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Virtual prototyping is the simple concept of using photorealistic rendering tools to bring your 3D models to ‘life’ in the form of images, animations and immersive VR/AR formats. For many components in many industries, it is important to have a means of reviewing your design concepts before investing your time and money in physical prototypes. In the world of aftermarket car parts, it would be very useful to assess how components will look on the car in the early stages of design, before committing to any fabrication. The development of aftermarket parts, like custom sport car spoilers, is much more efficient when aesthetics can be confidently assessed using 3D models.

In this blog, we will produce virtual prototypes of various sports car spoilers in the form of photorealistic images to determine which style of spoiler looks best. This blog runs through the process of developing, organizing and producing the virtual prototypes using SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional.

Time spent searching your data can never be recovered. Whether that data is stored in a Windows folder structure or on a mapped drive of a server or even in SOLIDWORKS PDM. Learning how to navigate the search engines in PDM can be most helpful and time saving. Searches can be done easily and come default with both PDM Standard and PDM Professional. This article explores the ways we can search in our PDM vault.

You are starting a new project and it looks a lot like a previous project. It may even be just an updated version. So, you ask yourself, “Can I save some time by reusing my previous data?" Well, you absolutely can! Today we will look at four ways to reuse existing designs to jumpstart your next project. These methods are; Save as, Pack and Go, SOLIDWORKS Treehouse, and finally SOLIDWORKS PDM with Copy Tree.

Process and instrumentation diagrams are comprised of various mechanical and electrical components. A total P&ID schematic will show the association of the operation hardware and the entirety of the instrumentation used to control it. The information inside these plans can fluctuate from easy to complex. SOLIDWORKS Electrical is intended to help sort out this information in P&ID drawings and join these drawings straightforwardly with the electrical schematic drawings.

Like many engineers, I often wonder if there is a better way to accomplish the tasks I am working on and how I might design a model that meets all the requirements more efficiently. One of the many ways you can pursue this quality of work is through topology optimization.

You may have seen components of products that you use every day that has material removed and holes in very strategic locations, or you may have noticed thickened and buffeted regions with greater structural strength. These parts tend to look incredibly organic and natural, so it begs the question, how did this get designed?

The answer is topology optimization!

Are you using your data efficiently? How do you keep the little things from falling through the cracks? SOLIDWORKS PDM is a tool that can help you stay on top of your data. Instead of wasting time searching for things, SOLIDWORKS PDM can make that data do the work for you. This article goes over the daily routine of two engineers - one with PDM Professional and one without.

TriMech is fortunate to work with clients from Maine to Florida and out to Arkansas, offering a range of engineering solutions. This week's client story showcases how TriMech helped Urban Electric develop their engineering processes by adding SOLIDWORKS PDM, DriveWorks, and SOLIDWORKS Composer.

SOLIDWORKS Motion Simulation tools are, to a surprising degree, under-implemented and I’m on a mission to change that. In our last installment, we explained why the use of Sketches is a sound foundation for starting a machine design project, and why the use of Sketch Blocks helps bring structure, best performance, and especially motion to your sketch.

In this article, we explore blocks in a bit more detail. We will cover some special sketch relations that apply only to blocks specifically to allow you to capture common motion elements of machine design.

Whenever we ask participants in training classes what lessons they hope to take away from the training, the most common question is “How can I design more efficiently?” Using SOLIDWORKS, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and additive manufacturing can accelerate your process from idea to prototype to product, but it can be hard to know how those tools can can apply to your specific needs and business. We've looked at each of these and pulled out what we feel are the top 15 tips to get you speeding up your design process as soon as possible.