Visual Product Validation to Boost your Business

 

Blocking License Borrowing from the SolidNetWork License (SNL) Manager

There is no direct way to disable this feature through the SNL Manager; however it can be controlled by use of an Options file.

The option BORROW_LOWWATER can be used to prevent all users from being able to borrowing a license of a specified product from the SolidWorks network license. Example: If the SNL is having 4 Professional License. Then the option file should consist of the following syntax. (Based upon your requirement enter the number of licenses)

Step 1: Create a Notepad file with the above mentioned Syntax and save it with extension *.opt.
Step 2: Place this file in the same directory as sw_d.lic (the license file) on the server. The license file should be located in C:\Program Files\SolidWorks Corp\SolidNetWork License Manager\licenses.
Step 3: Go to SolidNetWork License Manager Server and Select Server Administration Tab.
Step 4: Click Modify button and Choose Activate/Reactivate a software license, Click Next

Step 5: Check the Option File Check Box and Browse for your “Options file”
Step 6: Click Next Button
Step 7: Perform normal License Activation Procedure.

Prerequisites:
1. Solidworks software should be closed in all machines.
2. Licenses should not be borrowed by any user.
3. All Licenses should be surrendered.

List of Product Feature Names used in Options File

 

REMAN ENGINEERING WORKS

Ramping up productivity and avoiding waste with SolidWorks

Reman Engineering began operations in 1989 in Namakkal, India, the “Poultry City” of Tamilnadu, India’s second-largest egg-producing region. The company makes mash plants, pellet plants, batching machines, batching scales, feed silos, and transport silos for the poultry industry. They also manufacture sheet metal and structural works to customer specifications.

Reman Engineering manufactures and markets poultry feed mills and raw material batch machines according to rigorous quality control guidelines and in compliance with globally recognized quality standards for the industry. Their practices have made a strong impact on India’s pet food industry.

Challenge:

• Standardize the design of feed mills of various
• sizes and reduce raw material waste and rework

Solution:

• Adopt SolidWorks software for fully associated
• parts, assemblies, and drawings to incorporate
• new ideas into configurations and avoid rework and waste

Results:

• Produced clear cut-list properties
• Created clear, detailed manufacturing drawings
• Reduced rework for more effective use of manufacturing time
• Eliminated raw material waste

To Know More

 

Inserting Custom Parts into Toolbox

SolidWorks toolbox consist of numerous standard part models which helps us to reduce the most valuable design time in only creating custom parts.in the competitive world its necessary for us to shorten the process time between the drawing board room to the tool room.
Even though having handful of standard parts.there is a need to add custom components to the toolbox.
SolidWorks provides us a opportunity to add custom made components to the toolbox.
1. Create the part models along with its required configurations and save the models in the desired location.
2. Go to Start > All programs > Toolbox Settings 20nn and click customize your hardware.

3. Right click on the standard folder and select ”New folder”.Sub folders can also be created.Add a name to the folder.

4. Select the newly created folder and select “Add File”.

5. Custom Properties and standard colour can be defined.

6.As the Standard parts are created,This can be drag and dropped from the Design Library.

 

DOMOTECH APPLIANCES (P) LTD. ACCELERATING INNOVATIVE KITCHEN APPLIANCE DEVELOPMENT WITH SOLIDWORKS PROFESSIONAL

The efficiency and accuracy gains that Domotech Appliances has realized since standardizing on SOLIDWORKS Professional software have enabled the company to increase innovation while compressing design cycles during the development of kitchen appliance designs for leading brands.

Challenge:

Accelerate and increase the accuracy of unique kitchen appliance designs to improve competitive position as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) serving the needs of popular, well-known brands.

Solution:

Implement SOLIDWORKS Professional 3D design software.

Benefits:

• Cut development cycles by 90 percent

• Increased design accuracy dramatically

• Eliminated need for prototype molds

• Saved client $40,000 in prototyping cost

Domotech Appliances (P) Ltd. designs and manufactures innovative kitchen appliances for leading international brands. The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has designed and supplied kitchen gadgets to its clients for over 15 years. The company’s products range from electric-powered appliances to hand-operated tools, and from multipurpose food processors to coffee- and chutney-grinding devices. One of Domotech Appliances’ breakthrough products is the first tabletop tilting wet grinder for idli/dosa dough making, chappathi kneading, and coconut scraping.

SAVING MONEY, ELIMINATING PROTOTYPE COSTS

By moving to the SOLIDWORKS design platform, Domotech Appliances is saving money—both in its own processes and for its customers. Shorter design cycles result in reduced development costs, fewer design errors lower product manufacturing costs, and the elimination of prototypes saves the client money. For example, the greater confidence that Domotech Appliances has in the accuracy of its designs prompted the company to go straight to production on its most recent project for Panasonic, saving $40,000 in prototyping costs.

“Because SOLIDWORKS provides tools for fully interrogating a design—such as checking for interferences and confirming clearances in an assembly, or using draft analysis to avoid the need for a prototype mold—we no longer make prototypes,” Chandramouli stresses. “We have such great confidence in the accuracy of our designs created in SOLIDWORKS that we recommend that our clients entirely forego prototyping, saving additional time and money.”

“The SOLIDWORKS Costing tool gives us a competitive advantage in terms of turning around accurate proposals. The information provided by the Costing application is very accurate, so we use it as the basis of all of our manufacturing proposals.”

— P. Chandramouli, Managing Director

To Know More

 

Applying Knurling Operation for Cylindrical Components

SolidWorks gives the user with good functionality on knurling operation for their specific applications. When applying these kind of features, we need not specify it really on the model but apply it for virtual purposes. For the CAD representation, this appearance can be applied on a part & assembly.

Applying Knurling to the model:
1. Download High Quality Images Like .jpeg, .png, .bmp, .tiff
2. Adding file location to the design library appearances tabs
3. Drag & Drop in the virtual graphics area by selecting the reference face
4. By pressing the Alt key, auto enabling of scale ratio is done

Benefits:
1. Decreasing the no. of features involved in doing the knurling
operation
2. Better visualization with 3D graphics area on the components
3. Cutting down the rebuild time for realistic views

 

PARANTHAMAN EXPORTERS ACCELERATING DRILLING RIG DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION WITH SOLIDWORKS SOLUTIONS

Paranthaman Exporters relies on SOLIDWORKS design and analysis solutions to accelerate the development and validation of custom-designed drilling rigs for oil and gas exploration, and other applications.

Challenge Faced:
Accelerate the development and validation of custom-designed drilling rigs for oil and gas exploration, and other applications.

Solution from SOLIDWORKS:
Implement SOLIDWORKS Standard design, SOLIDWORKS Professional design, and SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional analysis software solutions.

Benefits Earned from SOLIDWORKS:
• Cut development time by 50 percent
• Doubled custom rig development throughput
• Reduced rig weight by 10 percent
• Resolved fabrication and assembly issues

Paranthaman Exporters is the export division of PRD Rigs, a leading Indian manufacturer of drilling rigs for oil and gas exploration, and other applications. Founded in 1972, Paranthaman Exporters has designed, manufactured, and exported more than 350 rigs to various countries around the world. The recipient of consecutive Indian Regional Export Awards for outstanding export performance from 2005 to 2014, Paranthaman Exporters has continued to grow, due to increasing demand for the company’s drilling rigs, particularly in Africa. PRD rigs are now used in 30 different countries.

“With SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional software, we run linear static stress analyses not only on critical components but also on each subassembly of the rig. This capability has allowed us to reduce the weight of our rigs by 10 percent while maintaining strength and performance.”
— Ramesh Rajamani, Design Head
 
FASTER DESIGN, INCREASED THROUGHPUT, FEWER FABRICATION ISSUES
Since implementing SOLIDWORKS design and analysis solutions, Paranthaman Exports has cut its development cycles in half—doubling its custom rig development throughput - while simultaneously resolving a range of fabrication and assembly issues, which occurred frequently when working in 2D.

“Our customers demand that we complete all manufacturing drawings for a custom rig within 15 days,” Ramesh notes. “Working in 2D, it was impossible to finish the drawings for a rig in less than 30 days. By implementing SOLIDWORKS, we have been able to consistently meet our customers’ requirements, reducing our design cycles by 50 percent, which has substantially improved our competitiveness.

“We’ve also been able to eliminate the fabrication and assembly issues and associated rework that were common with 2D because we can use tools like interference/collision detection to resolve  learance and alignment problems in 3D,” Ramesh adds. To Know More

 

UNDERSTANDING CONNECTORS IN SIMULATION

The methods of joining components together is becoming quite simple among the designers during the design process. The component joining methods can either be a welding, bolting or adhesives etc. This job becomes more easy on the assembled components prioritizing the material specifications with its respective thickness & sizes.

In a cost effective way SolidWorks offers the designers to understand all these problems relating to weld sizing or the right choice of Bolts. The Users can make use of the default options for Pins, Bolts, Springs, Welds & other connectors for assemblies. In Simulation, working with connectors is much easy to understand its behavior in our designs.

The SolidWorks users can directly convert the smart components like Bolts & Nuts to Bolt connectors for analysis on assemblies. During the conversion process, the Head diameter, shank diameter & the pre-load conditions will automatically be taken into consideration. For the manual selection process in assigning the bolts, we can select the predefined edges or faces with the Bolt material to analyse for failures.

The Connector forces can be calculated for:

• Shear Force (N or Kgs)
• Axial Force (N or kgs)
• Bending moment (N.m or Kgf.m)
• Torque

Benefits:

• Calculating Bolt Failures
• Right sizing of Bolts & Welds
• Drastic time reduction for large assembly analysis
• Predicting the desired location for Bolts
• Cost & Time reduction by optimizing the connectors for product designs

 

Automate Your Design Using SOLIDWORKS

SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software gives designers and engineers powerful tools to speed up design variants and automate repetitive design tasks. The Design process can save time and development costs by accelerating the productivity. SOLIDWORKS automation and configuration tools simplify the reuse of existing design data to create new designs. Designers and engineers can configure design data and document quickly by creating new designs. By this way, the product development time is reduced to focus on innovating new products.

 SOLIDWORKS design reuse and automation tools include:

• Design automation - Streamline the creation of similar parts
• Parts and Assembly Configuration - Generate simple, complex, or similar versions of your design

Design Automation SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD tools automate repetitive design tasks, benefiting companies making custom products for bid/RFP, as well as high volume manufacturers.
SOLIDWORKS design automation tools include:

• DriveWorksXpress - Automate and generate infinite variations of a model using rules-based project that runs again and again
• Design Table - Simple automation using Excel inputs
• SolidWorks Macros - Automate many tasks with only a few mouse clicks
• Equations - Users build simple relations and capture design intents
• Task Scheduler - Schedule and automatically drive off-peak batch processing
• Microsoft VBA - Generate custom automation using standard industry tools
• API - Automate Designs using Built In Application Programming Interface

Benefits of Design Automation

• Elimination of Laborious manual method of calculation and drawing generation
• Higher Customer Satisfaction
• Error-free design and Drawing Development Processes
• Re-use of knowledge
• Increased Productivity
• Elimination of bottlenecks in processes for higher efficiency
• Lease Cost of Ownership
• Proposal Generation for Least Cost and Time
• Efficient Man Power Utilization
• Increased availability of time for more productive development of designs and technologies