TriMech Blog

With so many software options out there, it’s hard to know which combination is right for your custom manufacturing needs. With the SOLIDWORKS family of integrated products we’re spoiled for choice, but that doesn’t make understanding all the options any easier to someone looking at it for the first time. We’ve taken a look at all the options and put together a summary of what we think is the “ideal” manufacturing bundle. In this blog post, we’ll go over all the top-level benefits for each product and what you’ll be taking with you.

SOLIDWORKS Simulation is one of the leading design analysis tools that brings the power of simulation into the SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD environment, to conduct design validation early in the design process. Ease of use and tight integration within CAD enables designers and engineers to run different types of simulation from linear static to nonlinear static to dynamic analyses. However, even with its extensive capabilities, there are situations where SOLIDWORKS Simulation needs a little extra help. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at one of these situations, running a snap fit analysis and will walk through assisting SOLIDWORKS Simulation with Simulia Structural Simulation Engineer (SSE).

Prior to the SOLIDWORKS 2018 updates, you were capable of saving a SOLIDWORKS assembly as an SMG file, however, there were no export options for SMG files and the default export option was set to exclude surface bodies. Due to this, users preferred to open SOLIDWORKS file directly through Composer, where import options can be customized as they need. Since the SOLIDWORKS 2018 updates, new SOLIDWORKS export options for SMG files have been added that allow full control over what information is saved to SOLIDWORKS Composer. These new options provide many advantages to Composer users that will be explained in this blog. 

SOLIDWORKS Education Edition is the perfect solution for preparing students for a career in engineering. With more than 200,000 jobs posted a year seeking employees with SOLIDWORKS experience, investing in their training will not go to waste. There are many questions regarding the Education Edition and what all is included. Let's dive into those questions as well as the updates to the 2019-2020 version. 

Manufacturing technology seems to catch on much slower than other technological leaps; it’s 2019 and I still train students every month coming from 2D drafting into the 3D world! Is this because of the companies, the designers, the machinists or none of these? There is a huge difference in how a job shop, or even a large-scale production facility, work versus how we think. We’re going to take a look at this much too common disconnect and what options are out there to improve shop communication and efficiency.

SOLIDWORKS is not just a CAD application. The integrated add-ins and supporting applications make it a complete engineering solution. I recently took advantage of these tools to complete a project that has been at the back of my mind for some time. It was a great opportunity to show how to use the SOLIDWORKS integrated platform from design all the way through the manufacturing and post-manufacturing process.  

From an engineering perspective, if you’re looking into the world of Model-Based Design (MBD) or have already been shifting that way, you’ll want to start researching some of the new standards that are being developed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In particular, the new standard that they are developing as a product definition for additive manufacturing. In this article, we will provide a quick list of the standards being looked at this year and touch on how you can apply these and other standards in a SOLIDWORKS workflow.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Model-Based Enterprise Summit at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD. This was the 10th annual MBE Summit and was focused on highlighting the practical implementations of MBE in the world, with the main theme being Democratizing the Implementation of MBE.

This event was possibly the most in-depth technical summit I have ever been to. The amount of applications for model-based engineering is amazing and getting to see how people are leveraging this technology is truly eye-opening. The list of speakers was staggering and humbling. It was truly exceptional to see so many experts in their field speak to how digital engineering has been completely transforming their businesses. As a mechanical-minded person focused on technology and interconnected systems, I believe there are certainly some exciting leaps coming in the future.

SOLIDWORKS xDesign is a new way of looking at CAD design. It is one of the cloud-based CAD applications that are part of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Just by being part of the platform allows this software to do some pretty interesting things that you can’t do with traditional SOLIDWORKS alone.

We’ve looked at reasons to use the cloud, reasons to avoid the cloud, now let's take a look at the benefits from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and see how they outweigh the reasons not to make the move to the cloud. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is geared and poised to make engineering in the cloud not only seamless but provides substantial benefits to the entire design process. Here are the five main reasons I think design in the cloud on this platform is the future:

You may have been seeing a compass icon in SOLIDWORKS videos, web pages and even in some of your design applications and wondering what it is or what it’s there for. Well, that compass represents the central navigation of the 3DEXPERIENCE “business experience” platform. In this blog, we are going to explore what that means and how SOLIDWORKS users can benefit from knowing how to use it.

I recently created an article on the “Top 5 Reasons to Use the Cloud for 3D CAD.”  And in true engineer fashion, I made a list of pros and cons and wanted to follow it up with the top five reasons to avoid the cloud when working with CAD. The cloud is great for design and there are substantial benefits, however, there are some drawbacks and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them as well.