CONTROL THE ACTION OF YOUR ASSEMBLY

Do you want to control the action of your assembly to show different position?

Look no further.

Mate Controller will help you manipulate specific mates that control degrees of freedom for a design. You can edit the positions, save and recall saved positions and mate values. You can also create animations based on the saved positions.

The allowable movement between components should be defined by adding mates to your assembly.

Supported mate types:

o Angle

o Distance

o LimitAngle

o LimitDistance

o PathMate (Distance Along Path, Percent Along Path)

o Slot (Distance Along Slot, Percent Along Slot)

o Width (Dimension, Percent)

Your assembly should include at least one supported mate type.

1. Begin by adding supported manually or use collect all supported mates automatically

2. Define the position by entering the mate values or using the slider and lock the values and add the position using.

3. Add multiple position by specifying the different value for mates.

4. Note that, at any time you can edit the value of the mates in different positions and update.

5. You can also save the positions as a new configuration.

6. View the working of the assembly by using the animation option and specify the time for each action.

7. Save the animation as a video.

With the help of this, you can easily and quickly create and show the working of your assembly to show different positions and actions.

You can communicate precisely how your product should move—and show off how your product works in general with the aid of Mate Controller.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

CUSTOM MATERIAL IN SOLIDWORKS

SOLIDWORKS has an extensive large material library, but some of the users often need to create new custom materials for their project or design. The ability to add custom materials enables users to calculate an accurate mass or simulation of a part or assembly.

You can create custom material by following the below steps:

1) Before creating a material, we will see how to add a material to a part or assembly

A) In a part, materials can be changed by going to the design tree, right clicking Material, and selecting Edit Material.

2) Now we have seen how to add material, now we will create a new material or custom material to the material library, For that you need to access material library, which can be done by searching in search box in SolidWorks or by going to Edit> Appearance> Material Edit

3) Ones the Material Dialogue box is open, scroll to the bottom of the material tree. Right click on custom material and select New Library, then create a New Category within the Library. For this I have used is Strongest Metal and category called Vibranium

4) New materials can be created by copying and pasting a similar material, or entering the material properties manually. Existing SOLIDWORKS materials cannot be edited.

To copy a material, simply click on a material in the existing SOLIDWORKS Library, right click and select copy. Right click in the new category and select Paste. Click Apply.

5) As we have copied the properties of other material properties, we have to edit material properties for our new material. The main property you need to add for your material are as follows

A) Tensile Strength

B) Yield Strength

C) Poisson’s Ratio

6) To edit the values just double click the box as shown in the above image, after inserting required data for your new material click apply and close the material box

7) Now you have successfully added the new custom material to the material library, now you can just add that material to the part as instructed in step 1

 

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Rigid – Flex PCB Solutions for Consumer Electronics

Consumer electronics have beheld increased adoption in the past decade. In fact, traditional consumer electronics products are improved a lot such as smartphones, laptops, personal computers, and digital devices to more advanced products such as Fitness band, Health activity tracker, and smartwatches. Consumer electronics design plays a pivotal part in the consumer electronics industry and the burgeoning of R&D activities we can anticipate seeing Flexible and Rigid-Flexible PCB in every product soon. As a result, Global Consumer Electronics Market can deliver us cost-effective
products.

 

Solidworks PCB is a pioneer to support the consumer electronics design globally and delivering innovation in your hand. In 2020, Solidworks PCB comes with Rigid-Flex PCB Design to enrich the traditional PCB Design.

To create Rigid – Flex in Solidworks PCB
Step 1: Define The Board Shape
Define the Board shape from the Solidworks PCB or using the Collaborative CAD-like Solidworks Mechanical (Complex PCB Form and Fit) 

Step 2: Configure the Layer Stack Manager 

Configure the Layer Stack Manager as per the application, add rigid and flexible stacks separately. Make sure to check the “Flex” checkbox option in the stack properties and name the stacks for easy identification.

Step 3: Define the Split Line and Bend Line 

Edit the Board Shape and define the Split Line and Bending Line over the Flex Area of the PCB 

Step 4: Define the Names for the Board Regions
Once the Board Split is completed, give the board names as per the stacks configured. For the Flex region, the “3D Locked” option should be unchecked. Duplicate board names are not allowable

Step 5: Animate the Board to Check the Bending 

View the Board in 3D, it will be viewed as flat PCB. To animate the flexible operation, shortcut key “5” should be pressed. This board can be pushed concurrently to the Solidworks Mechanical CAD through PCB Connector to ensure the form and fit with the mechanical enclosure 

3D view of Flat PCB

Animated View – Flexible Board view 

Rigid-Flex Board advancement is not stopped here. At this juncture, ECAD tools will be our pinnacle of the technology for the consumer electronics industry. So does your company has envision competing and achieve greatness in the electronics industry among others or already invested and waiting for development. These solutions will make you one step ahead of others and give technology the upper hand to your business.

Plan Your Assembly Before Your Start - SolidWorks Treehouse

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Track your Project Data with File Versions

Managing Project data seems to be difficult when there are too many project files and many Versions for individual project file. Versions are nothing but a milestone in our Project that can be retrieved anytime  for reference and reuse. While working towards the completion of our Project there are many stages where we improvise the Project or add an additional data to move our project a step closer to completion. Project Files can be saved separately in each of these stages as Versions so that we can have complete tract of our project data and reuse the older data whenever required. But improper version management often leads to troubles like,

• Maintaining filename for Version copies of Project file.
• Identifying the required file in cluster of similar files.
• Risk of deleting mandatory versions while removing duplicate files.
• Tracking the modifications in the individual version file while auditing the project. 
• Recovering the appropriate version files for reusing the same in another project.

To eliminate these troubles, SOLIDWORKS PDM provides an excellent Automated File Version Management and Control System. SOLIDWORKS PDM consists of three Servers namely – Archive Server, Database Server and License Server. Archive Server is where all the raw data gets stored and Database Server posses the Metadata of respective files. The Client systems uses a Local Vault View where we can see the completely organized data in proper folder structure from Archive Server and Database Server combined. Versions are created whenever we Check Out a file from Vault and again Check In the same file. SOLIDWORKS PDM automatically saves all the versions of a project file as separate files in its Archive Server and a version number is maintained for each version file in the Database Server.

During Check In, the check in dialogue box enlists the files and its references we are checking in to the PDM Vault. Each Check In increases the version number of the file and each version can have a comment which records the purpose of the version created. The version number can be preserved from increasing by enabling the check box Overwrite Latest Version. In case if we do not want to check in the file with all the changes we made after saving the file so many times we can use “Undo Check Out” option which erases the file in the local cache and provides the earlier created versions available without any changes made.

The Versions can be monitored and retrieved using the tools available in PDM local view. Here the Version tab shows us which version of the file we are having in our local cache in the format Available version/Latest Version (for example 2/3 denotes available version is 2 whereas latest version is 3). After Selecting appropriate file use “Get Latest Version” option in the toolbar to get the last saved version of the selected file. In order to retrieve older versions, use the created versions list that is available in the “Get Version” option of “Actions” dropdown menu. Here the Versions will be listed with version number and Version Comment we gave while checking in the file for making it easier to get the required version easily. The BOM will also get generated automatically for individual versions. 

In case, if we want to audit the project work “History” option in the toolbar can be used. This option will show a dialogue box that contains complete track of the project file. It lists outs all the major events of a project like Versions created and Workflow states changed along with date & time, User’s name who made the event, Comments we give while Checking in and changing workflow state. Here the different Version files can be compared by selecting the appropriate versions and clicking “Compare”. If we want to undo the changes made in the project up to a particular version, we can select the required version and click the “Rollback” button which rewinds the project to that Version. Any version can be saved as an individual file by selecting the version form the list and clicking the “Save” Button.

We may wonder what happens what if all my version file consumes a lot of unwanted space over a period of time. SOLIDWORKS PDM Administrator tool provides an automatic clean up tool “Cold Storage for erasing or moving the unwanted version file from the Archive Server. Once the Cold Storage is set, the older version files will be automatically moved\erased once the number of versions reaches the limit of our choice. Also, versions with Revision can be stopped from moving to cold storage. This process can be scheduled at regular time period like the system idle times so that this does not affect the performance of the server.