view of the model.

Now that the model has been exploded, we can go to the NEXT TOPIC and capture the 3D view again.

Click Capture 3D View in SOLIDWORKS MBD ribbon.

In the PropertyManager, in 3D View Name, type “Exploded View”.

In Configuration, select ExplView1.

In Display State, select Display State-2.

In Annotation Views, select Isometric.

Publishing the Document

We are done! We can finally publish the model as a document. Click NEXT TOPIC to continue.

If you take a look in the SOLIDWORKS MBD ribbon, you will see several options related to document publishing (see Figure 10). Here, we can click on the Publish to 3D PDF icon. If you wish to change the template to 3D PDFs, you can do so by clicking the Template Editor icon. We can also publish to eDrawing format, but for this tutorial, let’s look at 3D PDF publishing.

Figure 10. Publishing options.

Now we can view our published 3D PDF document, with the BOM list, the various views (see Figure 11) and any other PMI data that we chose to include in it (see Figure 12).

Figure 11. The BOM list with different views.

Figure 12. PMI data included with the BOM. 

Summary

Using SOLIDWORKS MBD removes the need for going back and changing drawings, because the main source of our data is in the form of a 3D model. This model can contain data for manufacturing, such as for CNC toolpaths, or even 3D printing. That same model can be used for creating a BOM, or for rendering to create marketing materials. In MBD, the 3D asset is central to everything.

In principle, one could create the model in 3D from scratch, assign the dimensions and PMI data, and produce an electronic drawing—then have that item manufactured without ever having to touch a piece of paper. Moreover, if we wish to update the final drawing information, we need only go back and alter the model.

As you have seen, the procedure for creating the document is fairly repetitive. It involves selecting the best angle for presentation, saving the display state, ensuring the annotations are available to that specific view, and then repeating the process until we have the views we require.

The good news is that we can make use of templates when it comes to creating the final document. So, while the process may seem a little tedious at first, I can promise you from experience that it’s a lot less time consuming than going from 2D to 3D and back again to 2D.

Give it a try for yourself.

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.

Figure 1. A car wheel.

Figure 2. An electric engine starter.

Figure 3. A printed circuit board (PCB) in an oscilloscope.

You probably can guess that I’m referring to the mounting structures that are called out by the red arrows or circles in Figures 1, 2 and 3. These structures could either be the circular mounting holes on your car wheels, or the distributed holes and fasteners on a printed circuit board (PCB) in an oscilloscope or your smartphone. In order to assemble multiple parts together, mounting clearance holes are widely used in mechanical and electrical designs. Because these holes stabilize a part by removing the rotational and translational degrees of freedom, they are often established as datum features for machining and inspection.

Here comes another question for you. In the simplified designs shown in Figures 4 and 5, are the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) definitions the same in the two figures?

Figure 4. Define two mounting holes as two separate datum features.

Figure 5. Define a pattern of two mounting holes as one datum feature.

The models are identical in Figures 4 and 5. The difference in the two figures is that one defined two mounting holes as separate datum features B and C (Figure 4), while the other specified the hole pattern of multiple holes as one datum feature B (Figure 5). These are totally different definitions that serve different needs. Here are the differences. To mount this part, most of the time, the multiple hole instances in an entire pattern act with equal chances of contact to stabilize the structure, so both or all of the instances in a pattern should function equally and simultaneously. In other words, there is no priority of one hole over another. Therefore, it’s important to define the entire pattern, rather than individual holes, as a datum feature. The practice illustrated in Figure 4 should only be used when there is indeed a necessary ranking order among the hole instances.

The ASME Y14.5: 2009 GD&T standard shown in Figure 6 interprets the practice shown in Figure 5 further.

Figure 6. Define a pattern as a datum feature as interpreted in ASME Y14.5: 2009.

You can see that by defining the hole pattern as datum feature B, the theoretical datum axis B established by the four-pin datum simulator is actually at the center of the pattern, rather than any of the hole axes. This practice better serves the need in this instance. What matters most in this design is the accurate positioning of the plate center because it determines the positioning of two M20 threaded holes. On the other hand, the individual mounting holes at the bottom of Figure 6 really don’t matter much because they don’t carry out the core function of the design. As long as they can collaboratively locate and stabilize the overall structure, their mission is accomplished.

The car wheel shown in Figure 1 provides another example. A key requirement for a car wheel is to accurately rotate across its center. Otherwise, the car would bounce up and down while it is being driven on a road. Consequently, it’s strongly recommended that you define the entire pattern of the wheel’s five holes as a datum feature to accurately control the center position.

There are other advantages to this practice. For example, because you don’t have to define one hole as datum feature B, the next as C, the next as D, and so on, there is no tolerance accumulation. In other words, a subsequent datum feature wouldn’t have to collect or be impacted by all the tolerances from the previous datum features. As a result, the manufacturing accuracy and quality are better. Furthermore, because the key requirement is on the collaborative result of the mounting center, the tolerance on each individual hole can be loosened. For a simplified example like the one shown in Figure 5, one hole location may shift a bit to the right, but if the other hole on the other side shifts by the same amount to the right, then two gauge pins on a datum simulator can still fit into the two holes simultaneously, so the part will still be good. In this way, you can save on costs because an inspection can accept parts that would have otherwise been rejected due to individual shifts in the hole center.

Now that the real-world use cases and advantages of a pattern as a datum feature have been clarified, let’s take a look at how SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 supports this practice. Figure 7 shows an example with one of the NIST product and manufacturing information (PMI)validation conformance test models.

Figure 7. Pick a hole pattern as a secondary datum in the Auto Dimension Scheme.

The software lets you define a model manually or automatically. In this example, I’m using the Auto Dimension Scheme. I picked the bottom face as the primary datum feature. Then, for the secondary datum feature, I clicked on one of the surrounding mounting hole edges. SOLIDWORKS then recognizes that this edge belongs to a hole that belongs to a pattern. So, the software presents several practical options, including a cylinder, a hole and a pattern, as the default selection, and a compound hole. Let’s just keep the default selection and continue to identify the target features to annotate. Next, please click on the green check mark in the auto dimensioning command, and you’re done. The workflow is pretty simple and fits nicely into the existing software functions. Figure 8 shows the results in which the four mounting holes serve together as the datum feature B, and the 10 holes on the top face are positioned to the datum reference frame established by A and B at the maximum material boundary.

Figure 8. A pattern of four holes is defined as datum feature B.

By the way, the pattern recognition and selection as a datum feature are not limited to native SOLIDWORKS models. Imported models are also supported. Figure 9 shows that you can leverage this new enhancement with an NX model.

Figure 9. Select a pattern as a datum feature from an NX model.

If you define a datum feature manually and there is an existing pattern callout to that feature, then the datum symbol will automatically jump to the callout (as shown in Figure 10) to tighten up the viewport display and comply with the ASME Y14.5: 2009 standard.

Figure 10. A datum symbol automatically jumps to an existing pattern callout in compliance with ASME Y14.5: 2009.

With that, let’s conclude this article. Patterns as datum features are widely used in products from automotive to consumer electronics. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 can support this practice with both manual and automatic annotations for both native and imported models.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your model-based enterprises, please visit its 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.

However, things are changing these days. My clients no longer send me 2D drawings. Rather, they send me only 3D models—either native or neutral formats integrated with 3D annotations such as datum symbols, dimensions, tolerances and surface finishes. These models may be in non-SOLIDWORKS formats such as Creo, NX, CATIA V5 or STEP. Now, what should I do? These annotated models look like black boxes to me. I may be able to import the models into SOLIDWORKS, but the key requirements conveyed in the 3D annotations will be missing. How am I supposed to provide a job quote without knowing the requirements of the job? Do I have to buy, install and maintain one seat of every proprietary CAD application just to see the annotations my clients provide? What about the neutral STEP files integrated with 3D annotations?

It turns out that this situation is not unusual. More and more suppliers are reporting similar situations driven by large enterprises moving toward model-based workflows. As suppliers, you really don’t have any choice but to adapt. Therefore, it’s encouraging to see that SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 now imports both models and 3D annotations from Creo, NX, CATIA V5 and STEP242. Figure 1 shows an NX model integrated with 3D annotations that has been imported into SOLIDWORKS.

Figure 1. An Imported NX model integrated with 3D annotations and views inside SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018.

You may notice that the annotations highlight the associative features. For example, the positional tolerance feature control frame in green highlights the width feature of the pocket on the plate. This helps you to visualize and confirm the relationship between an annotation and the defined feature as is recommended in the ASME Y14.41:2012 standard. Furthermore, the NX model views are brought in at the bottom 3D View pane, which can improve your visual understanding of all the requirements, which can be overwhelming sometimes. You may examine one view at a time, or follow the curated views to look at certain details in a sequence.This way, the annotated models don’t look like black boxes any more. Even without 2D drawings, suppliers using SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 can obtain the key requirements conveyed in a model’s 3D annotations.

One caveat is that the imported annotations are graphical only, so while human eyes can read them, the software applications are unable to provide additional semantic meaning behind the graphics. This is one way that the software can be improved in the future. Ideally, the semantic definitions would be retained after the annotations are imported into SOLIDWORKS, in order to automate downstream applications such as machining and inspection. This type of tolerance-based automation is possible today with native SOLIDWORKS annotations as illustrated in this blog post.

Another use case is that after the model is imported, engineers would like to create 2D drawings or publish 3D PDF documents based on them. In the 2018 release, these imported annotations don’t show up in these derivatives yet, because the annotations are not native to SOLIDWORKS. This is another area that can be improved in the future.

Now, besides the annotation import, what if a manufacturer needs to export annotations? A typical scenario is that a designer using SOLIDWORKS needs to send a neutral STEP file to a machine shop that may not have the software installed. To facilitate the advancement of the model-based workflows, in 2014, ISO released a new STEP standard, ISO 10303-242. I’m glad that SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 can now export semantic or software-readable annotations in this neutral format as shown in Figure 2.

Figure2. A STEP 242 file exported by SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018.

The model is displayed in eDrawings 2018. As you can see, selecting the feature control frames on the bottom face, or datum feature A, highlights the associated feature in green.

To illustrate the semantic definitions behind the graphics, Figure 3 shows the analyzed results of a SOLIDWORKS MBD STEP 242 export using the STEP file analyzer by Robert Lipman with the National Institute of Standard and Technologies, or NIST.

Figure3. The analyzed results of a STEP 242 file exported by SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018.

As you can see, the datum references, dimensions, tolerances, geometric control symbols, modifiers, and other annotations are conveyed in their semantic definitions. This makes the information consumable by the downstream manufacturing software applications. Therefore,various automations can now be realized even without native CAD models, such as Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) for machining or coordinate measurement machine (CMM) for inspection. It will take some time for manufacturing software venders to fully digest and act upon the semantic annotations in STEP242, but it’s promising to see that SOLIDWORKS is taking the lead to lay the foundation for the digital information flow.

It’s important to acknowledge that even before CAM software can act upon the intelligent annotations in STEP 242, just seeing the annotations attached to the model in one place provides remarkable value. Typically, a machinist loads a model in a CAM program, but they have to navigate through multiple pages of 2D drawings outside of the CAM program to collect the tolerances or surface finishes. Then the machinist must go back to the CAM environment and key in these requirements. Now, being able to see everything in once place means that machinists don’t have to switch back and forth between 3D models and 2D drawings any more, which is a significant time-saver today.

Of course, a natural next step is for CAM software to automatically extract the requirements attached to the STEP 242 models and program machining strategies, setups, and numerical control (NC) code accordingly. This automation has been realized with native SOLIDWORKS annotations by SOLIDWORKS CAM. I’m sure the automations based on the neutral STEP 242 are coming soon.

With that, let’s quickly recap this article. To facilitate the collaboration in Model-Based Enterprise (MBE) workflows, SOLIDWORKS MBD 2018 added the capability to import non-SOLIDWORKS annotations and also to export software-readable annotations in the neutral STEP 242 format in compliance with the ISO 10303-242 standard.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave themin the comments area below. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help implement your Model-Based Enterprise, please visit its 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.

• Organizes datum symbols and feature control frames in a structured tree for easier lookups
• Cross-highlights from 3D GD&T in the tree to corresponding model features in the graphics area
• Recognizes separate datum targets as one cohesive datum feature
• Flags GD&T errors automatically
• Guides proper GD&T definitions by providing only valid options according to the selected features

Let’s continue in this article with the solid benefits brought by model-based definition (MBD) and practical implementation suggestions.

According to Ram Pentakota, the engineering director with the Johnson Controls automotive seating division, quantitative benefits have been observed across multiple production procedures, such as design, engineering, manufacturing, quoting, quality and risk management. Table 1 summarizes the benefit categories, improvement range and key enablers.

Table 1. MBD benefits observed at Johnson Controls.

The benefits are certainly attractive, but the key question is how other manufacturers can copy the success. Let’s look into several recommended practices.

First of all, for many businesses, the transition from 2D drawings to MBD seems to be too big a leap to accomplish today. For instance, to comply with legal or governmental regulatory requirements, companies oftentimes still need to submit 2D drawing documents. Also, at the work site, the field team members need to see the whole drawing at once and mark up comments quickly. 2D drawing printouts come in very handy in these cases, and they don’t need digital equipment onsite at all.

To serve these needs and facilitate the transition, Johnson Controls developed an interim approach. The team developed tools to generate 2D drawings automatically with typical view layouts according to the 3D MBD data. At a first glance, this may seem to be a step away from MBD, but it’s actually a strategic bridge towards an effective enabler for MBD.

The reality is that 2D drawings are not going away anytime soon. There are many operations that have always been done in 2D and will continue in 2D for many years, for conventional, regulatory or pragmatic reasons. We can't just jump off the cliff and start everything from scratch.

The interim automatic 2D drawing approach can help shift the orientation and effort from 2D drawings to 3D MBD. Designers and engineers can now gradually start defining product marketing information(PMI) and creating views in 3D besides modeling. Just in case 2D drawings are needed, with the work already done in 3D, 2D drawings can be generated quickly at little effort. The net result is that the focus can be gradually shifted toward MBD.

Johnson Controls is not the only manufacturer who came up with this transition strategy. According to Prashant Kulkarni with GE Power and Water, on-demand paper drawing was implemented in GE's MBD process too. Figure 1 shows an on-demand drawing report dialog box, where notes, views, tables and signatures can be selected from the existing MBD datasets.

Figure 1. An on-demand drawing report dialog box. (Image courtesy of GE.)

Then the 3D MBD information will be passed along to a drawing template to generate drawings automatically as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Automatic 2D drawings based on 3D MBD data. (Image courtesy of GE.)

Kulkarni called these “pseudo-drawings,” in that they are not created through traditional 2D detailing. Most of the work is actually done in 3D, and the pseudo-drawings are just a quick report of the MBD data. These drawings can be printed out as hard copies as needed, but they must respect the 3D data as the single source of truth, instead of the other way around. You can learn more details about GE’s transitional approach in a previous blog post, “Drawingless or Paperless?”

SOLIDWORKS MBD provides similar capabilities for reusing MBD data in 2D drawings. For instance, Figure 3 shows a 3D model with attached PMI in its front view.

Figure 3. A 3D model with attached PMI in the front view.

On a 2D drawing sheet, you can choose to import annotations from the 3D model as shown in Figure 4. As you drag and drop the front view from the view palette to the sheet, the DimXpert PMI will be automatically carried over from the model to the drawing. This annotation import automation can save effort in the 2D drawing creation and help steer more energy towards 3D.

Figure 4. Import annotations from a 3D model to its 2D drawing.

In this article, we summarized the solid benefits observed at Johnson Controls. Then we looked at a common challenge facing manufacturers today: how to manage the transition from 2D drawings to MBD. As a strategic bridge and effective enabler, an automatic 2D drawing approach based on the MBD data has been adopted by both Johnson Controls and GE Power and Water. Lastly, we introduced a SOLIDWORKS function to reuse 3D annotations in 2D drawings in the direction of the above discussion. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its product page.

About the Author

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

In December 2014, an updated STEP standard was released, the ISO 10303 AP 242 (STEP 242). Its full name is “Industrial automation systems and integration—Product data representation and exchange—Part 242: Application protocol: Managed model-based 3D engineering.” The 2014 version was the first edition. The second edition is planned in the future.

By the way, just in case that you are puzzled by these seemingly random standard index numbers, 203, 214 and 242, here is a nerdy way to remember all of them. Their last two decimal places are 03, 14 and 42, respectively. Coincidentally, 3 multiplied by 14 equal 42. I said coincidentally because I highly doubt the standard committee came up with the index numbers based on this calculation. Nevertheless, it works for my memory and I hope it works for you too.

Let’s drill a bit further down to the standard content. It features a more dedicated model-based definition (MBD) support, such as 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) integrated with models. Therefore, it has generated strong interest in the industry. Enterprises that want their suppliers to read the MBD data without 2D drawings can now export STEP 242 with PMI. This way, the clients don’t have to send out the original proprietary CAD files or force the suppliers to maintain the matching CAD software to read the files. The clients will have a larger eligible vender pool from which to choose.

On the other hand, suppliers can now just fulfill the numeric control (NC) machining orders directly using the neutral STEP 242 data from customers. From the technical standard point, a machinist can now program the NC code according to the models integrated with PMI at one place. As a comparison, a typical way today is that the machinist must look back and forth between two sets of documents to conduct the NC programming. One is the model in a CAM software application. The other is the corresponding 2D drawing, either digital or hard copy, to extract the tolerances, surface finishes or other key requirements and then enter into the CAM application. Obviously, the back-and-forth interpreting of two sets of documents is not as efficient as reviewing everything at one place.

Business-wise, machine shops may not have to maintain all the proprietary CAD products to open the various client MBD data formats any more. The vender’s potential customer base can be expanded because of this common MBD data communication protocol.

One step further, STEP 242 has the potential to enable the continuous digital threads throughout the extended model-based enterprise (MBE). As highlighted in a previous article, “Top 5 Reasons to Use MBD,” the number one benefit of MBD is to further automate manufacturing with software-readable PMI. One of the driving philosophies of STEP 242 is to communicate software-readable PMI so that manufacturing applications, such as CAM or coordinate measuring machines, can program the NC code automatically, according not only to the models, but also per the 3D PMI.

It’s important to note that there can be two levels of 3D PMI in STEP 242 or other MBD data, presentational (also called human-readable or graphical) and representational (also called software-readable or semantic). Presentational PMI means that human eyes and intelligence can interpret it, but software applications hardly can. Figure 1 shows an example. Despite the rough handwriting, we can still recognize it as a diameter of 20 with plus and minus 0.05 tolerances, but this interpretation is very hard for software, at least today.

Figure 1. A presentational PMI example.

On the other hand, representational PMI can be recognized not only by human eyes, but also by software. Figure 2 shows an example of a representational hole pattern callout. Please notice the callout is automatically highlighting both instances of the pattern in the viewport. Furthermore, the callout properties are parametrically defined on its property manager on the left, such as the reference feature, callout value, tolerance type and decimal places, all of which can be extracted and reused by other software applications automatically.

Figure 2. A representational 3D hole pattern callout in SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017.

A common misunderstanding is that if a callout can highlight the associated features, then it’s representational. As noted above, the cross-highlighting only means that the association from the PMI to the reference features exists. Representational PMI also requires the underlying parametric properties that are consumable by software to automate downstream manufacturing processes.

You can find more about the recommended practices of STEP 242 PMI at the CAx implementer forum. The latest recommended practice version of PMI presentation and representation was published in 2014. A 2016 version is still under review at the time of this article. Along with other companies, Dassault Systèmes, including the CATIA and SOLIDWORKS brands, is an active member of this forum to improve the STEP translator quality.

In summary, STEP 242 and its implementation practices are evolving rapidly in the recent years. Software developers and the industry are monitoring this new MBD communication protocol closely because of its potential benefits noted above. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 started publishing presentational PMI attached to models as shown in Figure 3. The published STEP 242 3D PMI in eDrawings 2017 is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 3. Publish STEP 242 with 3D PMI in SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017.

Figure 4. STEP 242 presentational 3D PMI display in eDrawings 2017.

Although Figure 4 shows only presentational PMI, the communication still can be more efficient than looking back and forth between the model and separate 2D drawings. One example is NC programming in CAM as noted above. I hope that SOLIDWORKS MBD can publish representational PMI in STEP 242 in the future releases.

Lastly, it’s important to point out that although 3D PMI is a key feature of STEP 242, this STEP standard scope is much broader than 3D PMI. Figure 5 summarizes the high-level coverage, such as process planning, data management and 3D composite design. You may find more details from the ISO standard itself and the AP242.org website.

Figure 5. The high-level scope of STEP 242. (Image courtesy of AP242.org.)

In this article, we first introduced the STEP 242 standard and its potential benefits to MBD implementations. Then we clarified the differences between presentational and representational PMI. I’m glad that SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 can now publish this format and eDrawings 2017 can read it. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

Figure 1. A multiple-page 3D PDF example published by SOLIDWORKS MBD.

Because of the rich and easy-to-use 3D content viewable in the ubiquitous Adobe Reader, 3D PDF has become an important contributing factor to model-based definition (MBD). However, adopting 3D PDF doesn’t necessarily mean a successful MBD implementation. On the flip side, a successful MBD implementation doesn’t necessarily need 3D PDF either.

Let me explain the first point first. 3D PDF is just one of the contributing factors to enabling MBD. There are many other factors to consider in an MBD implementation. A previous blog post summarized three key perspectives within an organization—people, process and product—along with detailed recommendations and lessons learned. As proven by many manufacturers rolling out MBD, the most challenging obstacle is not technology, let alone 3D PDF. It’s the team member’s 2D drawing mindset and the process shift. So please don’t underestimate the scope of an MBD implementation. It’s not as simple as adopting 3D PDF.

Furthermore, even at the technology level, 3D PDF itself has many variations, and we need to be discerning about what to adopt. 3D PDF started with a format called Universal 3D (U3D) in 2004. The last U3D format edition was published in 2007. In other words, it hasn’t been updated for nine years. Common issues with U3D include low data fidelity, poor quality of 3D model rendering, slow response speed and large file sizes.

A new 3D PDF format is called product representation compact (PRC), which was established as ISO 14739-1 standard in December 2014. As noted by the 3D PDF Consortium, the PRC format is an accurate, highly compressible 3D data format optimized to store, load and display various 3D data, metadata, assembly structure, graphics information and product manufacturing information (PMI). To improve the output quality and comply with the ISO standard, SOLIDWORKS upgraded the underlying 3D PDF technology from the U3D format to the PRC format in 2015. The example shown in Figure 1 is based on the PRC format.

A point worth mentioning is that you don’t need a SOLIDWORKS MBD license to publish a 3D PDF. Figure 2 shows a gear box assembly model with integrated PMI and 3D views in SOLIDWORKS.

Figure 2. A gear box assembly model with integrated PMI and 3D views in SOLIDWORKS.

You can save this assembly as a 3D PDF by checking the box in the orange circle as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Save a model as a 3D PDF.

Figure 4 shows the saved result of a basic 3D PDF.

Figure 4. A basic 3D PDF saved in SOLIDWORKS.

As you can see, the PMI and 3D views are not saved into this document. It contains only one viewport and one sheet. Although it is based on the PRC format and is embedded with a 3D model, it falls short in meeting other important MBD needs as noted above. Therefore, the 3D PDF published by SOLIDWORKS MBD(as shown in Figure 1) is highly recommended for your MBD implementation. Table 1 summarizes the key differences between the 3D PDF documents saved in SOLIDWORKS and those published by SOLIDWORKS MBD.

Table 1. Differences between the 3D PDF documents saved in SOLIDWORKS and those published by SOLIDWORKS MBD.

In summary, an MBD implementation requires much more than 3D PDF. Mindset and process shifts are far more challenging than technologies. Also the 3D PDF technologies involve multiple levels. The rich and production-quality 3D PDF based on the PRC format can serve you better.

Now let’s move on to the second point. A successful MBD implementation doesn’t necessarily need 3D PDF. As mentioned above, 3D PDF is great for team members who don’t have access to CAD products to consume the MBD data. However, for those who do use CAD products, the native CAD formats can best preserve the data intelligence and avoid the conversion errors. Let’s remember: Although the 3D PDF by SOLIDWORKS MBD can reach less than 1-micron accuracy from the native model, as a neutral format, it can’t and shouldn’t retain all the native information.

Because of the data fidelity considerations, Gulfstream, along with all the suppliers, is standardized and synchronized on one engineering software platform. “I can’t tell how big of a difference it has made to the [MBD] implementation,” said Dan Ganser, product lifecycle management staff scientist at Gulfstream.“Not having to convert data is unbelievable.”

Therefore, when you are evaluating MBD technologies, please start with your objectives. For instance, if you just need the visual presentation and accurate measurement of the 3D models, then the 3D PDF published by SOLIDWORKS MBD can satisfy this need. If you want to use the intelligent model and representational PMI to drive downstream manufacturing applications such as computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and a coordinate measuring machine (CMM), then the native models work better. As of November 2016, I’m not yet aware of a CAM or CMM software application that can read the 3D PDF model integrated with PMI and program automatically. It may become possible in the future as the technology evolves.

Besides 3D PDF, there are also other approaches to share MBD data. For example, the STEP format is widely used at machine shops. In 2014, ISO published the first edition of STEP AP 242, which specified the PMI support for this neutral format. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 can publish STEP 242 with graphical PMI (see Figure 5), and eDrawings 2017 can read it (see Figure 6).

Figure 5. Publish STEP 242 with PMI using SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017.

Figure 6. Read STEP 242 with graphical PMI in eDrawings 2017.

In addition, as described in a previous blog post, sharing MBD data over the Web has become increasingly promising. Figure 7 shows an image of an interactive MBD model from an iPhone’s Web browser.

Figure 7. An interactive MBD model from an iPhone’s Web browser.

I hope this article can help clarify 3D PDF and MBD a bit further. 3D PDF is one of the contributing factors to enabling MBD, but it’s certainly not everything. Native CAD formats are the best for preserving the MBD intelligence. In addition to 3D PDF, STEP 242 and MBD data over the Web are also promising approaches for sharing and collaboration. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

Table 1. The Dos and Don’ts in MBD implementation.

To put things into perspective, let's begin with a supply-chain story. Five years ago, a vendor was asked by a client to adopt the MBD process. For a selected pilot product, the client built a new model-based design using a proprietary CAD tool and exported the design into an intermediate 3D format. The MBD data in the intermediate 3D format was sent to the vendor, including the models and integrated 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI). No 2D drawings were provided.

To fulfill the order, the vendor followed the mandate and plowed ahead. The supplier's engineering team found a viewer of this intermediate 3D format to open the data and interpret the design. However, the team kept running into obvious mistakes in the client’s data, but they weren't sure whether the issues were caused by the data, the viewing software or the usage of the software. Finally, several months later, the vendor raised a red flag to the client—only to discover that the files they received didn't match the client's original design. Now after months of time, money and work had been wasted, the finger-pointing began.

I wish this incident was isolated, but it's not. In an MBD validation pilot conducted by the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States, one of the pilot projects was the Bradley cross-drive transmission as shown in Figure 1. The research team found that 21 percent of the transmission models contained errors.

Figure 1. The Bradley cross-drive transmission models (left) and the physical product (right). (Image courtesy of Paul Huang.)

How then can we avoid these kinds of errors? In the 2D drawing–based process, there is a step to check the drawings. In the MBD process, we need a similar checking process to both verify and validate the MBD data through manual review and/or using automatic software tools. Let me explain these two steps—verification and validation.

Verification focuses on checking the cohesiveness of the model,as well as the product and manufacturing information (PMI) in the source 3D CAD design. For example, a common question during the design phase is whether a part can be manufactured on the shop floor, or what kind of manufacturing issues might arise from certain types of design. Figure 2 shows a manufacturability check by an application called DFMXpress in SOLIDWORKS.

Figure 2. A manufacturability check by DFMXpress.

Besides the model manufacturability checking, here is another example with PMI. If a maximum material condition (MMC) modifier  (M in a circle) is attached to a feature positional tolerance zone that does not have feature size tolerances defined, then there is no way to identify the MMC. Therefore, this modifier results in an error. SOLIDWORKS MBD can catch this issue as shown in Figure 3. There are hundreds of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) rules built into the software to check errors. More details can be found in a previous article, “Check Your Grammar: Verification for GD&T and MBD.”

Figure 3. A GD&T MMC modifier error is flagged in both the graphic area and the tree nodes in SOLIDWORKS.

In contrast, validation checks whether a derivative matches its original source. For instance, if a hole is missing or if a tolerance value is altered from a CAD model to its STP export, it should be caught by the validation step. A presentation on MBD implementation practices by Casey Gorman with Sparton shared these experiences:“Before sending data to suppliers, we validate STP derivatives against the original CAD models and use a CheckSum tool to protect them. Later when a supplier sends us their STP or models used for manufacturing, we compare their models against ours. If they changed our models and the part didn't pass quality checks, they would have to eat this part, instead of us.”

Similarly, Gulfstream established rigorous processes to ensure data integrity. A software application (Kubotek Validation) is used to run the topology analysis by comparing model surface changes from one CAD version to an upgrade, or from the CAD file to its derivative.Furthermore, another software tool (ITI CADIQ) is deployed to compare the point changes. Besides models, these tools are also used to compare the PMI differences.

If the separate results by Kubotek Validate and ITI CADIQ both confirm zero changes, then this dataset is regarded as well preserved between software versions, or between the source data and the export. If there are any changes to the dataset, or any inconsistencies between the validation results by the two different tools, then the software upgrade can't take place, or the data export is not trustworthy until the issues are resolved.

Now let's circle back to the supply-chain story noted above.For clients, it's highly recommended that models be verified and any derivatives be validated against original designs before sending them to suppliers. For suppliers, it is best to work from a client's verified and validated data. If a vendor's engineers have to recreate any new models, then the new creations must also be validated against the client’s data. These verification and validation requirements may even be built into a legal contract before a job is accepted to clarify the rights and responsibilities of parties.

There are capabilities in SOLIDWORKS today to help you build trust into your data, such as DFMXpress, PMI verification and Design Checker. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

A gap analysis revealed that the 2012 release lacked a way to quickly and easily capture and retrieve comprehensive MBD variables, such as models, annotations, configurations, display states, annotation views, orientations and zooming scales.

Targeted at this gap, SOLIDWORKS MBD 2015 developed a tool called 3D View as shown at the bottom of Figures 1 and 2. Simply put, 3D View is a visual bookmark that captures a comprehensive combination of all the MBD variables noted above. In other words, you can take a photo of your MBD design using a 3D view.

The view thumbnails are designed to help users get a quick visual of the content. Each of these thumbnails has a pop-up balloon with the view’s name and properties, which can help users easily grasp the various view settings. Going one step further, a series of created 3D views build up a visual storyline that conveys the design requirements step by step to downstream manufacturing teams.

Figure 1. A panel of 3D views captured in a shaft part model.

Figure 2. A panel of 3D views captured in a gear box assembly model.

Let's dive into an example to see how these 3D views can be created. We will start off with a shaft with three configurations(130 mm, 150 mm and 200 mm) as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. A shaft with three configurations.

The green arrows at the top and bottom of Figure 3 indicate the buttons to capture 3D views. Once you click either one, you will see the property manager on the left and a preview of your 3D view on the bottom panel as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The property manager (on the left) to capture a 3D View.

You can select the desired configuration, display state and annotation views on the fly before a capture is finalized. For example, Figure 5 shows that the 150-mm configuration is selected on the property manager on the left. The model in the main viewport is updated automatically to this configuration. With a longer shaft, you may need to zoom out and pan the model a bit to fit the shaft into the viewport.

Figure 5. A 150-mm configuration is selected in the property manager.

Similarly, you can adjust the visibility of multiple annotation views for this upcoming 3D view. For instance, if you include the Notes Area annotation view, the notes will be visible as shown in Figure 6. If you deselect the Notes Area annotation view, the notes will be hidden as shown in Figure 7. One caveat here is that the active annotation view can’t be excluded. In this case, the Right annotation view is active and will remain on, unless you activate another annotation view through the model tree or the DimXpert tree.

Figure 6. The Notes Area annotation view is included on the property manager.

Figure 7. The Notes Area annotation view is deselected on the property manager.

You can turn on multiple annotation views as needed. Figure 8 shows that the section annotation view is included. Therefore, the callouts to a tilted hole are visible on the right side.

Figure 8. Include multiple annotation views on the property manager to display additional callouts.

Once you are satisfied with the view settings, you can press the green checkmark at the top of the property manager to finalize the 3D view. Or you can simply double-click on the viewport area to finalize the creation. By double-clicking on the viewport area, you can save yourself the trouble of moving your mouse all the way to the upper-left corner. Plus, you don’t have to click exactly on the small green checkmark. Double-clicking anywhere on the viewport area will accept the creation as long as the click doesn’t select anything else.

In the same way, you can create as many 3D views as needed as shown in Figures 1 and 2. There is no limit to the number of 3D views that can be included in a document. You can retrieve a certain visual bookmark in the viewport area by simply double-clicking on its thumbnail. If you want to edit a 3D view, right-click on the view and select “Recapture View” as shown in Figure 9. You will be able to further refine the view by following the steps noted above.

Figure 9. Further refine a 3D view by recapturing it.

As introduced in a previous post, “What's New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: MBD,” you can now drag and drop 3D views to easily resequence them and fine-tune the design storyline using MBD 2017. Also, 3D views can be sorted automatically by multiple orders, such as history, name, configuration and display state.

It’s important to highlight that although it’s called 3D View, the tool is very flexible and is not limited to capturing models. It can also capture tables, notes or other 2DPMI. Figure 10 shows a bill of materials (BOM) captured in a 3D view.

Figure 10. A 3D view dedicated to a BOM table.

If a team member or a supplier doesn’t have a SOLIDWORKS MBD license, they can still see these 3D views in the software. These 3D viewscan be viewed, but cannot be edited without a software license. Of course, all 3D views created in MBD can be reused in 3D PDF and eDrawings.

With the above technical briefing, it's worth sharing how 3D views are used in the actual manufacturing process. As Casey Gorman with Sparton noted in a presentation that shared MBD implementation experiences, Sparton recommends capturing the first 3D view for notes, so that downstream teams can first read the key requirements such as materials and finishes in the notes. Then the second 3D view is typically an isometric view to provide a straightforward look. After these two views, a series of orthogonal views, detailed views and exploded views are created where necessary. Then these 3D views, along with models and custom properties, are published into 3D PDF documents for other team members who may not have SOLIDWORKS installed. Figure 11 shows a 3D PDF published by Sparton.

Figure 11. 3D Views published in a 3D PDF by Sparton.

Now let’s circle back to the comments in the NIST PMI study noted at the beginning of this article. Regarding the 3D view tool, Eckenrode confirmed the level of compliance to Military Standard 31000 Appendix B viewing schema for SOLIDWORKS. I hope that you find this tool useful, too. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

Figure 1. The SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 command bar.

If you don’t see the MBD command bar, you may need to right-click on a ribbon bar tab and check the “SOLIDWORKS MBD” option to display it as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Check the SOLIDWORKS MBD line to display its command bar.

Some users have heard that MBD can now compare the 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) differences between documents, but then can’t find this function on the MBD command bar. Let’s walk through several handy user interface (UI) customization techniques to optimize your experience with this product.

As you may have noticed, at the far-right side of the command bar in Figure 1, there is a “>>” icon indicating that there are more buttons to be displayed. These buttons are hidden because of the limited width of the computer display and the large number of command buttons on the bar. You can easily shorten the bar by unchecking the “Use Large Buttons with Text” option as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Uncheck the “Use Large Buttons with Text” option to shorten the command bar.

But this may not be the ideal choice. What if you want to show some buttons with text and some without text? You can click on the “Customize CommandManager…” line as shown at the bottom of Figure 3. Then the command bar customization dialog box will appear as in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The command bar customization dialog.

From this dialog box, you can turn on and off various UI elements. Most of them will instantly display once you make your changes, so I won’t go into too much detail here. A nice feature is that you can drag and drop a command from this dialog box directly to the command bar as shown in Figures 5 and 6. For example, defining DimXpert callouts to reference geometries has been newly enabled in MBD 2017 as explained in a previous article, “What’s New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: MBD.” You may want to add the Reference Geometry button to the MBD command bar to gain quicker access to it instead of going back to the Assembly command bar. So, you can just drag the button from the dialog box as shown in Figure 5 and then drop it onto the MBD command bar at a preferred location as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 5. Drag a command from the customization dialog box.

Figure 6. Drop a command onto the MBD command bar.

Another trick you may not be aware of is that while the customization dialog box is on display in the foreground, you can actually right-click on the command bar in the background and make some changes. For instance, as shown in Figure 7, the Basic Location Dimension button looks almost twice as wide as other buttons because of its long command name, taking up a good amount of the precious screen space.

Figure 7. Right-click on the command bar while the customization dialog box is on display.

By unchecking the “Show Text” option, the button becomes much smaller as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Uncheck the “Show Text” option to reduce the size of a button.

You can apply the same change to the Datum and the Geometric Tolerance buttons. Figure 9 shows a much more concise rearrangement of the buttons. Now these three buttons together take up only about one-sixth of the width of one button if we compare the layouts in Figure 7 and Figure 9. Plus, the icons themselves are distinctive and self-explanatory. They also come with descriptive tool tips, so the UI still is very intuitive to use.

Figure 9. An intuitive and concise command layout with tool tips on smaller-sized buttons.

Similarly, I reduced the size of six other buttons; “Datum Target,” “Surface Finish,” “Weld Symbol,” “Note,” “Balloon” and “Stacked Balloons,” as shown in Figure 10. Please note that the two newly added buttons in MBD 2017 are visible now: “Publish STEP 242 File” and “3D PMI Compare.” Several new enhancements are introduced in this previous post.

Figure 10. An updated command bar with a full display of all the buttons.

By the way, just in case you cannot find a certain command, you can just search for a keyword in the box at the upper-right corner of Figure 10. If I type in “compare,” the search results shown in Figure 11 will appear.

Figure 11. Search for a command by a keyword.

While we are on the customization dialog box, I highly recommend the shortcut bar customization as shown in Figures 12 and 13. You can simply drag and drop a button from the DimXpert toolbar to an assembly shortcut toolbar.

Figure 12. Drag the Auto Dimension Scheme button from the DimXpert toolbar.

Figure 13. Drop the Auto Dimension Scheme button onto the Assembly Shortcuts toolbar.

This drag-and-drop customization to a shortcut toolbar works with any button. I have added several other frequently used buttons to a shortcut bar. Then, as shown in Figure 14, you can easily access them with your mouse cursor tip by pressing the “s” key on your keyboard.

Figure 14. Access the frequently used buttons on the shortcut toolbar with your mouse cursor tip.

This is convenient because you don’t have to move your mouse back and forth between the viewport and the command bar anymore. As you may have noticed in Figure 13, you can customize the shortcut toolbars in the part, assembly, drawing and sketch environments to speed up other command access besides the MBD workflows.

One last point is on the PMI tree display. My personal preference is to display the annotation-based tree as shown in Figure 15 because it directly correlates to the callouts I create.

Figure 15. An annotation-based tree.

By default, the tree is displayed as feature based as shown in Figure 16, which lists the underlying manufacturing features supporting the callouts. These features pave the way for downstream intelligent manufacturing applications as described in a previous article.

Figure 16. The default feature-based tree.

You can also switch the tree to a flat display that lists all the annotations and features as shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17. A flat tree listing all the annotations and features.

In this article, we walked through several techniques to make the UI friendlier and your MBD workflow more productive. The command bar customization, shortcut toolbars and annotation-based tree display are often used to make popular tools and information more accessible. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

First, as we learned previously, Gulfstream equipped its entire shop floor with CATIA V5 software, workstations and dual monitors. This allows the shop floor workforce to bring up the models and query necessary information in real time without having to wait for others. The 3D models reduce ambiguity in interpretation and avoid time delays.

Second, Gulfstream uses model-based electrical harness design as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A model-based electrical harness design. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

This allows separate electrical analysis to ensure that the critical signals are routed as designed. The team can trace any electrical signals throughout the airplane. Then, the harnesses are merged with the 3D models as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. An electrical harness system integrated with the airplane’s 3D model. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Next, Gulfstream extensively applies numerical controlled (NC) machining and precision manufacturing. Because of the 3D MBD data and precision manufacturing, the produced components are of much higher quality than before, which speeds up assembly time. For example, Jeff Kreide, vice president of Business Solutions with Gulfstream, pointed out that the barrel joining assembly used to take five people three and one-half days to complete. Now the components can be well aligned and assembled in just 15 minutes as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The barrel joining assembly time was reduced from three and one-half days to only 15 minutes. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Here is another example of faster assembly. Airplanes use a large quantity of fasteners such as rivets. Many different types of fasteners must be installed accurately at a wide range of locations according to a variety of torque specifications and instructions. What’s even more complex is that the installation surfaces are often curved, especially at the entrance doors. Previously, 2D flat drawings had challenges to define the exact fastener locations on curved faces. The shop floor used to draw the fastener maps on nylon pieces and wrap the pieces around the doors to convey work instructions or run quality checks. Now the fastener maps that were previously made on nylon pieces have been digitized as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. A fastener map projected onto the curved surface of a door. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Using a software application, ProjectWorks, along with multiple high-resolution laser projectors, Gulfstream projects the fastener map directly onto the airplane’s body. Of course, the projectors coordinate with each other in order to bend and reshape the image to make sure that all the fasteners are correctly located on the curved surface. With the digital model projection, you can modify the model or instructions in real time and they will be instantly updated and mapped correctly onto the airplane, without having to wait for the redrawn physical nylon pieces anymore. One tip here is that rather than using actual protrusions, Gulfstream only models the fasteners as points and vectors with attributes such as types, tooling and pre-drill information. This can prevent the model heaviness from being loaded onto computers.

Similarly, in 2016, Gulfstream expanded the use of digital laser-projection into painting as shown in Figures 5 and 6.

Figure 5. A technician adjusting and projecting a painting plan onto a Gulfstream G650 airplane. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Figure 6. A painting plan is projected onto a Gulfstream G650 airplane. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Traditionally, the painting plan was laid out on 2D drawings. Besides the problem of there being different interpretations to different eyes with flat drawings, the more complex the curved surfaces are, the greater the possibility is for the actual painting to deviate from the drawing. Then when it comes to painting preparation, the step of taping an exterior surface alone could take a crew of technicians eight to 12 hours.

Now with the 3D laser projection, the time to prepare an aircraft for painting has been cut in half. Furthermore, the easier and real-time digital modification allows more design options and greater owner participation.

Last but not least, training is vital to the success of the MBD implementation. For example, Gulfstream uses colors rather than product and manufacturing information (PMI) to indicate certain key characteristics. However, designers use colors differently for a wide range of use cases such as surface roughness or tolerancing methods. How would others involved in the process be aware of this? The color usage must be constantly communicated.

To this effect, Ganser shared a story. An assembly line once installed one of the initial mirrors onto the airplane. The mirror fitted perfectly, except that the reflective side was against the wall, so the mirror wasn't reflective at all. What was the cause? The engineer built the model and added the color yellow on the reflective face. However, the manufacturing team wasn't sure about the color's meaning, so they thought the reflective face could be on either side, or that yellow meant the back side. After all, the model looked the same. The miscommunication led to this mirror being scrapped. There are many other similar issues that require ongoing training and communication to address.

Beyond internal teams, the supply chain must go through a major paradigm shift as well. This is one of the areas where Gulfstream underestimated the impact. For example, during the manufacturing process, shop floor team members often modify the models due to manufacturability considerations, such as deleting holes or adding handles. The problem is that many times, the inspection is conducted against the modified NC models rather than the CATIA V5 models. Gulfstream has to keep training suppliers to respect the CATIA V5 models as the documentation master, not 2D drawings or shop floor NC program models.

To mitigate the risk, the company established a rigorous process for suppliers to go through. Suppliers must make sure they understand how Gulfstream documents its models and how to read them. Before a supplier can be delivered a purchase order (PO) or an MBD part, it has to be approved through the Gulfstream qualification process.

There have also been some pleasant surprises. Originally,the implementation team thought it would be difficult to train the shop floor workers to adopt new software and hardware.It turns out that the team underestimated how quickly the technicians could adapt to the MBD process. The workforce is much younger than before. Not only did the workers like the cool technology, but they also grasped the skills needed for their particular jobs much faster than expected.

That’s it for now about the MBD experiences at Gulfstream. We discussed the practices to empower the downstream manufacturing process such as software and hardware tools for technicians, model-based software applications and training. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

As Dan Ganser (staff scientist with Gulfstream) shared, “We model everything, including fasteners, shims, veneer and so on.Our 3D representation is everything that you see in the G650 model.”The high-fidelity digital representation brings many benefits such as real-time bill of materials (BOM)creations and accurate assembly processes as discussed in the two articles just noted. In addition, it enforces consistency. Modeling everything means that nobody can decide subjectively what to model and what not to model, which has been a problem for many manufacturers. However, the digital representation introduces a huge amount of complicated data. For example, the forward fuselage as shown in Figure 1 illustrates how complex one system can be.

Figure 1. Aforward fuselage. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Let’s also keep in mind that Gulfstream aircraft have a lifecycle of 50 to 75 years. The data for the aircraft must be usable for an extended time frame to support ongoing maintenance and upgrades. Furthermore, the company has to consider the continuous evolution of the software and hardware to create and use the digital data. Jeff Kreide, vice president of Business Solutions with Gulfstream, shared several examples of such considerations. How will the engineering data work across software releases? What happens if a software company goes out of business? What hardware will be used 50 years from now?

In short, the challenge is to ensure the data integrity across design iterations, engineering updates, software releases, CAD formats and hardware platforms over an extended period of time. Of course, the data must serve all the key stakeholders seamlessly, such as the six Gulfstream facilities shown in Figure 2, along with the entire supply chain. The data integrity is also one of the key requirements for the FAA in the United States to certify an electronic model-based definition (MBD) system.

Figure 2. Six Gulfstream facilities. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

The first task is live archiving, which is storing new data while maintaining the entire data system's integrity, or protecting it from corruption. Ganser mentioned that the change validation process is one of the biggest hurdles for Gulfstream to meet the FAA’s certification requirements. Initially, the team thought that since the data storage was secured, nobody would have the access to make unintentional modifications. But that wouldn't prevent the database administrators or system administrators from making alterations. Designers and engineers request that administrators update data all the time: “I released my design by mistake. Please change it.” or “There is a spelling error. Please fix it.” The FAA even asked Gulfstream, “If an administrator were given $5 million, could he or she change the system?”

Facing these rigorous regulations, Gulfstream developed rigorous tools and processes to validate the data every night at the bit and byte level. For example, the company compares the hash values of files and attributes to make sure they aren’t unintentionally altered from one design release to another.

The data validation used to take 24 hours. Then the company redesigned the data storage process to shorten it to 12 hours and minimize the impact on working hours. The goal is to catch any data corruption as soon as possible. The sooner you can catch the issues, the easier it is to identify the root causes and resolve them. The hash values used to be pulled after a design was released. In 2015, the values were extracted at the release phase. Going forward, the team plans to move the hash value extraction process to the design review phase.

Beyond all the data and checking steps, Ganser stressed the importance of the environment as shown in Figure 3 because it's a key factor in determining the final interpretation.

Figure 3. Stored data, presented data and interpreted data. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

No matter how good the data quality is, if it's not presented correctly and consistently, the final interpretation can be at risk. Therefore, Gulfstream controls the environment tightly too. Whether the data is presented in a native CAD tool, in a viewer, in a hologram, on a laptop, on a workstation, or by a projector, the presentation should be the same to ensure that the interpretation is the same. Any software applications or hardware tools must be verified before they are added to the environment.

Here is one example of software upgrades being controlled rigorously.As a background,when working from one CAD software version to an upgrade, engineers have run into unintentional data migration issues such as critical color differences or product and manufacturing information (PMI) changes. Therefore, the team at Gulfstream validates the same dataset between the current CAD version and the upgrade. An application (Kubotek Validate) is used to run the topology analysis by comparing surface changes. Similarly, another tool (ITI CADIQ) is deployed to compare the point changes. On top of the models, these tools are also used to compare the PMI differences.

If the separate results by Kubotek Validate and ITI CADIQ both confirm zero changes between software revisions, then this dataset is regarded as well preserved and the software upgrade is deemed safe for it. If there are any changes between CAD revisions or inconsistencies between the results by the two different validation tools, then the software upgrade can’t take place until the issues are resolved.

As mentioned in a previous article, once a CAD software revision is qualified for an upgrade, then all the internal teams and external suppliers must upgrade to the same revision at the same time.

In order to move data in and out of CAD applications, Gulfstream needs to export the released models to the STEP format per the ISO 10303 AP203 standard as required by the FAA. To support the standard, the modeling practice intentionally limits the content allowed into the CATIA models. A simple check is to export a model to STEP and then import it back in. Only the content that remains intact after the export and import is allowed in the CATIA model.

Then the STEP data is validated against the CATIA data using the above two validation tools. Besides the model comparison, the PMI is compared at the polyline level and Unicode string level. Only when the STEP output confirms the source CAD model and the validation results by a match from two different tools can a STEP export be qualified.

In this article, we reviewed the Gulfstream experiences in maintaining its data integrity across design iterations, engineering updates, software releases, CAD formats and hardware platforms. I hope these practices can provide several insights to reference at your organization. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

However, the bigger point of this article is not to detail how great these achievements are. It is to describe how Gulfstream did it. You will see that the Gulfstream approach is not out of reach for other manufacturers. You can do it too, although it does require the mindset shifts, process upgrades, continuous trainings, multiple iterations and hard work.

Dan Ganser, product lifecycle management (PLM) staff scientist with Gulfstream, shared an important realization at the CIMdata PLM Road Map for the Aerospace and Defense Industry in 2015. MBD doesn't mean to put everything in the model. Although, geometrically speaking, Gulfstream models everything, including even the tiny fasteners and thin veneer, using CATIA V5, it doesn't actually annotate its models with dimensions unless there are special needs to explicitly call out critical dimensions. Tolerance standards are stored in its product data management (PDM) system and it only calls out nonstandard tolerances in the models. Similarly, other attributes such as notes, materials and surface finish processes are stored in the PDM system. This way, the upstream designers and engineers can focus on the truly exceptional characteristics, rather than wasting time in repeating the information already conveyed by the models or PDM system, which also avoids the traditional information conflicts that can occur between 3D models and 2D drawings.

To support this minimal annotation strategy, Gulfstream equipped all of its shop floor technicians with the workstations and CATIA V5 software shown in Figure 1. Technicians are required to measure the models and query the PDM system to obtain what they want. Initially, the implementation team was concerned about whether the shop floor team members would be able to proficiently learn the hardware and software, or whether they would be willing to adjust to this change from 2D drawings at all. It turns out that Gulfstream underestimated how quickly the technicians would adapt to the MBD process according to Jeff Kreide, vice president of Business Solutions with Gulfstream. The workforce is much younger than before. Not only did the workers like the cool technology, but they also grasped the skills needed for their particular jobs much faster than expected.

Figure 1. A shop floor technician uses a workstation and CATIA V5 software to obtain necessary information for the job at Gulfstream. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Speaking of software, Gulfstream invested thousands of CATIA V5 licenses for every internal member who need data access and also requires all external suppliers to use the same software at the same version, revision and even service pack as it uses. A software upgrade occurs every two years at the end-of-year time frame when all Gulfstream's internal computers and its suppliers must upgrade together to the same minor revision. In other words, the entire extended enterprise is standardized and synchronized on one engineering software platform. “I can't tell how big of a difference it has made to the [MBD] implementation,” said Ganser. “Not having to convert data is unbelievable.”

Beyond models, Gulfstream stores a large amount of information in the PDM system mentioned earlier. For example, the assemblies are defined by PDM structure links and the geometric positions are modeled in CAD. Previously, it would take a bill of materials (BOM) planner five weeks and five tries to figure out all the parts that the procurement team needed to buy. Now, thanks to the data structure in the PDM system, anybody with the PDM access can pull up the BOM table in five seconds anytime they want. Furthermore, everyone on the shop floor can access the manufacturing execution system (MES), which is linked to the PDM system, so that a technician can query the PDM system or pull up the models in CATIA V5 for a particular task such as planning and assemblies. Regardless of the task, every geometry traces back to the CAD models and every attribute traces back to the PDM system.

Another big reason for heavily integrating the PDM system was to collaborate with suppliers. Ganser recalled, “When we told purchasing they have to open a model to find the material, it didn't go well.” When suppliers quote parts, they need the BOM tables, complex finishes, exceptionally tight tolerances, overall sizes and so on, because these are the key drivers of costs. Suppliers don’t even care much about CAD geometries for quoting unless it's a highly complex part. With the above attributes defined and organized in the PDM system, the procurement team can extract the key information for suppliers in real time without having to open up a model in CAD software. All the PDM information is version controlled and protected with access right management tools.

Now let's summarize this article into experiences and benefits.

Finally, an important point to highlight is that the above measures must be part of a concerted effort because they rely on each other to succeed. For instance, if the shopfloor technicians didn’t have the necessary hardware or software to interrogate the CAD models, then the minimal annotation practice wouldn’t work at all. Or if the designers didn’t assign correct attributes to a product in the PDM system, the procurement and suppliers wouldn’t be able to extract the relevant information quickly. This is the reason why MBD implementation needs an enterprise-level perspective and must be well-coordinated and driven from the top down with strong sponsorship from an organization’s leadership. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

Figures 1, 2 and 3 show several typical 3D views of sheet metal parts to present the key characteristics from different perspectives.

Figure 1. A 3D View from the back perspective.

Figure 2. A 3D View from the top perspective.

Figure 3. A 3D view focusing on the flange.

In Figure 1, the model attached with the 3D product and manufacturing information (PMI) appears fairly tall vertically on the screen. Since most laptop or desktop computers are equipped with wide screens, you may want to reorient the model horizontally in a way that is similar to the orientation shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4.A horizontal orientation of the sheet metal part.

However, such a modification comes with a bit of inconvenience. The reading direction of the dimensions and tolerances is now from bottom to top, rather than the direction that is most comfortable to human eyes, from left to right. Can we reorient the PMI as well? Yes, we can achieve this by reorienting the annotation view. Here are the steps for this process.

First, edit the annotation view containing the PMI you want to rotate as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Edit the annotation view.

Notice that a light yellow transparent plane is previewed to indicate the viewing direction and orientation as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. A light yellow transparent plane indicates the viewing direction and orientation.

To adjust the orientation, you can just type in the angle to rotate the preview plane as shown in Figure 7. I entered“90 degree” in this dialog. You can also slide the bar next to the angle text box to adjust it dynamically. Notice that the plane shown in Figure 7 has been rotated 90 degrees compared to the one in Figure 6.

Figure 7. Adjust the horizontal direction of the viewing plane.

Last, just accept the edit to this annotation view. Now when you orient it, it will display the model and the PMI horizontally to take advantage of the wider horizontal screen space as shown in Figure 8. You may need to drag and drop the callouts to tweak their placements a little bit since they have been rearranged. Of course, you can capture this nice display as a 3D view.

Figure 8. The model and PMI are displayed horizontally.

To review multiple perspectives at the same time, you can choose to display multiple viewports as shown in Figure 9. I personally prefer breaking the links between these viewports so that I can control each one individually with better flexibility.

Figure 9. Review multiple perspectives at the same time using multiple viewports.

You may have noticed another annoyance featured in Figure 8. The bend lines and bounding box are visible in the folded state, which crowd the view but don’t add much value because they are tied to the flat or unfolded state. You can easily hide them as shown in Figure 10 and recapture this cleaner display as an existing 3D view or a new one. It's nice that with the multiple selection supported, you can hide them both together.

Figure 10. Hide the bend lines and bounding box together.

Speaking of the flat state, it is indeed very important to facilitate the fabrication communication with the bend lines and bounding box. Again, 3D view comes in handy here. You can turn on the flat pattern, create a configuration for it, and light up the annotation views containing the PMI applicable to the flat view while hiding others. Finally, show the bend lines and bounding box. Once your sheet metal part puts on a clearun folded pose, just hit the button “Capture 3D View” in a way similar to taking a picture with your camera. Figure 11 illustrates the unfolded 3D view along with the dimensions between the bend lines and bend notes. You can define more PMI as discussed in the previous article.

Figure 11. Capture a 3D View of the flat or unfolded state of a sheet metal.

One possible issue is that when you rotate the model, the bend notes may be displayed backward, although the dimensions do flip automatically for easier reading as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Bend notes are displayed backward after a 180-degree rotation.

One work-around is to turn on this option under System Options > Display > Display notes flat to screen.

Figure 13. Display notes flat to screen under System Options.

Now the bend notes along with other notes will always stay flat to screen for easier reading. They won't rotate any more as shown in Figure 14. Please notice the difference between the dimensions and the notes. The dimensions are tilted and aligned with the model rotation, but the notes are not.

Figure 14. Notes don't rotate with the model anymore.

In a similar fashion, you may use a special annotation view type, 2D notes area, to organize bend tables or other 2D entities so that they won't rotate with the model. Figure 15 shows a bend table assigned to a dedicated bend table 2D annotation view. SOLIDWORKS MBD 2017 added support of multiple 2D annotation views. Facing many types of 2D entities such as bend notes, bend tables, general notes, bill of material (BOM) tables and statements, you can now categorize them separately and control their visibilities at a more granular level.

Figure 15. A bend table is assigned to a dedicated 2D annotation view.

With this bend table inserted, let's capture it as a 3D view too as shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16. Capture a bend table as a 3D View.

You can also save this bend table as a generic table to be inserted into the 3D PDF template editor as shown in Figure 17. One enhancement in MBD 2017 is to allow columns and rows to be resized by dragging and dropping the handle on a table divide as pointed to by the green arrow. This way, longer strings can fit better in tables.

Figure 17. Insert a bend table into a 3D PDF template.

After a desirable template is laid out, you can publish the sheet metal part to a 3D PDF as shown in Figure 18. A nice addition to the MBD 2017 release is the ability to display supplemental geometries in 3D PDF as mentioned in a previous article. So now the bend lines and bounding box are showing up too.

Figure 18. A bend table and multiple viewports on a 3D PDF of a sheet metal part.

To conclude, there are plenty of free tutorials at MySolidWorks, including dedicated lessons on sheet metal models. I highly recommend these tutorials to anyone new to SOLIDWORKS MBD. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

A subsidiary of General Dynamics, Gulfstream designs, develops, manufactures, markets and services business jet aircraft such as the Gulfstream G650 model shown in Figure 1. Gulfstream employs more than 13,000 employees and has produced more than 2,000 aircraft since 1958. The Gulfstream product line consists of the G280, G450, G550, G500, G600, G650 and G650ER as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. The Gulfstream G650 model. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Figure 2. The Gulfstream product line. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Thanks to the implementation of MBD since 2003, Gulfstream achieved a series of remarkable successes. For example, it was the first to realize a long-held aerospace industry dream, an aircraft developed with a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-certified, fully electronic MBD system. It designed the G650 model shown in Figure 1 completely with the MBD approach in 2007. Later, G650 MBD data was heavily reused in the G500 and G600 models shown in Figure 2, so that Gulfstream was able to concurrently design these two new models and announce its test flights together in early 2015.

Between the 2D drawing approach for the G550 model and the MBD approach for the G650 model, the standard parts and part numbers were reduced by more than 50 percent. Even more amazingly, the number of outfitting clips, angles and brackets were reduced from around 450 down to only 6. The reduction of part numbers alone generated huge savings in the supply chain management. At the barrel joining step shown in Figure 3, the assembly time was cut from three and a half days to only 15 minutes.

Figure 3. The barrel joining assembly time was reduced from three and one-half days to only 15 minutes. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Although such successes are the envy of the manufacturing industry, the MBD journey at Gulfstream is not necessarily unrepeatable for others. At the very least, there should be plenty of constructive lessons and recommended practices to learn from it. To begin with, let’s review the history of Gulfstream’s MBD implementation.

Gulfstream first started an MBD project with the G450 model back in 2003. The initial driver was quite simple. The old approach to outfitting an aircraft was low-volume, high-customization and hand-built. It relied solely on highly skilled craftspeople to interpret 2D engineering drawings with limited content. However, as sales increased, a significant change to the business model and process was needed to support higher-volume production.

Although the implementation team had a long-term goal of designing an entire aircraft with the MBD approach, to address the most urgent bottleneck—lower the complexity and control the risk—it focused the first attempt on the aircraft completion step, which was mainly about the interior design as shown in Figures 4 and 5. As a stepping stone, focusing on the completion enabled the team to minimize the risk because the interior design isn’t mission critical to an aircraft after all. The team also avoided the complexities of managing machined parts from many external suppliers and dealing with multiple sophisticated business systems along with remote infrastructures. Another consideration was to test the potential of saving standard part numbers because there were a large variety of standard components at the completion step that produced a heavy procurement overhead.

Figure 4. A Gulfstream jet interior design. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

Figure 5. A Gulfstream jet forward fuselage system. (Image courtesy of Gulfstream.)

To provide a true 3D electronic representation of the aircraft, the engineering team modeled everything, including fasteners, veneer, hoses and so on, as the nominal geometries using CATIA V5. The 3D digital models allowed the team to increase the part reuse during the design phase, minimize technician’s subjective customization on the shop floor and ultimately reduce part numbers by more than 50 percent. Nowadays, the model-based interior design has been expanded to the entire airplane fleet.

In 2007, building upon the MBD successes of G450, Gulfstream started designing and manufacturing its flagship product, the G650 model, entirely with the MBD approach, including the airframing, integration and completion procedures. That was a huge change and added a great deal of complexity to the production processes, engineering systems and business systems. Gulfstream built new plants and factories that were completely based on the MBD process. There were no 2D drawings or 3D dimensions because the 3D models conveyed the dimensions already. Users were equipped with the software tools so that they could interrogate models for relevant dimensional information as needed. Designers only called out annotations for exceptions and critical characteristics. Other key attributes, such as tolerance standards, materials and surface finish processes, were stored in the product data management (PDM) system. Assemblies were defined by PDM structure links. The MBD approach was deployed to all users across the enterprise such as engineering, manufacturing, assembly, quality, purchasing, product support and the supply base.

As a result, Gulfstream was able to reuse the G650 model design data throughout the entire production process. For example, as shown in Figure 3, with the barrel joining assembly step, it used to take five people three and one-half days to make all the components aligned and smooth at an airplane quality level. Now, due to the accurate digital models, it only takes 15 minutes. According to Jeff Kreide, the production capacity was only able to outfit 12–15 airplanes per year. After years of the MBD progress, Gulfstream could run nearly 40 airplanes per year in 2013, which supported well the growing sales volume as mentioned above.

Furthermore, the reuse happens not only across one product line, but also in the later G500 and G600 models. Gulfstream was able to concurrently design these two models by reusing the G650 MBD data. In early 2015, both G500 and G600 models were announced in flight tests. The similar reuse benefited the latest G650ER model too. Even based simply by the appearance of the top four aircraft listed in Figure 2, they look very similar to one another.

That’s it for now about the MBD history and successes at Gulfstream. I hope it can help you and your organization build up interest and confidence. To learn more about how SOLIDWORKS MBD can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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.

The first step is to customize a 3D PDF template according to industry or company standards. It's very similar to customizing 2D drawing templates. In a 3D PDF template, you can insert as many 3D independent viewports as needed. These viewports are placeholders in a template and will be populated with specific views of your choosing later.

A thoughtful practice adopted by some manufacturers is to place multiple viewports on an early sheet to provide an upfront overview for data consumers, as shown in Figure 1. This way, anyone looking at the first page can quickly and easily obtain a rough idea of the design from multiple perspectives without having to flip a model back and forth repeatedly in one viewport.

Figure 1. Present multiple views on one page as a quick overview.

On the other hand, some regulations may require the first page of a technical document to declare certain statements such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). In this case, the first page may not be allowed to show any viewports or technical information. You can now customize the first page so that it doesn't include any viewports using the MBD 2017 release as illustrated in this article, “What's New in SOLIDWORKS 2017: 3D PDF Template Editor.”

After the first several sheets, some companies recommend placing one big viewport per sheet to make a document friendlier to printers as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Present one big viewport per sheet for easier printing and viewing on paper.

This is a very practical consideration because MBD doesn't necessarily mean paperless processes, as explained in this blog post. Oftentimes, hard copies are still necessary and this template layout strategy can help ease downstream data consumption tremendously.

With a professional and practical template, we can now move on to the 3D PDF publishing step. One recommended practice here is to capture well-thought-out and organized 3D views before publishing. 3D views are very comprehensive and capable of representing a wide range of viewing factors, such as orientations, configurations, display states, annotation views, zooming scales and so on. These factors will also closely align with design expectations in a published 3D PDF. As a comparison, in my experience,predefined views or the current model view (circled in the red box in Figure 3) don’t behave as predictably as 3D views.

Figure 3. 3D views are recommended over predefined views and the current model view.

As suggested at the bottom in Figure 3, 3D views don't have to capture models. They can also be used to capture 2D content such as bill-of-materials (BOM) tables, notes and statements. These elements can all be populated in independent viewports in a published 3D PDF. It's also possible to take it one step further and assign these 2D elements to an annotated view in the 2D notes area so that they won't rotate and will always stay flat to the screen for easier reading in both SOLIDWORKS and Adobe Reader. This article, “How to Present the MBD Data of a Gear Box Assembly,” explained further the annotated view in the 2D notes area.

Once a 3D PDF is published, a very noticeable tool is the view strip, as shown at the bottom in Figure 1. You can quickly browse through these views by clicking on a thumbnail; the corresponding independent viewport will be updated per your selection, in the same fashion as the 3D view strip in SOLIDWORKS as shown at the bottom in Figure 3.

Furthermore, Adobe Reader provides many tools to present and manage views. Figure 4 shows several expanded settings, such as the View Selection drop-down box, the Model Render mode, the lighting options, the viewport background color and the cross-section properties.

Figure 4. Adobe Reader viewing tools.

These Adobe Reader settings are self-explanatory. You can try them out and check out the results visually right away, so we don't have to explain too much here. One point worth noting is the Illustration display mode as shown in Figure 4. Another mode is the Solid Outline display as shown in Figure 5. In many cases, engineers need to see the edge lines to best understand the boundaries of complex features, so these two modes are recommended for this need. As a comparison, Figure 6 showed the solid rendered mode where the edge lines are hidden, which doesn't look as sharp as the displays in Figure 4 or 5.

Figure 5. Solid Outline display mode in Adobe Reader.

Figure 6. Solid display mode without edge lines in Adobe Reader.

Another setting is the view selection drop-down box as shown at the upper-left corner in Figure 4. You can pick which view to populate to an independent viewport from this drop-down list. One neat MBD 3D PDF feature that many people aren't aware of is that once you populate a viewport with a specific view, you can actually save this selection back to a 3D PDF using Adobe Reader. A common perception is that Adobe Reader is just a viewer to display documents in read-only mode, but when it comes to the view selection, you can edit and save it. Whether you are scrolling up and down through multiple pages or reopening a 3D PDF, what you pick for the independent viewports will be remembered.

This provides greater flexibility in the view arrangement. For example, you can decide on the view presentation sequence even if you don't have SOLIDWORKS MBD on your computer or don't want to publish this 3D PDF again. It is especially handy when you want to print all the views in certain way from a 3D PDF inside Adobe Reader.

One last overlooked point is that when you add a 3D comment, Adobe Reader will automatically create a view as shown in Figure 7. So to retrieve a 3D comment, please remember to check the list of views on the left or in the drop-down box. Of course, you can save a 3D comment along with its view back to a 3D PDF using Adobe Reader.

Figure 7. 3D comments are saved as a separate view in Adobe Reader.

Now to learn more details about 3D PDF, please feel free to check out the video in this blog post, “How to Publish a 3D PDF with SOLIDWORKS MBD.”Another blog post video, “How to Use 3D PDFs,” will walk you through the basic tools available in Adobe Reader. Last but not least, you may also download several 3D PDF samples published by SOLIDWORKS MBD at this forum post. To learn more about how the software can help you with your MBD implementations, please visit its 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 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.