Id Desing With Solidworks

7/28/2019 Id Desing With Solidworks

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Today I will go through initial set-up for ID in Solidworks 2005. (We can figure out some work

arounds for earlier versions as we go along for those with earlier versions) When you use

SolidWorks it initially feels as if you are drawing with crayons or something. You free-form draw

a thick blue-lined circle wherever you want it with no constraints (very unsettling for those used to

pure parametrically driven models). What a novice program! It even looks like crayon. However,

the simplicity isn't indicative of an underpowered program, but of intuitive interface. If you want

an unconstrained circle somewhere, SW won't argue with you, but go with the flow.

You can soon learn a whole palette of tools that allow very complex geometry in very few

steps. However, Solidworks out of the box does not show all the tools that I use on a consistentbasis. I will show you how to customize the layout for ID purposes.

This is what I see when I initially open Solidworks. There is not a whole lot to look at. This is

because the interface subtly changes depending on the type of edited document

Type Ctrl+N to create a new document. Click on Part. The opening screen will not look like theone below. I have removed all the commands and toolbars, so that I can start out fresh, and only

show common commands. To remove a toolbar click on the edge of the tool bar and drag it out

into the display area. This makes the toolbar a standalone dock-able window that you can close

out.


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Click Tools ->Customize. A dialog box opens up that looks like this. Click the following options

within the toolbar options. This opens up the toolbars with commonly used commands

Next drag and drop the new toolbars into the grey areas surrounding the display area to clean up

the display. Arrange the toolbars as you deem logical. Your screen should look something like this:


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We still dont have all the commands that we need. Click Tools-->Customize. A dialog box opens

up that looks like this. Go to the Commands tab, and in the scrolling Category menu go to Sketch.

Add the commands that I have circled in the menu to the sketch toolbar on the right of the screen

by dragging and dropping

Scroll down to Features Category and drag and drop the extra commands. I will explain what most

of these tools do later in the tutorial.


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You can also optionally remove commands that you rarely use by dragging and dropping them

into the display window. This does not work during regular use, only during customization

You should end up with a screen that looks like this (minus the doodles) Tomorrow I will go over

the modeling strategy that we will use. It is very important to think about how you are going to

model an object and your overall strategy before you actually start using Solidworks

We went over some house-keeping today. This might be tedious, but dont worry things will get a

little more exciting the next few days.


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Here are some approaches that we can possibly take. Approach 1 has the disadvantage of having a

degenerate point where all the isoparms come together. This can make the surface quality difficult

to control. We will probably have a hybrid of Approach 2 & 3 taken to another level

This is not the mouse we are planning to model just a quick stand in to show some basic modeling

techniques


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Over the next few days, I will try and break down how to make this mouse. It is composed of

surfaces that are later knit, shelled and split into various components. This kind of method is whatis referred to as a "top down" assembly. The actual construction method turned out to be a variant

of Approach 2. My sketch shows a crease in the mouse. I decided not to model it because first it

would have taken a little longer to think through and explain and second-it wasnt looking all that

good

These are the underlying surfaces to model


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The following part deals with inserting backgound bitmaps to use as underlays. Also the curve

formed at the interface of the red part and the grey plastic is important. So we will define the

character line by means of a 3D curve (3D sketch).

Solidworks uses flat planes called construction planes to create flat curves (2D sketch). These

curves are then used to create geometry. The default construction planes are the Right, Front and

Top plane. Designers used to Rhino and Alias can be confused by the construction planes. The

default constuction planes are not actually views. Refer to Solidworks documentation to learn

more to pan, zoom and dolly the camera.

Inserting Background Sketches:

1) Click Right plane.

2) Insert >Sketch, to start a sketch on the Right plane

3) Within the sketch Insert>Picture to insert a background sketch. Insert a cropped view of the

mouse in the right hand view. I used Photosop to crop out the different views. It is useful to crop

each view as close to the bounding envelope as possible.

4) Draw a line that passes through the origin, and dimension the line to 120 mm. This line will be

used as a reference to scale the background bitmap

5) Double click the bitmap. Drag handles will appear that will allow you to scale the jpeg to the

120 mm construction line. position the highest point of the sketch over the sketch origin by

dragging and dropping


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Repeat the previous procedure on the Front and Top Plane. It is convenient to position the jpegs so

that the baseline passes through the origin.

Sometime it is more useful to have more than one view of the model


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Creating the 3D sketch:

In addition to 2D sketches, SWX allows you to create 3D sketches. which are splines with control

points that can move in three axes. They are very useful to define character lines/ bone lines of a

product.

1)insert>3DSketch

2)in the right view use the spline tool to trace over the bitmap. It defualts to create a flat curve in

the Right Plane.

Similar to Rhino and Alias you can move the control points in the Top View to match the bitmap.

(Hint: Hit Spacebar to get default views like left , right , top etc:)


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Solidworks Rant Time:

The spline functionality is still not fully implemented. The spline control handles of 3D sketches

are VERY buggy unless you constrain them horizontal, vertical or tangent to a construction line.

eventhough you cannot use spline handles to the same degree in 3D that you can in a 2D sketch

they are stiil a big leap over 3d splines in 2004. The curves will just be a little heavier because you

use control points to define curvature rather than the spline handles

Tweak the curve to match your sketch lines. You have just defined a 3D character line!

Awright- lets continue with the mouse. Renszu will shortly be hosting a file with the starting

curves that we can work through


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This is what you should see when you open the file. You will see a trimmed surface loft and a

bunch of curves. I wanted to start with just curves, but the side section curves are created with

curves that are tangent to the trimmed loft surface. The side section curves are also constrained to

pierce the 3D character line that we previously created

Start a Loft between the Edge of the Trimmed Surface and the 2D sketch "Plan View" All required

sketches should be in the folder "Sketches for the Main Surfaces" which is nested in the history

tree.

Start editing the loft so that it is curvature continuous at the top. This is done by editing the Start

Constraint to "Curvature Continuous" in the drop down menu.


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Define the loft a little more with guide curves. This can get a little squirrelly along the center line

because the guide curves at the rear and front (Rear Section of Side Profile and Front Part of Side

Profile ) along the center-line are cut (convert entities) from the Profile Sketch. Use the secondary

history tree in the modeling window to pick the right sketch

To create a smooth connection along the center line click the guide curves and choose Normal to

Profile to make the loft smooth along the center line.

Mirror the surface bodies along the Right Plane. Generally mirroring the bodies (as opposed toFaces or features) is the most straight forward because the computer does not have to calculate too

much information

If at any point the sketches become annoying or too busy CLick View>Sketches to toggle


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visibility of Sketches. You can do the same thing with planes, curves, origins etc:

I have toggled sketch visibilty so that I can choose the edges of the surfaces to define a planar

surface

Use the bottom edges of the lofts to define the bottom planar surface

Knit all the surfaces together to create a Solid. Check the box that says "Try to form a Solid" (the

process is similar to creating a closed polysurface in Rhino)

This will give the model mass properties and gives you the ability to use solid modelling tools on

the model


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Shell the solid to give wall thickness of 2mm. If you click on any faces that will create an opening

in the shell because those selected faces will not be included in the final shell. So in this case Dont

click on any faces because we are interested in keeping all the surfaces

Fillet the bottom edge 2mm


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Created an extruded surface with the 2D sketch that defines the material break between the two

colored plastics.

This will be used to split the solid body into two bodies along the character line that we defined

earlier

Split the body using the extruded surfaces.

Pick the surfaceCut the part

Pick the Bodies that you want to keep from the resulting bodies


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Go to the Solid Bodies folder and pick the top part of the mouse and hide it

You can see the wall thickness now that you can see inside. Fillet the top edge. Fillets are cool

from an engineering perspective they eliminate stress risers at sharp edges, and allow for easier

ejection from tooling. Fillets also make your final renders look good because they catch light well.


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Hide the bottom and fillet the edge of the top component

Create an extruded surface to split the top component again.


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Split the model with the extrude. In hindsight it would have been better to combine all the splits in

to one command

You can change the color properties of any object by right clicking on it and going to color


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Cut extrude the opening for the mouse wheel. Offset the sketch plane from the sketch plane by

about 5mm (this option can be found in the first drop down menu).

Extrude the mouse wheel and in the Direction1 and Direction 2 options set them to offset from

surface. Create the extrude .5 mm offset from the inner walls of the opening. Uncheck the box that

says merge result. SWX by default tries to chunk features together into one solid mass whenever

Solid features are used. Most times this is preferred but sometimes you might might to makuse of

multi- body features (as in the case of the scroll wheel.


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This fillet is a full round fillet. Pick the three consecutive faces of the cylinder to create the fillet


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yeah things have been really crazy the last few weeks. Finally got a few hours this morning to

streamline the Solidworks file and make sure all would work well. Putting together a tut is hard

work! pls expect the files tomorrow.

Thanks sixfish. i still have to do the deformed revolves on the sides of the mouse, but the major

modelling is done. This weekend I think I will be traveling but as soon as I can stay still we can go

through how to use the deform tools. I agree with you about how "stable" SWX is. That is one of

the advantages of a sketch. If you wish to interactively move curves without entering a sketch that

is possible too. It is somewhat difficult to find solidworks instruction specific to ID and creating

organic shapes. This mouse is not an extremely difficult model but demonstrates some possibilities


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Thanx for the encouragement Renszu. Photoworks is the rendering add-in for Solidworks. It

comes with Solidworks Professional. Photoworks is not the best rendering system in the world,

but it can be coaxed to produce very nice renders

figured it out. Select the Extruded Surface as the trim tool geometry. After doing the split

command, I had to hide the Extruded Surface from the tree manager in order for it not to show in

the graphics area. It's a very nice ID-based surfacing tutorial for SW. Thanks, Parel.

The fillet2 surface is because I filleted the sharp edge on the Extruded surface. This saves you

from creating two fillets later.

Norah- It is good to see that you made it through the tutorial. Sorry that I have not posted more

info on the deform command. i had a family emergency that has knocked me out for the last 2

months. I will try to post the complete info before the weekend starts.


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I figured out how I wanted the ribs to look like in the sketch in the folder "Rib sketces" Extrude a

surface that goes past the outer surface of overmold

This creates a rib that you can lay onto the surface of the overmold


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Create a 3D sketch and create intersection curves between the surface extrude and the outer

surface of the overmold.

(Hit Esc after you create the curves to back out of the intersection command)

The curves in green are the curves on the surface of the overmold that you want to map your

gripping ribs to. as you can see there are four ribs to be mapped by means of the deform tool.

So we will have to make copies of the revolve.


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Use the Copy/move Body Feature to make 3 copies of the revolve. Do not specify a displacement

(all the copies will overlap and look like one revolve even though there are 4 bodies). This is so

that we can use the centerline of the Revolve sketch as an initial curve

(Ignore the surface extrude . You can hide it)

The Deform tool uses curves to map your geometry to curves. The initial curves map to your

geometry, and then Solidworks interpolates the change in geometry from the change between the

Initial and Target Curves


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When you are performing the deform command, hide all the revolved bodies except for one. This

makes it easy to select the body you want to work on.

As you can see in the tree, there are 4 deforms performed t omodel each rib

Mirror the grippy bodies to the other side


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Combine all the grey parts into one Solid body

Max has a better interface with Mental Ray, which is also the rendering engine for Solidworks

office. When I said I add DOF in photoshop . I was talking about Depth of field, and blurs. I

approximate what that looks like by using feathered selections, and the FIlter>Gaussian Blur.

Renszu-Photoworks does have the capability of z-depth rendering. Here is a progression to give

you an idea of what Rensu was talking about Norah. You can even uses the raw render below and

the depth cue rendered image to approximate DOF. As you can see you dont really have to go to

the effort of doing a depth cue render if you already have a picture in your minds eye of what is

farthest and nearest to the viewer

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Id Desing With Solidworks