DriveWorks at SolidWorks World

For those that are attending SolidWorks World next week there are an unprecedented number of breakouts tailored towards design automation.

The interesting point about this is that these are topics that people who use DriveWorksXpress or DriveWorks have chosen to present. It gives us great satisfaction that DriveWorks is making such an impact that end users and resellers are compelled to talk about it.

I have picked out the sessions that focus on DriveWorksXpress and DriveWorks below: -

Designing for Reusability
Monday, February 9, 1:30 - 2:30 - Jeff Sweeney, Engineering Data Specialist, 3DVision Technologies - Room: Osprey Ballroom
Learn how to use existing designs to create new designs. Attendees explore what happens when parts change and customers do not use SolidWorks, how to create library parts for flexibility, and examine configurations, design tables, the API, mates, and DriveWorksXpress.

Design Automation with DriveWorksXpress
Tuesday, February 10, 1:30 - 2:30 (Hands-On) - Steve Fick, Regional Application Engineer, Fisher/Unitech - Room: Swan 2
Learn how to easily automate your designs with DriveWorksXpress. In this hands-on session, attendees walk through creating an automation project; capture dimensions, properties, drawings, and configurations; and explore different options for the powerful rule-building capability that DriveWorksXpress offers.

Design Automation: Design Tables vs. DriveWorksXpress
Tuesday, February 10, 1:30 - 2:30 (Hands-On) - Scott High, Technical Services Manager, 3DVision Technologies - Room: Swan 3
Discover which SolidWorks tools are best suited for your design processes and how to scope and develop an automation project. Via step-by-step, hands-on exercises, attendees will contrast the different methods of automation as they utilize Design Tables and DriveWorksXpress.

Save Time and Money with DriveWorksXpress
Tuesday, February 10, 2:45 - 3:45 - Trevor Waldeland, Product Designer, Eric Summerfield, Design Drafter, Exlar - Room: Swan 9/10
Learn how to automate design aspects that you do day after day - and never do them again! Attendees examine how to use DriveWorksXpress to automate features in their designs and create one-off parts fast and cost-effectively.

Design Automation for Today and the Future - A DriveWorks Story
Tuesday, February 10, 4:30 - 6:00 - Nicholas Benner, Mechanical Engineer/CAD Administrator, Scott Buiten, Mechanical Engineering Manager, Granco Clark - Room: Swan 7/8
Gain a broader view of design automation for an immediate return and with an eye to the future. Attendees explore what an implementation at their company might entail and how to get an early ROI without sacrificing long-term goals.

Design Automation Options within SolidWorks
Wednesday, February 11, 1:30 - 2:30 - Keith Schaefer, Regional Technical Manager, Computer Aided Technology - Room: Asia 4
Gain a better understanding of the different progressions of design automation within SolidWorks. Attendees will examine the strengths and weaknesses of configurations and design tables, DriveWorksXpress®, and DriveWorks®, as well as available options, add-on products, and tips and tricks.

Custom Wheelchair design automated

New DriveWorksXpress example now available.

Another example on the DriveWorksXpress website is of automating the design of custom chairs. This is a big industry, but one historically associated with mass production. Customer driven demands and the development of the industry into sports and recreational activities mean this product now involves a lot of design time. Time that can be saved by adopting design automation.

DATE

I am asked quite often how a date, entered on a user form, can be driven into a captured custom property.
When a date is entered into a text box, DriveWorksXpress will report the date:time code used by excel. You must let DriveWorksXpress know how the date is to be formatted. To do this we can make use of the Excel TEXT function. The TEXT function needs to know 2 things: -

1. The item to be formatted


2. How it is to be formatted
   

The rule will look something like this: -

= TEXT ( InputName , "mm/dd/yy" )

Where InputName is the user form control where the user enters the date, and the element within "" is how this is to be displayed.

This will result in 01/11/09, other formats can be used. For instance: -

"mmm-ddd-yyyy" will equal Jan-11-2009

"DDD DD,MMMM YY" will equal Sunday 11, JANUARY 09

There are many combinations of formatting that can be used, best bet is to just experiment until you hit the one you want.

The only hang up with this is the date must be entered in a specific format on the user form.

However there are some functions that calculate the date automatically, so there is no need for it to be entered on the form. The NOW function is one which returns the current date that your system is set to. This function requires no arguments, so it will just be entered as =NOW(). This again returns the date/ time code, so you must use the TEXT function with it: -

= TEXT ( NOW () , "dd/mm/yy" )

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.

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.

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.