Wednesday 17 December 2008

Happy Birthday!!

The Little Book of Rules has just turned 1.
The book has proved to be a valuable source of information for everyone who is using DriveWorksXpress. It is packed with examples of common functions used in building rules. One reviewer has even wrote:
A Must Read
...It is clear, concise and easy to read. If
you are interested in Design Automation this is the book to have.

Over the past 12 months the Little Book of Rules has reached number 62 on the Lulu all time best sellers list (current position is 65). And there are over 4000 (yes - four thousand!) copies in circulation.

These facts are a good indicator that DriveWorks and DriveWorksXpress are helping engineering companies to speed up the design function with design automation.

Monday 15 December 2008

Component Replace

Did you know that you can replace components with DriveWorksXpress? No?



So if your assembly has components within it that can be replaced with components of different geometry you can get DriveWorksXpress to swap them in. This saves you the trouble of overloading your assembly with everything that could exist and building rules to delete the stuff that is not required.

Here's how: -


The first thing to be aware of is that SolidWorks references the internal ID of each component mated into an assembly.If you replace any component manually in SolidWorks you will get rebuild errors if the internal ID does not match. You need to eliminate this in DriveWorksxpress to avoid rebuild or mate errors.
The only succesful way I have found to ensure the internal ID's of replaceable components match is to take the original model and save it as a different name (ticking the save as copy box). Then open the copy and delete the parts and load in the new ones.
Once this is done the result of the File Name rule for the existing component must be the name of the model it is to be replaced with. The model must be located in the same place as the existing model also.
DriveWorks goes much further with this concept by allowing you to drive the replacement files.


Thursday 4 December 2008

Negative numbers in SolidWorks 2009

SolidWorks 2009 allows you to enter negative and zero values for sketch dimensions. This is fantastic news for DriveWorksXpress users because these values can also be driven.

Imagine a cut out on a face centred about a plane. This cut out could cut through the edge of the face, or be positioned anywhere on the face. To achieve this In SolidWorks 2008 some reference geometry was needed to be created away from the edge so the dimension to the cut always resulted in a positive number even when the distance from the edge was zero.

This had an impact on dimensioning the part on a drawing using model items – you wouldn't dimension to a point in thin air. Now you can dimension the cut on the face...

... and capture the dimension so it can be driven to zero when it is required to cut through the edge of the face.

Also when the cut out is usually positioned about a centre line (as in the image directly above) but sometimes can jump to the other side of the centre line, driving the dimension to a negative number flips it to the other side. See the image below.

All good stuff for design automation!

Overriding Master Name

I briefly mentioned the use of the asterisk or wild card symbol in my last post, but I thought this was worthy of a post all of its own.
DriveWorksXpress makes use of the asterisk on the File Name parameter only. DriveWorks (the full version) makes use of it in many other areas.
The asterisk must appear at the very start of any result the rule equates to. What comes after the asterisk will be used as the name of the model.
Because the asterisk is treated as text it must be encased in quotes. Also remember to use the & symbol to string text inputs and values together.

Having a master model named Outer Frame for example, your rule would appear as the following: -

To apply a form value = "*" & Width

To add the original name as a suffix = "*" & Width & "Outer Frame"

To give the new part a part number (100) and include a form value = "*" & 100 & Width

To include a calculation = "*" & IF(Width>1000," Large" , " Small")

We have previously discussed why parts cannot have the same name as assemblies; the same applies for the clones automatically produced by DriveWorksXpress. When overriding the master name there is the danger that the result of the rule applied could match that of another component being produced that is meant to be a different name. Be careful.

One last thing to mention is that this does not apply to drawings. Drawing will take the original name and have the result of the rule appended to the name. There is much greater control over drawing names in DriveWorks.