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DESIGN ANALYSIS

SOLIDWORKS Costing an in-depth Review Part 3 – Options

As with most SOLIDWORKS modules, you of course setup your system settings for starting any project. Costing is no different, you can define or override system-level costing options using the Costing Options dialog box.

You can select sheet metal Costing options to do the following:

  • Estimate the cost of sheet metal parts from a machining template.
  • Apply fixed custom costs to sheet metal features, such as bends, hems, or library features.

You can select machining Costing options to:

  • Recognize any removed material as volume features.
  • Assign a default machining operation to volume features, or calculate the cost of volume features by assigning a per volume cost to the removed material.
  • Assign the default surface finishing operation for milling and turning on machined parts.
  • Override template settings for offset-based finishing. You can enter a value for the offset from the machined surface for finishing and semi-finishing operations.

To open the Costing dialog box, select the Costing Task Pane, click Costing Options SolidWorks(upper left corner).

SolidWorks

Costing Options – Defaults

You can streamline the costing process by using the costing default values to prepopulate the Costing Task Pane to meet your specific needs.

To access the costing defaults, in the Costing Options dialog box, click the Defaults tab.

Manufacturing Method:

There are 3 different methods that can be defined for manufacturing:

General Body
Sheet Metal
Structural Member

 

General Body:
General body is anything that is not sheet metal or a structural member.
Select one of the following manufacturing methods:

•Machining
•Plastics
•Casting
•3D Printing

 

Sheet metal:
Machined Plate is now included as a manufacturing method for sheet metal

Select one of the following manufacturing methods:

•SheetMetal
•Machined Plate

 

Structural Member:

Select one of the following manufacturing methods:

•Structural Member
•Machining
•Plastics
•Casting
•3D Printing

 

The next section is the Main Template options for each of the manufacturing methods. Here you can define a Template for either a General Body, Sheet Metal or Multibody.

SolidWorks

Templates will be covered in part 4 of this series.

 

Material:
Material in where you can specify what materials to assign for each manufacturer type:

SolidWorks

 

Stock Type:

SolidWorks

Machining stock body – Select one of the following types:

•Block
•Cylinder
•Plate

 

Sheet metal blank size – Select one of the following types:

•Bounding Box
•Flat Pattern

Structural member stock type – Select one of the following types:

•Per Length
•Per Stock Length

 

Quantity:

SolidWorks

Single body Enter a quantity for Total number of parts and Lot size.
Multi body Enter a quantity for Total number of parts and Lot size.

 

Template Overrides:

Use the costing template overrides to define or override system-level costing options.

To access the costing template overrides, in the Costing Options dialog box, click the TemplateOverrides tab.

 

Removed material processing:

Select one of the following:

Use standard manufacturing process recognition – Defines the stock material that is removed as specific machining operations.

Use customizable volume feature recognition – Defines the stock material that is removed as volume features. You can apply volume feature options to customize the removed material cost estimates.

 

Feature processing:

Use custom defined cost – Lets you specify custom costs for bends, hems or library features.

Slot feature recognition Select one of the following:
Recognize slot features
Treats slot features as slots.
Recognize slot features as volume features – Treats slot features as volume features for cost estimation.
Select Show slots with undetermined volume in NCA folder to move volumeless slots to the No Cost Assigned folder.

 

Volume feature calculation – Select one of the following:

Default machining operation – Assigns the selected machining operation to estimate the cost of removing the volumes of material from the stock body.

You can select from the following operations:
•Flat End Mill
•Ball End Mill
•Face Mill
•HSS Drill
•Carbide drill
•OD Turning
•ID Turning

 

Cost per volume removed – Lets you assign a fixed cost per unit volume of removed material, rather than calculate the cost based on tool sizes and removal rates. You can specify custom costs for roughing, semi-finishing, and finishing.

 

Finish processing:

Default finishing operation type Specifies the default finishing operation type:
Roughing
Semi-finishing
Finishing

 

Override template settings for offset-based finishing
Calculates the per-unit-volume cost of semi-finishing and finishing, based on an offset distance value rather than on template data. The offset distance value is the operation offset distance from the machined surface.

We hope this series gives you some good insight to the SOLIDWORKS COSTING product.  Please check back to the CATI Blog as the Dedicated Support Team will continue posting new articles to this series as we continue to dive deep into this topic. All of these articles will be stored in the category of Daily Dose…..of SOLIDWORKS Support and links to each article with their release date are listed below:

 

 

Blake Cokinis

Sr. Support Product Specialist

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

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