Graphics Systems SolidNotes

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!

COSMOS FloWorks user? Wanna grab the EV of 08's SP4? Read here first.

So you say you've been waiting and waiting and waiting for SP4 of SolidWorks 2008.  And you've seen the download for the EV (early visibility) release on your Customer Portal.  But now you're wondering if you should download it.

If you're a COSMOS FloWorks (SolidWorks' Computational Fluid Dynamics software) user you might want to think twice. Why?  Because Flo studies are not backwards compatible to the previous Service Packs.

Straight from the horse's mouth.... or better, the SolidWorks Knowledge Base, see Solution Article S-016109. Users who've upgraded to SP4 will be greeted with a message "Wrong file format" but SolidWorks will still load. The answer to this article: "COSMOSFloWorks is not backward compatible. Upgrading the machine with COSMOSFloWorks SP2 to SP4 will correct the "Wrong File Format" error message. Unfortunately there is no work around other than recreating the model using the SP2 version or upgrading to SP4."

This means that if the company is going to upgrade its users, all the users ought to upgrade, even if only one or two are FloWorks users.  This should cause the CAD administrator and the user community to think twice before haphazardly downloading and installing new service packs. As always, if you have a question or concern, please call your reseller first and let them offer their input and help guide your decision. (This is also a good time to 1. make sure your organization has backups and restore points and 2. keep an eye on those individuals who are always the first to grab new releases and install them independantly from the rest of the community)

Add it in!

We're all familiar with SolidWorks Add-Ins such as COSMOSWorks, PhotoWorks, or Third Party items such as DriveWorks. But did you know that some productivity softwares, such as MS Excel also utilize add-ins? It's true. Furthermore, you might realize that you are already using one! If you don't know, allow me to show you- in MS Office 2007- where to go. So, start up Excel... go ahead...

At the bottom corner of the Start menu for Excel, you'll note the Options button.

Note the "Add-Ins" category. By selecting this you can see what add-ins are available and which are active or not. Some add-ins are loaded when you install some other piece of software. Others are additional content for and through Microsoft Excel that need to be downloaded before using. (You can select the images to make them larger)

Here to the left, I clicked "Go" from the previous screen and you can see I've chosen one of the add-ins provided to us by Microsoft. This particular add-in allows me to perform histograms, covariance analysis, and random number generation among others.

So what?  What could this possibly have to do with SolidWorks. Well, quite a bit if you frequently work with Design Tables or use third-party SolidWorks add-ins such as DriveWorks. Both of these examples heavily rely on Excel. For example, if we used a design table to capture important dimensions of a part and the MROUND command to round up the values for displaying within the part drawing, we would be concerned if whether the Excel Add-In that contains that function was installed lest the design tables fail to round the values accordingly.

This problem, like others with Excel, can often be abrogated by simply insuring that you are using the most recent version of the tool. This however isn't always available as an option. So, as a friendly reminder from another SolidWorks user who has been bitten in the backside by Excel, please be sure to check your add-ins. (especially if your company is upgrading from one version to another) And who knows? You might find that useful command you were looking for that you never thought Excel could do!

If you are a DriveWorks user then setting up Excel shouldn't be something new. Along with Add-Ins, you also have macro and security settings to consider. But this, as the expression goes, is "another episode."