As this year comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on all that was accomplished and/or left undone, and feeling that I could’ve done so much better. I bet we have all felt that same way at some point or another.  The year 2009 wasn’t particularly bad for me and, believe me, I’m grateful for that. There were really great moments that left me with wonderful memories I’ll treasure for a lifetime, but aside from those moments, in many ways it was also what you’d call “blah”, without much growing, without much excitement going on in between those “peaks”, and not enough challenges. 

I guess I could simply make a list of resolutions that included adding all those elements that were missing this year into my life in 2010. Yeah, that would do, except that I’m so bad at keeping those resolutions that I don’t even bother making a list anymore. I mean, for several years “Getting organized and free of clutter” used to top the list, and then all the accumulated lists I made used to top the mountain of clutter, while my husband kept pointing out the fact that I was running out of room where to cram all my stuff and, I suspect, secretly throwing away part of my loot while I wasn’t looking.  

Anyway…  Strangely enough, my pastor was talking precisely about that at church today. No, not about clutter or the fact that I’m a packrat, he was talking about new year’s resolutions, yes, but under a very different light, and the message I left with was that my journey was actually in need of more freedom and just a bit more hope.  So, if anything, my only resolution for 2010 is to strive for those two elements in every single thing I do: hope and freedom.  No more than just that because then it becomes too complicated and a sure path to self-defeat.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful year 2010 and may all your troubles last as long as your new year’s resolutions! Happy Holidays!

I had been curious for a while about Alibre’s aggressive marketing and extremely low prices. No one I knew had ever used or tried the software, and many even looked down on it, yet Alibre’s  salespeople advertised it pretty much implying that it could do everything SolidWorks does, but for a fraction of the price. I grew even more curious. Is this really so? Could it be that this software really does everything that SolidWorks can do but isn’t any more popular simply because bigger companies (Big Meanie SolidWorks) have made it hard for them spreading rumors that it’s not good?  I mean, after all, if you look at the description in their website, it looks like it does, right? It brings Algor into the mix for the Simulation, Hypershot for renderings; it can do sheetmetal, drawings, read files from other CAD software, print 3D pdfs, etc.

If you run a quick search for Alibre jobs, you’ll probably find only one or two in the whole country, yet their website mentions quite a few companies (some of them kind of famous) that use Alibre, and reading their forums you find people that say they bought Alibre and use it to do consulting. They bought it because that’s all they could afford, which is really understandable, or because they were coming from 2D software and this was their first experience with 3D modeling and they wanted something really low priced to begin with.  That is understandable too.  

Well, I’m one of those that can’t afford much and that would make this software look like a great bargain for me, right? Well, not quite. Unfortunately for me, I guess you can say that I have a champagne taste on a beer budget, and that can be really sad. I decided to try the software and see how it worked. My first trial expired and I never even installed the software, but the salesman called me quite a few times and even offered me a nice financing plan to buy their Alibre Expert in easy monthly payments over a whole year and without any interests. That’s a really mind-blowing offer, but I wish it had come from a different software reseller, if you know what I mean. I told the salesman that I wouldn’t buy software if I hadn’t tried it first and was convinced it could do all that I needed/wanted from it. I mentioned to him I specifically couldn’t live without surfacing tools similar to those in SolidWorks.  He stopped calling… I didn’t understand right away why he dropped me like a hot potato, but I think I just found out.

I managed to get myself a second chance to download and try their software.  I can say without being conceited in any way, that it’s OK, if OK is good enough for you, but it certainly can’t do what SolidWorks does. Certainly can’t do everything that SolidWorks does; if only perhaps a fraction, and very limited. This is only my opinion, you are allowed to have yours and you can certainly disagree with me, but I guess I much rather go without, and save my pennies for something else, even if it’s not SolidWorks.  I want to make it clear that I’m not a SolidWorks fanboy (fangirl?). If anything, I’m a fan of the functionality I’ve found in SolidWorks and that is not present in this other software.  Perhaps, with time they will include it, but right now it’s not there.

I suppose if you are coming from 2D software or no software at all, you won’t notice this as much, but if you got spoiled as I am, then it’s really painful to look for functionality (I’m not talking bells and whistles) that is not there or that is very limited compared to what you’re used to. Fillets are a great example of this because you don’t have as many options as in SolidWorks. This is true in general, for every single command you try, you’ll find limited options when compared to SolidWorks, but perhaps the worst, for me at least, was to find nothing for surfacing tools. You can trim a solid using a surface and thicken a surface to a solid, but I didn’t find any surfacing tools for creating the surfaces inside Alibre. You are supposed to bring those from another application, such as Rhinoceros, instead, meaning that you’ll have to invest more money and time into purchasing and learning a different application. You can move a face and delete it too, but only as long as a patch can be left on its place, meaning that you can’t go from surface to solid and solid to surface and do hybrid modeling like you do in SolidWorks. For instance, I extruded a square into a cube and then tried to delete one of its faces, but Alibre kept marking this as an error.  It didn’t even give me the best results when I tried importing a model from Rhinoceros into Alibre. The same model would open great in SolidWorks, even without attempting to heal any faces, but in Alibre it would open as a bunch of untrimmed surfaces intersecting each other.

Anyway, I’m not trying to bash anyone here, and I apologize if it looks like it. I just wanted to share this, for those that may be in a similar situation as I am, looking for something really good and affordable. It’s good to have information about the good and the bad, so you can make good choices.  Like I said, I will pass on this one and save for something else; you may decide it’s good enough for you… or not.

Basically, the survey makes you choose among different combos of functionality for the three different seats currently available in SolidWorks: standard, professional and premium. First they show you descriptions of three options for each seat, including the “as is” option, and two others that include some extra functionality and/or take away some other goodies, like photo-realistic rendering in professional and premium, or Simulation capabilities. There’s also a description of a stand-alone solution for photo-realistic rendering and presentation, and some stand-alone solutions for simulation, that I guess you could buy separately or together with your seat of SolidWorks, if you choose.   A brief description of similar products offered by AutoDesk follows.

Next, they ask you to choose from a list of possible choices which one you would prefer the most and which one the least. The choices include options such as SolidWorks Professional #1 with photo realistic rendering option (the standalone) for “X” amount of money or AutoDesk Inventor Suite for “Y” amount of money, for instance.  This part is a little tricky, though, but at least you have the cheat sheet available to check again what was supposed to be offered with each option.  However, unless you are very familiar with AutoDesk products, you can’t be really sure from their super-brief description of what functionality is exactly offered and how the price would compare.  Also, I’m not sure these prices included maintenance fees. I don’t think they did. Some of them seemed a bit too expensive to me, considering all that had been taken off the original license.

Part of me really hopes this means there will be a more affordable way to purchase a license of SolidWorks in the not so distant future, although there’s also the other part of me, the realistic one, that thinks it’s better not to hold my breath on this one.  It would be cool, though. I can think of a few bells and whistles I could certainly do without, but only as long as it really helps the price go down substantially. If you are going to end up paying almost the same as for the “as is” version, then it’s not worth it. What would be really cool is if you could buy some basic, affordable seat and then grow it by modules as you need, instead of having to upgrade to something twice as expensive and full of functionality you may never really use. While I’m in dreamland, it would be nice if they lowered the maintenance fees too.  Well, dreaming is cheap, right? Waking up to reality, now that’s the hard part. J

For some of us, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why the need for this kind of site?” A few users pointed out they can easily get models for free from the 3D Content Central. While this is true, you need to remember that the best models usually come from part suppliers and many of the models you find at the user’s library, could use a little improvement.  Phil Staunton, product designer and co-founder of Cadooku, had the following to say about this:   “Most models you get from Content Central are designed by manufacturers that upload components hoping for designers and engineers to use these components in new product assemblies as they are already modeled. The incentive is that the production team is likely to spec the same components and therefore the manufacturer will sell more real components.

This doesn’t provide any incentive to upload components that you don’t manufacture in the real world. And therefore these components tend to sit on all our hard-drives. Cadooku is designed to help increase the library of SW parts available by encouraging people to upload their models as they could create a passive income.

As an SW user myself I have regularly tried to hit a deadline by downloading models from free sites only to be disappointed at the quality of the download and worse, that it is simply imported surfaces that are hard to edit. By encouraging those who upload a model to give detailed, accurate descriptions and upload an image of their model tree, we hope to avoid this for users of our site.”

So, I guess this would mean that for most users knowing they’ll get paid for their model and that they are responsible for the model’s integrity is a good incentive to upload something of decent quality, as opposed to simply sharing whatever they model for free, errors and all.  Personally, I think it’s a great idea.  As much as I like sharing what I do, because I also learn in the process and my interest has always been to compare notes with other users that may take a look at my models and point out my mistakes or areas that need improvement, I do believe that great modeling work deserves compensation.  If someone out there spends several hours creating a great model and then some of us want that model and we plan to use it for commercial purposes, then I think we should compensate his/her effort. It’s only fair!

However, there are other implications in selling models this way that need to be understood, as well.  One of them is deciding how much a model is worth.  Regarding this, Phil adds, “Price is entirely determined by the seller.

We suggest during the upload process a price of $15-25 per hour of modeling time. The $15 an hour rate would be sensible for student or new modelers where as $25 an hour would better reflect a more experienced modeler’s expertise. This is because although they would be quicker at modeling, the model is likely to be modeled using better, more editable techniques and therefore would be worth more.

For example: I am a reasonably experienced modeler who builds robust, parametrically defined models. I have built a mountain bike in 3 hours and therefore I would probably charge $20 * 3 = $60. Of course I may choose to go for a lower price to sell more and undercut existing models or charge more on the basis I think I have done a great job and it is better than other, similar models on the site. The $60 just gives an approximate price to start from.

Price can be altered at a later stage if the seller chooses. However, if the price is reduced, this may be viewed as unfair by people who have bought the model at the higher price and therefore we discourage this.”

Other concerns  that come to mind are those about disclosure of proprietary information, as well as how to fight plagiarism and prevent people from taking a model from a free site, such as 3DCC, and then posting it in Cadooku  as their own.  Phil also had something to say about this, “I agree that 95% of content produced by designers is probably confidential client work. And yes we will probably never be as big as Turbosquid for example. But that’s ok because all we need is the 5% of models from lots of design consultancies to create a decent, useful library. The problem is going to be that if no-one uploads anything. To help encourage people to put models on the site we are currently offering great benefits (inc. free advertising for a month and zero commission until March 2010) for any model uploaded by December 1st. We are also offering to professionally render your main showcase image for any model uploaded before the end of the year. So take advantage and upload that 5%!!  …  If you post models from 3DCC as your own, you are breaking your agreement with 3DCC. We plan to police this and report these users to 3DCC and take their models off our site. We are also hoping our members will help with the policing. Any other suggestions to help with this would be appreciated!”

It certainly sounds like an interesting idea that may benefit quite a few users. What do you think? Do you think even those models you create during your down time are worth something or would you much rather share them for free? As a user, would you buy models or would you rather spend the extra time and effort and model everything yourself or hope to find something semi-decent for free?

For illustration purposes, I’m going to use this old model of a drill jig. Suppose I want to create a section view of this assembly by making a partial cut along the Front and Right planes and removing a section of the drill jig’s handle and  block, thus revealing the screw inside.  If I tried to use Section View  (from the Heads Up Toolbar in the Graphics Area or  from View, Display, Section View), it would slice all components in the assembly all along  a couple of planes parallel to the Front and Right planes, leaving just a piece of it, as you can see in the following image. That’s not really what the section view of the assembly in that picture was supposed to look like.

So, let’s try a different approach using Assembly Features.  First of all, I created a new configuration and called it Section View.  Now, on the assembly’s Top plane, I sketched a couple of lines right where I needed the cut for the section, as you can see in this image. Notice that this sketch in on the assembly’s Top plane, not at the part level.

Once my sketch was ready, I clicked on Assembly Features from the Assembly toolbar and selected Extruded Cut from the list to cut the components in the assembly using my sketch (you can also find this command from Insert, Assembly Feature, Cut, Extruded Cut).

Notice that this extrude cut command works pretty much in the same way it does for parts, but rest assure that the components themselves won’t be affected by this feature outside of the assembly. As a start condition, I decided to use offset, so the cut would begin a short distance from underneath the sketch plane. Under Direction 1, I reversed the direction to extrude trough all in the upward direction.  This way it won’t cut all through the bottom of the block, but only through the top. I used Feature Scope at the bottom of the Property Manager to select that only the handle and the block, but not the screw, would be affected by the cut. You can see all my selections in the following image.

Here in this other image you can see the section view that was created this way. In the Feature Manager, a new cut extrude feature has been added at the assembly level. This feature only exists inside the assembly; if you open your parts in a separate window, they’ll remain unchanged.

Now I’m trying to catch up with the rest of the world, although I know that’s just impossible. I did notice, however, that this year DS SolidWorks came up with something new: contests! And the prize is free admission to SolidWorks World 2010! That’s so cool!

I think their second contest is currently going on and it’s open to those that have never been to SolidWorks World.  From what I understand, all you have to do is leave a comment on their blog describing a first SolidWorks related experience of your own. It can be your first user group meeting, your first experience using SolidWorks, your first finished model. Hmmm, I wonder if writing about the first time you overdefined a model, or your first crash would also be acceptable…  Never mind that! If you have never been to SolidWorks World and you want to get in for free, courtesy of DS SolidWorks, then head over to that blog and write your heart away.

First of all, he added small fillets to the areas of the latch where stress concentrations are expected, at the “root” of the latch. He also “cut” the model in half, in order to take advantage of its symmetry through the use of symmetry constraints, which can be found among the Advanced Fixtures available in SolidWorks Simulation.

The symmetry fixtures will simulate the half of the latch that was cut from the model. Having this fixture in place will prevent any displacements across the plane of symmetry, but allow displacements on the plane of symmetry. The idea behind this is to reduce the number of equations necessary, as well as the solving time. In order to use this constraint, right click on Fixtures, and select Advanced Fixtures, Symmetry. He selected the left planar face of the latch to define the plane of symmetry, as you can see in the following image.

Chris also talked to me about the possibility of improving results by any of two options: manually refining the mesh and using mesh controls, or making use of the h-adaptive solution method, which is available only for static analysis and solid elements. Why is this going to improve results? Well, simply because any solution obtained through FEA will depend on our choices for discretization (a.k.a. meshing). Different choices for meshes will also cause different discretization errors, and we can estimate these errors by making systematic (planned and gradual) changes to the mesh and analyzing the impact of such changes in the results of our study. This is often called a convergence process. The way we can do this is by simply starting with a study that uses an average element size mesh, and then, in subsequent studies, gradually refine the global mesh (reduce the size of the elements), while keeping an eye on any changes in stress and strain in the whole model or in areas of interest (in this case the fillets). We’ll know the process is converging when any further refinement of the mesh produces insignificant changes in the magnitude of the results. This can be a long and tedious process.

Further manual refinement consists of applying mesh controls to the areas of interest in the model. Basically, mesh controls allow us to refine the mesh locally, only in those areas of interest where we expect high concentration of stress, while the rest of the model is meshed using a much larger element size, thus reducing the number of equations and time needed to solve the study, at least when compared to global mesh refining. Mesh controls can be applied to edges, vertices, faces or entire components of assemblies, and they need to be applied before meshing the entire model.  The way to apply mesh controls is by right clicking on the mesh icon in the Simulation Study tree and select Apply Mesh Control.

Here in this image you can appreciate the way Chris applied a mesh control to that couple of fillets. He selected the two faces and used an element size of 0.029 in and a Ratio of 1.5.  This Ratio parameter simply specifies the ratio between element sizes in consecutive transitional layers when going from the global mesh element size to the local mesh element size. A Ratio of 1.5 is usually default.

Chris also applied mesh controls to the curved face of the cutout you see on the bottom of the latch, where stresses also concentrate, and to that edge on the tip of the latch, that he created by means of a split line, and used to define the Use Reference Geometry Advanced Fixture that I applied in the original study to make sure the latch had that 5 mm displacement, remember?

He then meshed the rest of the model using the default mesh element size. Notice in this image the transition between mesh element sizes in different areas of the model.

So that’s the manual way to do it, but this refinement process can also be automated, by using the h-adaptive Solution Method. By the way, the “h” refers to the size of the element, so the convergence process through mesh refinement is actually called “h convergence process”, since the size of the elements is gradually reduced.

To make use of the h-adaptive solution method right click on the name of the study in the Simulation Study tree and select Properties, then select the Adaptive tab, and under Adaptive method option select h-adaptive.  You have a few options to choose from here.  From the help document, “Target Accuracy sets the accuracy level for the strain energy norm in the model, which is not the same as stress accuracy level.” A default value of 98% means that the convergence process will stop if the difference in the strain energy norm between two loops drops below 2%. Accuracy Bias instructs the solver how to concentrate on getting stress results: Local (all the way to the left) will cause the solver to concentrate on getting accurate peak stress results for those very localized areas with high strain energy errors (the fillets) by highly refining the mesh in those areas, while Global (all the way to the right) will cause the solver to ignore high, localized strain energy errors and concentrate on getting accurate overall stress results for the whole model.  The maximum number of loops will tell the solver how many times to repeat the process of mesh refinement. Looping will end when Target Accuracy is achieved or when the maximum number of loops is reached. If Mesh Coarsening is selected, it simply means that during the mesh refining process our original mesh can actually be made coarser in some areas of the model, as the solver sees fit. This way the mesh will be refined only where needed.

This is the mesh that my friend Chris achieved for the latch by using the h-adaptive solution method with default values and a maximum number of loops of 3.

As my friend pointed out to me, the h-adaptive method is useful not only to save us from the tedious process of manual mesh refinement, but also for those times when we’re not exactly sure where the areas of high concentration of stresses will be.

Thanks, Chris!

I named him Troubles because it suits his personality. He’s always in the mood for mischief and looking for ways to get into all sorts of places.  Unfortunately for me, one of his favorite places to explore is inside my kitchen cupboards, where I keep the aluminum foil, the sugary cereal, and other goodies. Up until a couple of days ago, I used to think I had the situation under control thanks to the leftovers of the childproof latches I had installed on those cupboard doors to keep my own kids out of them. That’s when I contemplated in horror how the cat managed to push the latch down and swing the cupboard door open.  Wait a minute?  I thought those things were supposed to be hard to open even for a small child! Not that it requires a lot of effort, but, I mean, how strong is a cat, anyway?

Motivated by this question, I decided to make a simple model of a childproof latch and use SolidWorks Simulation to estimate the force that is required in order to push the latch down and open the cupboard door.  First of all, the kind of latch I’m talking about is a simple vinyl one, such as the one in this picture.

The long narrow piece goes attached to the inside top corner of the cupboard door and there’s a small piece that goes secured to the frame of the cupboard, and that will serve as a stop for the latch. When the child attempts to open the door, the latch will get trapped by the other piece, allowing the door to open only partially, unless the latch is pushed down enough for its tip to pass underneath the other piece.  I’m not so good at explaining this, but I’m sure most everyone has seen one of these before.

So this is what I did… I made a very simple model of the latch, as you see here. My model included some filleted edges, but they are not really necessary or useful for this analysis, as you will see in a bit, so I decided to suppress the fillets and run an analysis without them.  Doing this usually makes the calculations easier and faster, and the results aren’t affected, unless, of course, there’s a concentration of stress in the corners and you are interested in knowing   the stresses precisely in the filleted areas.

Next thing I needed to do was create a new Simulation study using this configuration without fillets, and establish some boundary conditions.  I applied a fixed geometry fixture to the back of the rectangular plate, to simulate how it would be securely attached to the cupboard door, unable to rotate, slide or move in any direction. This is done simply by right clicking on Fixtures and selecting Fixed Geometry from the menu.

I applied a second fixture to this study. This fixture makes the study slightly unusual, because what I was used to do was to apply some boundary conditions (usually some fixed geometry) and then a force and that’s it, let SolidWorks calculate stresses, displacements, etc. due to that force. In this case, however, I’m trying to find the magnitude of a force that will generate a certain known displacement, and this second fixture is going to help me in that task.

I knew I needed the very tip of the latch to displace some 5 mm down, so I used an advanced fixture to specify this translation.  If you right click on Fixtures and select Advanced Fixture, you’ll open a property manager where you’ll be able to choose from several different advanced fixtures available. In this case, I used Use Reference Geometry.  At first, I made the mistake of thinking that what I wanted was for the that small rectangular face on the tip of the latch (shown in pink) to displace down 5 mm along the vertical face adjacent to it (shown in green), and so I used those two faces to define the fixture, as you can see in the image. 

This, however, was a mistake because, after meshing the model and running the simulation, it produced the following result.  Notice something funny about this image? Look closely. If you were paying attention, you probably noticed that both faces remain parallel to their original positions throughout the deformation process, which is not the way you expect the latch would deform when pushed down. You can see it clearly in the image, as the original model has been superimposed on the deformed one.

So, I tried again, only this time I used different entities to define the fixture. Instead of a face, I used an edge on the tip of the latch.  I specified that I needed that edge to translate 5 mm down in a direction normal to the Top plane, as you can see in the following image. 

Well, that seemed to do the trick! After meshing the model and running the simulation, I obtained results that were more like what I was expecting.

By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I don’t have Simulation Premium, I was running this analysis in SolidWorks Simulation, but even though SolidWorks Simulation is usually limited to the small displacement kind of analysis (linear analysis), where the deformation of the model is so small it really can’t be noticed by the naked eye, it is also possible to solve some large displacement, non-linear problems, as well,  and obtain some accurate results, provided that there is no permanent deformation.  This one is a large displacement kind of problem, since 5 mm is an extremely noticeable deformation, however, this deformation doesn’t appear to be permanent, since the maximum stress is way below the yield point for this material.  To run an analysis making use of the large displacements option, simply right click the analysis name on the tree, select Properties, Options, and check the option Large Displacement, as you see in this image.  However, if you don’t select this option yourself and, while running the simulation, SolidWorks Simulation detects that this is a problem where large displacements are involved, it will give you a warning about it and ask you about running the simulation using this option. Don’t ignore the warning, since it can lead to incorrect results.

Once the stress distribution was calculated, I was able to estimate the force necessary to push the latch down 5 mm by right clicking on the Results folder and selecting List Result Force from the menu. I selected the rectangular face of the tip (in green), clicked Update, and found that the magnitude of the force should be approximately 5.5 lbs, applied normal to this face. 

I checked these findings by running an analysis the “typical” way, applying a force of 6 lbs normal to that same face, and the displacements plot showed the kind of large displacements I was expecting, once again with a maximum stress way below the yield point.  One thing to notice here is that if you look at the stress distribution plot for this problem I just talked to you about, you’ll see that the magnitude of the stress appears to be higher on the particular edge that was used to define the second fixture, when compared to the stress on rest of the latch’s tip, that is. This, I think is a consequence of applying the fixture using the edge, and not necessarily relevant, but I could be wrong.

Oh, I almost forgot! My brother is on the look for 3D modeling software for his personal use.  He’s not looking into SolidWorks, mainly because he can’t afford it and also because he’s in the area of architecture and doesn’t feel SolidWorks would be what he needs. After spending quite a long time convincing him that AutoCAD 2010, even with all the bells and whistles it’s been given, is NOT a 3D modeling software, he decided to take a look into other software, such as Rhino, and I must admit he’s got me curious about it. Well, it seems so affordable that if it’s really something useful for mechanical /product design, I may save my pennies and get a copy for my personal use.  So here are some questions for you:  Do you use Rhino combined with SolidWorks? If so, what is your experience with it? What kind of design have you done that you used Rhino for and what part did SolidWorks play in the rest of the design? Did you need other software of addins?

Anyway…  Transforming the plain round head of the funkey into a mouse’s head began by changing the sketch for the revolved surface from an arc (spherical head) to a partial ellipse (oval shaped head).  I also changed the axis of revolution, just tilted it up a bit.

Next step was to modify the ears. Instead of revolving the sketch 360 degrees as before, I only revolved it 180 degrees and then thickened the surface to a solid, by using the command Thicken, then mirrored the ear with respect to the Front plane and filleted the edges.

On the Top plane I made a sketch to aid me in the process of shaping the mouse’s snout. I used the sketch to trim the face’s surface with it. In the image, you can see the surface I’m removing in purple and the sketch appears in blue on the Top plane. Notice that there is a projection of this sketch on the back of the head, but I didn’t select that surface to be removed as well.

After trimming the surface, I patched the hole with a new surface using Fill Surface.  I didn’t really want to just patch the hole; I wanted this surface to have a more pronounced shape, different to that of the face. My goal was to create the nose of the mouse, so I thought if I added a point as a constraint curve (the one you see in the image), the new surface would have to pass by that point and I’d be able to shape it that way into a mouse’s snout. Well, the idea was good in part, but you can’t really depart that much from the original shape by using this method, or else the Fill Surface will fail. This is as far as I was able to locate that point.  I get a bump in the surface, but not so much for a mouse’s nose.

And this is where I decided to try my luck with the Freeform tool.  By the way, before you read any further, I would like you to take a look at a very nice video that Mark Biasotti shared with all the community through the SolidWorks Discussion Forums. You can find the video at: http://files.solidworks.com/special-videos/freeform demo.zip  This video explains in more detail how to use the Freeform tool.

Did you check out the video? Great! Now I’ll tell you how I used Freeform with my mouse.  First of all, I established that the boundary conditions at the edges would be Contact. Why? Well, because I wanted to deform that surface considerably and I knew the result would certainly not be tangent or have the same curvature of the face, but that was OK with me. For your own projects, however, you may want to keep the edges tangent or have the same curvature, so keep an eye on that.  I also established that the deformation would be symmetrical with respect to the Front plane by choosing Direction 1 Symmetry. What this means is that whatever I do to one side of the surface will automatically be done to the other side, thus making my work easier.  Notice the plane of symmetry in the middle of the nose. In this particular case, the plane is coincident with the Front plane of the model.

Next, I added a few curves (they appear in green in the image) by clicking on Add Curves and placing them pretty much wherever I thought I needed them.  On most of these curves, I also placed a few points, by clicking on Add Points and placing them over the curves I had just added previously. Each one of these points would allow me to push and pull from it, thus deforming the surface. Pulling a point in one of these curves will affect the appearance of the rest of the surface, at least up to the next curve. It sounds complicated, but each one of the points also has a Triad that gives you some control over the whole deformation process. You can either pull directly on the screen or enter numerical values for each axis direction in the property manager.

While you are at it, if you take a closer look at the edges of the surface being deformed, you’ll notice some arrows/vectors. If you click on them, a Triad will show up and by manipulating this Triad you’ll be able to adjust the tangency and vector direction of the surface right at the edges.  This will also affect the look of the rest of the surface.

So, basically, this is what I did with Freeform. I spent a few minutes pushing and pulling, adding and removing points. Just dynamically changing the surface until it looked the way I wanted it. I wasn’t really worried about creating the best of surfaces at this point, or if the mouse would be able to be manufactured or not; I just wanted the looks. Nevertheless, with some effort and perhaps a sketch or two to guide the deformation, I believe better results can be achieved with this tool.

Moving on with the rest of the mouth. Before deforming the surface, I had made an offset copy of it to serve as the back of the mouse’s mouth, by using the Offset Surface tool, as you see here.

Then, once the surface had been deformed, I trimmed it again using another sketch I made, again on the Top plane. This sketch will help me shape the smiling mouth. You can see the sketch in blue and the purple area is the surface to keep.

Once I had the gap for the mouth, I opened a 3D sketch and placed a two-point spline from corner to corner, like you see here.

I used this 3D sketch to create a couple of surfaces using Fill Surface. This is one of them.

And this is the other one.

Notice that the surfaces intersect the one for the back of the mouth that was previously created using Offset surface.  It’s time for some trimming.

First, I trimmed both new surfaces against the one I had created for the back of the mouth. In the image you see the parts in purple are the areas to keep and the surface in black is the one for the back of the mouth, used as the trimming tool.

I trimmed the back of mouth surface against the other two in a very similar way and then knitted all three surfaces together.

The eyes were made in a very similar way to the mouth. First, using a sketch to trim part of the surface of the face…  The sketch appears in blue and the area in purple is the one being removed.

I then opened a 3D sketch, converted the edge of the snout, thus creating a spline, and trimmed the spline  to the edges of the eye hole, like you see here. This sketch will be used to loft a surface for the eye.

This is the loft for the eye. As you see here, the lofted surface was created between the edge of the eye hole and the 3D sketch. I added a start constraint using the Top plane to define Direction Vector. I just wanted to give the eye some volume and make it look like it was popping out of the face.

The rest of the features for the face are fairly simple. The black little nose was made using a surface revolve and the teeth are just a couple of extrusions.

I’m still fascinated by the Freeform tool, however. I want to explore it further and see what else it can do and what other applications it can have, but most importantly, learn to control it a lot better than this in order to achieve the best results possible.