What’s New in SOLIDWORKS

SOLIDWORKS Technical Update, World News

We are excited to share with you some of the many exciting enhancements being delivered in SOLIDWORKS 2022 that will increase your productivity and help you not just get to market faster, but smarter. We can’t cover all the new features and enhancements in one blog, but here are a few highlights. Keep an eye out for weekly blogs over the next few months that will drill down deeper into what’s new in each product within the SOLIDWORKS ecosystem. SOLIDWORKS CAD Improved large assembly design. Better performance of Detailing Mode that further increases the speed of drawing creation as well as the ability to add hole callouts, edit existing dimensions and annotations, and add Detail, Break and Crop views. Faster file operations, configuration switching, and automatic Lightweight mode resolving even the most complex assemblies. Streamlined workflows for creating assemblies. Enhancements to assembly modeling include interference-detection reports that can be exported with images to Excel spreadsheets; the ability to save defeatured models as configurations so users can toggle between full and simplified versions; auto-resolve lightweight components; curve length for chain patterns; and an option to automatically resolve lightweight components upon expanding Feature Tree node. Better part design flexibility. Redo now available for over 60 features and commands in parts; sheet metal for edge flanges on non-planar tangent edges; complex flanges can be flattened; and the ability to add and evaluate equations in file properties and cut list properties. Work faster on large, complex designs. Improved performance for occlusion culling, silhouette edges, and drawings; open, save and close assemblies; detection and reporting of circular references; and adding files to SOLIDWORKS PDM vault. Connect to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Create seamless product development workflows and easily extend them with new tools as your business needs evolve. This connected the design-to-manufacturing ecosystem in the cloud enables teams to collaborate on real-time data anywhere and at any time on any Internet-enabled device. SOLIDWORKS Simulation Solve more models with contact faster. Faster contact simulation significantly speeds up contact simulation calculations. Improvements include parallel computing, better CPU usage, faster stiffness calculations, and more robust data communication for contact. Better meshing. You can’t simulate until you create a mesh. SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2022 offers a new mesh default: no enforced common modes that enable users to obtain a mesh much faster with the same accuracy as with common nodes between parts. Also, new mesh diagnostics enable users to identify, isolate, and be prompted when poor quality elements need to be fixed, improving mesh quality. Tap into built-in intelligence. Who doesn’t want a smarter way to simulate? With an automatic selection of the equation-solver, your simulations will be more accurate and faster. SOLIDWORKS Plastics Redesigned Plastics Manager tree. A redesign of various nodes of the Plastics Manager tree provides a more streamlined ad logical workflow for material selection, domain specification, process parameters, and other key plastics simulation tasks. Taking advantage of these new workflows will greatly simplify simulation preprocessing. Improved cooling results accuracy. Improvements to baffle and bubbler cooling system components include a new feature that splits flow passage into two halves when a blade is inserted in the channel. For bubblers, the plat is replaced with a smaller inner tube. More accurate and up-to-date material data. We have forged partnerships with leading global plastic material suppliers to ensure our customers have the most precise plastics material data, which leads to improved results. SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2021 Faster 3D electrical routing. Performance with the routing of wires in 3D has been vastly improved enabling users to 3xperiment more quickly with electrical route path choices inside complex equipment to refine the overall product design. User rights customization. You can now customize user access to areas, such as libraries, projects, product data and drawing controls for members of your workgroup to ensure data security and output consistency. Gain a more realistic of your product. Determining the mass properties of your wire, cable, and electrical harness design inside the 3D model of your overall machine, product, or vehicle.  

Flexible Component

Create Your Own Flexible Component (Intro.)

SOLIDWORKS Technical Update

[A New Balloon Air Pump Design] “Flexible Component” is one of the new features in SOLIDWORKS 2022. You can define a part component as flexible to drive the geometry of flexible components by the assembly geometry. That means it works only in assembly files to make a rigid part model become flexible without creating several configurations. Better Explanation for Assembly Model! To make the spring body a “flexible component”, we can avoid creating several configurations to explain our design in different positions as in the above pictures. However, this blog will be the introduction purpose first. In other words, this blog will be continuous in part2 and part3.   Introduction for The Flexible Component Please note that the external reference must be one of the following entity types: The “Make Part Flexible” feature can find it in customize > commands > Assembly categories. Or you can directly use the search commands function. For part2, I will show the details of how to create the spring sketch for the flexible components feature. For part3, I will show you more advance about how to create the sketch for the flexible balloon!!!

Simulation

Intro to Metal Forming Simulation with an Explicit Solver

SOLIDWORKS Technical Update

The 3DEXPERIENCE WORKS® Simulation portfolio includes the ability to simulate the metal-forming process. The products can be leveraged on SOLIDWORKS® models when connected to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Forming processes may include stamping, punch stretching, forging, drawing, and more. Truth be told, simulating forming processes can be a difficult task. Usually, they involve geometric, material, and contact nonlinearities. However, simulation of forming processes offers advantages that outweigh the difficulties. Forming simulations can reduce both the cost and length of a product development cycle by identifying potential problems prior to tooling or fabrication. Simulation can also improve the quality of the part being manufactured through testing to ensure that the manufacturing processes appropriately account for spring back, stretching of the parts, and thickness reduction. Figure 1: Forming a flap into a sheet metal part Validate on the Fly Forming simulation tools on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform recreate manufacturing processes virtually to check for potential problems such as thinning, wrinkling, or cracking. This enables you to adapt on the fly during development, which often eliminates the need for multiple physical prototypes. Plus, you can experiment with different kinds of materials to see how they will behave in the real world (virtually) and then decide which material works best for your application based on actual performance. Also, you can test process parameters such as manufacturing speeds or temperature levels. Costly Physical Testing Cycle In a traditional production environment, without metal forming simulation, you must develop physical tools along the way to validate your design. And this process may require several iterations before getting to a final version—a very slow and expensive process to be sure. However, finite element analysis (FEA) testing shows you how your products will perform, without ever doing a physical test. You can eliminate iteration cycles since you can test designs and materials to validate what will happen during the forming process. Figure 2: General development process supported by FEA  Simulation Tool Belt Metal forming simulations are numerically challenging because you will often see large deformations, plasticity, or complex contact situations (with large sliding interactions and friction) which makes for highly nonlinear simulation studies. The 3DEXPERIENCE WORKS portfolio of simulation solutions provides additional tools for your FEA tool belt. When you encounter simulations in SOLIDWORKS that demand a deeper level of nonlinear studies, you can simply reach for another tool, in this case, the explicit solver within 3DEXPERIENCE to validate forming processes that will increase the efficiency and speed of your product development process. If you would like more information about simulation for metal forming processes, please contact. Figure 3: Plastic strain result of a deep drawing simulation Click here to watch the forming simulation technical webinar that will walk you through the part development process and demonstrate how forming simulation recreates the manufacturing process virtually. If you would like more information about simulation for metal forming processes, please Contact Us.