How do you obtain the material property data utilized in your analysis work? Do you only use the materials in the SOLIDWORKS Material Library? Are you one of the many SOLIDWORKS Simulation users that believe SOLIDWORKS Corporation should provide several hundred more materials in the built-in material libraries? To me, this is a serious question that I often debate with other SOLIDWORKS Simulation users. How often? As recently as a few days ago I was engaged in a slightly heated […]
Do you need to provide documentation about the accuracy of the Simulation program to support a Quality Assurance (QA) process in your company? Or have you ever asked yourself; “How do I know I’m getting accurate results?” No need to guess or worry, the SOLIDWORKS Simulation team has provided verification problems with comparison to theory to support this need. To access the full list of these problems and open the model files associated with each, navigate within SOLIDWORKS to the […]
Have you ever proofread your own writing a dozen times and not recognized a mistake? Well, in Part 1 of this blog I did just that. It must have been the lucky number 13 re-read to realize my blunder! My original premise was to use the same number of nodes along any edge in the finite element model. So, when I referenced Part 1’s ‘Figure 5‘ and wrote: “The difference in results between 3 high quality elements and 4 draft […]
Simplify, simplify, simplify! I cannot count how many times I’ve had this discussion with customers when reviewing their CAD models and listening to what they want to analyze with SOLIDWORKS Simulation. I know how easy it is to start a new SOLIDWORKS Simulation study and begin setting up an analysis on fully-featured CAD models – click a button and you’re on your way. Let’s look at an example of starting simple and working towards the complex with SOLIDWORKS Simulation that […]
Stress Averaging at Mid-side Nodes is one of several new features in SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2019. If you’ve been digging through the What’s New documentation for SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2019, I would be willing to bet this addition has you stumped. I was when I first read about the new feature and started investigating how this option functioned. In fact, I had to reach out to a couple of good friends who work in SOLIDWORKS Product Definition for clarification of this new […]
Recently, I was discussing the use of hand calculations in conjunction with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with one of our customers. His belief is that hand calculations are a waste of time, that they are never accurate enough to represent what he designs. Simply put, how can an equation referencing material properties, geometric characteristics, or section properties needed in many structural analysis calculations represent the complex designs he creates today. That is a strong and fair argument that I cannot […]
How many left mouse button (LMB) clicks does it take to complete a task? More specifically, how many left clicks does it take to select all the faces, edges, components, and similar that you need when setting up a feature in SOLIDWORKS Simulation? I’m sure you would agree that the more complex the analysis, the more button clicks required. Are you taking advantage of the available tools to reduce your LMB clicks and save time? If you are not currently […]
If you are doing more with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) than just analyzing single, continuous volume parts, you need to pay attention to the contact conditions in your Finite Element Model. For SOLIDWORKS Simulation users working with assemblies, a frequent complaint I hear is how much time it can take to set up all the necessary contact conditions. For a Finite Element Model to mimic reality, proper contacts are essential. While I will not disagree that getting everything set up […]
SOLIDWORKS Simulation Fatigue Analysis The process of progressive structural damage in a component subjected to alternating loading conditions that may lead to failure after a sufficient number of cycles accurately describes fatigue. If you design products that need only to last for a single use, the rest of what you will read beyond this does not apply to you. For those of us designing products that must last for multiple use cycles, even cycles into the tens of millions, fatigue […]
I’ve previously blogged about the ice cream spoon, but when I wrote those articles the weather was more suited for eating ice cream! Personally, I like ice cream year-round, but some people choose warmer desserts when the winter months set in. The first ice cream spoon blog discussed Surface Modeling techniques to create the spoon design. The second ice cream spoon blog discussed using SOLIDWORKS Plastics to analyze the injection molding of the ice cream spoon. In this installment, I […]