3DVision invites you to register for the Northern Indiana SolidWorks User Group (NISWUG) Meeting Tuesday, June 18th. 3DVision Technologies’ Application Engineer, Chris Snider, will be presenting. The event will take place from 5-8pm and there will also be food provided.

The event will be hosted at:
Comfort Inn & Suites
27838 CR 24
Elkhart, IN 46517

Meeting Agenda:
5:00 – 5:30 Meet, greet and eat
5:30 – 5:45 Group discussion
5:45 – 6:00 Break
6:00 – 6:45 Chris Snider, Application Engineer at 3DVision Technologies ” Large Assemblies, Using Speedpak & Managing”
6:45 – 7:00 Break
7:00 – 7:45 Chris Snider, Application Engineer at 3DVision Technologies ” Intro to SolidWorks Composer (3DVIA)”
7:45 – 8:00 Giveaways and wrapup

Please RSVP to niswug.info@gmail.com to help determine food required.

The post Register Now for the Northern Indiana SolidWorks User Group (NISWUG) Meeting Tuesday, June 18th appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

3DVision invites you to register for the Greater Evansville Area SolidWorks User Group (GEASWUG) Meeting Thursday, June 20th. There will be some interesting information shared by Beau Buente of Westech Building Products, Inc on Configuration Publisher. The event will take place from 5-8pm and there will also be food provided.

Meeting Agenda:
5:00: Doors open
5:00 – 5:30 Network and Dinner
5:30 – 5:45 Opening Remarks
5:45 – 6:45 Beau Buente of Westech Building Products, Inc “Configure This?”
6:45 – 7:00 Break
7:00 – 8:00 Sam Golan & Tim Hogan of PAS Technologies “Directly from SW model or drawing the entire inspection lifecycle is automated”
8:00 – 8:30 Network

The event will be hosted at:
The University of Southern Indiana
8600 University Boulevard
Evansville, IN 47712
Building: Business and Engineering
Room: 0035

For more information or to RSVP for the event, please click here.

The post Register Now for the Greater Evansville Area SolidWorks User Group (GEASWUG) Meeting Thursday, June 20th appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

Ever wanted to put a Center Mark on an Isometric view in a drawing ?

You can’t do it with the regular “Center Mark” tool, but the video below shows a pretty good solution…

VIDEO —  ISO CENTER MARK .mp4

And here is the .sldblk file I created…      ISO CENTER MARK .sldblk

The post Isometric Center Mark appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

In my opinion, one of the most underutilized tools in SolidWorks Simulation is the Design Study.  Design studies allow you to easily set up a number of ‘what if’ scenarios and run them all with the click of a button.  Sure, it might take a couple extra minutes to set up a few parameters, but the extra setup time will pay off handsomely later.

Let’s take a look at the effects of varying mesh size for a stress concentration.  The first step is to create and run a Simulation Study to verify the model setup and boundary conditions.  Second, set up a parameter for the global element size.  Third, create a design study, using that parameter as a variable.  Finally, add a constraint; in this case we’ll use the maximum stress from the Simulation study we previously created.  When these steps are complete, run the design study and all of the scenarios with the click of a button!

Setting up a Parameter can be done in (at least) two ways.  From the Evaluation tab of your Command Manager, you can left-click the down arrow on the Design Study icon and choose ‘Parameters’.  Alternately, from your Simulation feature tree, you can right-click on “Parameters” and choose ‘Edit/Define…’. The keys to creating a Parameter are to provide a name, choose the appropriate category, then link that parameter to the item you want to vary in the design study.  In this example, I want to link the Parameter to ‘Global Element’ size, so I’ll click on the Mesh icon from my Simulation study feature tree.

The next step is to insert a Design Study into your model.  Use the down-arrows to add the Element Size variable to the Design Study.  In the second column, I chose to use discrete values for element size.  These can be typed in using a comma to separate values.  In the Constraints section, use the pull-down menu to add a Simulation Data Sensor to the model, specifically to monitor the maximum stress.  Be sure to choose the Simulation study you want the sensor to reference for data.  Then un-check the ‘Optimization’ box and click ‘Run’.

When the Design Study is finished running all of the scenarios, you will have a plot for each constraint utilized.  In the picture below, the stress plot from one of the scenarios is shown.  I’ve also added a ‘Local Trend Graph‘ to show the stress concentration model does, indeed, show a diverging solution with regards to stress.

I could have arrived at the same information in a couple of ways not utilizing a Design Study.  The most common method I encounter is a user creating ten Simulation studies, then manually meshing each with a different Global Element size.  That is, quite simply, a waste of time!  The extra few minutes spent creating Parameters and properly defining a Design Study can be done much faster than creating several individual studies.  I’m certain with a little investigation you can find plenty of uses for this powerful tool.  Now go make your products better with SolidWorks Simulation!

The post Parameters and Design Studies appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

Any engineer working with CAD/CAM software knows the value of having a physical model in hand. Now, thanks to advanced 3D printing technology, engineers can create prototype models featuring overmodeled or soft touch parts, all in one procedure.

Additive manufacturing technology has advanced so far that 3D printed prototypes are not only used for design validation but also for testing form, fit and function. Now, thanks to advanced 3D printing technology, engineers can create prototype models featuring overmodeled or soft touch parts, all in one procedure.

Traditionally, an overmold or soft touch part – as commonly found on power tools, consumer electronics and medical devices – takes days to create and produce. With PolyJet Connex technology, these parts can be made simultaneously, saving time and money.

With PolyJet Connex technology, resolution is high and multiple flexibilities or durometers are possible.

You are personally invited to join Stratasys and PolyJet expert, Randy Stevens, for a presentation devoted to multi-material 3D printing solutions for enhanced prototype development.

Who Should Attend:
– Engineering Managers and Directors
– Design Engineers
– Product Designers
– Manufacturing Engineers
– Plant Managers and Directors

When: May 23, 2013 @ 2PM EDT

To register, Click here.

The post 3D Printing Webinar – Printed Prototypes Feature Overmolded Parts appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

Most people only use Visual Basic’s Message Box as an “alert” tool – a way to pass information to the user. Did you know you could use it to pass information back to your macro?

The SolidWorks API class teaches you to declare a variable and set that variable equal to the value returned by MsgBox.

Works great, now the button the user chooses (in this case either a “Yes” or “No” button (most likely in this case “Yes”)) will be stored in the “result” variable.

…but how do you know the values for Yes, No, Cancel, OK? … so you can compare “result” later in your code? I never remember all the different return values for MsgBox, and the help file is too slow. So instead of declaring the variable as a simple integer, I always declare it as the “VbMsgBoxResult” enumerator. Now, any time I access that variable, Visual Basic gives you some nice IntelliSense.

As soon as I click the equals sign, the IntelliSense appears.

This works for .NET programming too except you declare the variable as “MsgBoxResult” instead of “VbMsgBoxResult”

The post VBMsgeBoxResult appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

This is a follow-up post to a question that I was asked recently about THIS blog entry: http://www.3dvision.com/wordpress/2012/04/14/strengthening-ribs-in-sheetmetal-new-in-sw2012/

The question was basically “HOW do I MAKE a rib like that ?”

Easy !

Start out with this:

Then create your “Rib TOOL” as a separate BODY in the file…

Then you can use the INSERT–FEATURES–INDENT command to use that “Rib Tool” body to create the indentation in the sheet metal part.

You will then of course want to do a DELETE BODY on the Rib Tool body (just select the body in the tree and hit Delete on the keyboard), and then add any fillets (don’t forget both sides) if you want them to make it look something like this when finished.

Here is a link to the actual SolidWorks part file (2013 version) if you need more guidance:    Sheetmetal REMOVE FACES

There you go !!   Easy when you know how…   

The post Strengthening Ribs in Sheetmetal – pt 2 ! appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

Out of the box SolidWorks Enterprise PDM gives you the ability to populate your drop lists based on SQL query results. I use this functionality all the time to give my users a list of qualified suppliers from a purchasing database, lists of users in a specified group, choices of product type, etc.

The limitation is that these queries are all based off of constant values. These queries are run by the EPDM server on a predefined interval, and the results are stored in the EPDM database. This method is fast, but it eliminates the ability to populate the lists based on properties of the file itself.

Granted with EPDM’s “Controlled by variable” option,

you can change the query based on one other variable, but if you want to use more than one variable or the file’s physical properties, PigeonHole makes the process very easy.

This video gives a quick demonstration showing how.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The post Smarter EPDM Drop Lists Using SQL appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

If you are using Active Directory for your SolidWorks Enterprise PDM authentication, and you have A LOT of user accounts within EPDM, expanding the “Users” node within the administration tool can take longer than a story from Great Aunt Eleanor about the advantages of dual ranked RDIMMs over single ranked UDIMMs.

The wait is caused by EPDM checking each user’s status against Active Directory.

Instead of expanding the users node; right mouse button click on “Users” and select OPEN to trigger a users dialog. This is much quicker, since it by-passes the bulk-authentication step.

As a side note, if you have less than 25 users, and it is taking more than five seconds to authenticate those users, you may have some network health issues that may need addressing.

The post Administrate Zillions of EPDM Users appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.

3DVision invites you to register for the Central Indiana SolidWorks User Group (CISUG) Meeting Thursday, May 16th. There will be a technical presentation on SolidWorks Advanced Modeling. The event will take place from 5 – 8pm and there will also be food provided sponsored by SWUGN.

The event will be hosted at:
ZIPP Speed Weaponry
5315 Walt Place
Indianapolis, IN 46254

For more information or to RSVP for the event, please email Peter Fischer.

The post Register Now for the Central Indiana SolidWorks User Group (CISUG) Meeting Thursday, May 16th appeared first on Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana SolidWorks 3DDesign-3DVision Technologies Blog.