The right part. The wrong stress.
When analyzing a SolidWorks assembly within COSMOSWorks, the available results to plot are initially displayed for the entire assembly. But I'd like to tell you about a trick to change that. And it might be the most important COSMOSWorks trick you learn this week.
Here in the image on the left, we see a simple, two-piece assembly and we're plotting the normal stresses in the Z. Note that the maximum stresses occur within the piece to the left. Let's call that the "collar." The second piece- we'll call that the pin shuttle- comes in to contact due to the loading and we're interested in the stess concentrations and maximum stress there. What do you do??
First, you must hide all components you are not interested in. Secondly, right-click the chart results in question and modify the Chart Options.
You will be then presented with a checkbox option to show the Min/Max range on the shown part only.
After this, you may need to re-edit the definition of the plot but afterwards, the plot will correctly display the stresses, displacements, or strain for the desired part only.
You can see the modifications in the image to the right. And now you know how to tweak your plots from assembly analyses to correctly show results for specific component!




One tool that SolidWorks Corporation has developed that I think will be useful is SolidWorks for iPod. No, it's not a software solution; it's a website that has cool videos, renderings, and technical tidbits that are made for the iPod. SolidWorks thinks this is such a great idea that they gave every regular attendee of SolidWorks World an iPod Nano loaded with this content! See
3DVia is a hot ticket on the showroom floor. This is an awesome solution for creating truly interactive documentation for tech pubs, as well as mockups of super-large assemblies. We'll be showing it at Graphics Systems in the near future! Take a look at the information on www.solidworks.com.