Category: SOLIDWORKS

1D MESHING:

• Used for geometries having one of the dimensions very large in comparison to rest of the two (Refer fig.1).

•Element Shape: Line (Refer fig.2)

•Element Type: Rod, beam, Pipe etc,.

•Practical Example: Long shaft, beam, pin joint, Connection elements. In solidworks, We use beam element for 1D meshing. Beam elements are capable of resisting axial, bending, shear, and torsional loads.

2D MESHING

•Used for geometries having two of the dimensions very large in comparison to last dimension.

•Element shape: Triangle

•Element type: Thin shell, membrane, plate.

•Practical application: Sheet metal parts, Plastic components like instrument panel

3D MESHING

•Used for all 3D objects.

•Element shape in solidworks: Tetragonal.

•Element type: Solid

•Practical application: Gear Box, Engine Block, Crankshaft.

Appropriate meshing:

You can mesh a sheetmetal part with Solid tetrahedral element but meshing a sheetmetal with shell element gives you approximate result and reduce computational effort which will be handy for any simulation engineer. likewise, you should mesh a beam or rod using beam  element.

This is a short blog about the benefits of using SOLIDWORKS interference detection. this is very powerful tool when creating with moving parts and components in assemblies,

We would be analyzing component interferences found within the assembly interference,

Detection analyzes geometry and identifies overlapping components within a basic 

Assembly.

So, having a tool that can do this job is greatly beneficial interference detection is found within “Evaluate tab”

click Tools > Evaluate > Interference Detection 

Interference deduction tool tab

It is usually easy to see interferences but sometimes it can be difficult to

determine,

By default, the selected component will be assembly. You can delete it by right-clicking on the

name of the assembly and selecting Delete. To select new parts, click on the desired area in the

Graphics window. 

In this situation, the components have been overlapped

Overlapped component

How we can solve this kind of problem??

we will have the option to calculate interferences within the entire assembly or specify

components.

We will calculate the entire component we can see that the two interferences,

The interference detection makes both components interfering transparent and Highlights the overlapping volumes make it easy to see since I made this assembly 

Highlighted component

We know that there is a distance made between the two interferences

Interfering Components that we need to address even if I did not know this using the view

mates Tool can be a quick way to list all the mates associated with that component

View Mates option

Edit coincidence mate

We will increase the dimension around check the interference, again as you can see there Are no longer any interference this joint will be able to rotate.

Edit distance mate

We had easy to change the distance and the overlapping issues have been resolved.

Results Section

Interference deduction was great for static interferences when it comes to dynamic

Collisions we need to use a different tool the move component command contains a

Collision detection feature will check collisions between all components.

interference detection can be useful to ensure that the component has the desired level of

motion.

SOLIDWORKS has a capability to work with third party native CAD data files which includes ACIS, Autodesk Inventor, CATIA v5 (.CAT part, .CAT Product), IGES, PTC, SOLID EDGE, NX files as shown in Fig(A)

Fig(A)

IMPORTING STEP/IGES FILES AND EXTRACTING THE FEATURES

SOLIDWORKS has a special option to extract and recognize all the features from other CAD files or STEP/IGES files.

Let us see the step by step process for extracting features from a STEP file

Step1:

Fig (B)            

Fig(C)

Open a STEP file directly into SOLIDWORKS. Once after opening, the part will be viewed as an imported STEP part as shown in fig (C)

Step 2:

Right clicking the STEP part file allows you to click on the “Dissolve feature” option which will prompt you to break the link of the part initially as shown in Fig(D)

The below picture shows you the break link dialog box after clicking on the dissolve feature. Click on “yes, break the link” option as shown in Fig(E)

Fig (D)    

                                                     Fig(E)

Step 3:

Breaking the link from the previous step will convert the step part file into a imported geometry. You can extract feature only after converting it into a imported file.

Right click the imported file and go to feature works -> Recognize features. This will induce the user to extract the standard features or sheet metal features as per the wish shown in Fig(F) and (G)

Fig(F)     

Fig(G)

Step 4:

The Complete recognition of the remaining features in the imported body. When recognition is complete, the imported body no longer appears in the SOLIDWORKS Feature Manager design tree.

                                                                     

A steel rod circular in section, tapers from 3 cm diameter to 1.5 cm diameter in a length of 60 cm.Find how much its length will increase under a tensile force 22 kN. Take E = 2 x 10⁵ N/ mm²

The Hand calculated taper Rod deflection is 0.186 mm. We will follow the solution using Simulation Package. The Material Properties introduced in the software.

Create a Geometry to build in the software for given Dimensions:

Fig (1) 3D model of Taper Rod

Fig (2) Material Properties involved in the calculation

Boundary conditions involved as per theoretical conditions involved in the same.

Fig (3) Fixing at the larger end

For solid we can arrest the three Translation x, y, z and rotation of Three components will be eliminated.

Fig (4) Fixing at the smaller end

Tensile Load on the smaller end with the load of 22kN. 

Conclusion: 

We have compared the result of Taper rod subjected to tensile load using hand calculation and Solid works simulation.  Solid works simulation is giving us most accurate result compared to theoretical value.