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1. Point object at center of hole (choose e.g. top circular edge) 2. Construct reference plane using point and a parallel face 3. Insert sketch, draw centerline down middle of hole, draw circle where you want the groove 4. Cut-revolve operation
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Apr 5, 2021 16:37
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To set up that sketch plane, you'll want to first hit the hide/show eye icon in your graphics area, and make sure the view temporary axes button is selected, Second from the top on the right side. That should show the implied axis of your cylindrical hole. Then you'll go to Features > Reference Geometry > Plane. You can select a first reference, that being some plane or planar face that you'll want the new plane to be parallel to. Your second reference will be confident to that axis you showed in step 1. From there, sketch a construction line showing the axis of revolution and the profile of the o-ring grove at the appropriate distance and you're good to go for your revolved cut feature!
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Apr 5, 2021 16:42
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Thank y'all for the detailed step-by-step instructions. Those sound like broadly-applicable patterns that will come in handy elsewhere - especially the concept of reference geometry. I think those patterns are more consistent with the overall UI than the Groove/O-ring tool, which are more geared towards specific-part-selection.
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Apr 5, 2021 16:57
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Library parts are a little more involved, but useful. I believe there is an included library for o-ring groove features, but I haven't used them myself. Just in case you find yourself doing a lot of them, it might pay off to check out.
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Apr 5, 2021 17:00
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I think that's what I ended up with from the Groove tool. It was a list of specific o-ring standard widths under various standards.
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Apr 5, 2021 17:16
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OMG thank you whoever posted about the EAA solidworks deal. I use it daily for work but have been either frustratingly using Fusion for home projects or just snuck in time on my work license. Now I can curse solidworks' mother when it freezes on me on my personal computer as well! Hopefully the version that comes with the membership is fully featured as the professional version, I'm way too used to the advanced features to go back.
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Apr 5, 2021 18:29
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:OMG thank you whoever posted about the EAA solidworks deal. Here's the info if anybody else is interested. https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membership/eaa-member-benefits/solidworks-resource-center/eaa-solidworks-standard gently caress, now I'm going to sign up. Plus the museum access benefit because I'm a museum nerd (once the pandemic settles down and it's safe to travel again).
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Apr 5, 2021 20:05
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Current and former military get the $20 deal too. Probably other groups as well. (Students?)
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Apr 5, 2021 20:38
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Dominoes posted:I think that's what I ended up with from the Groove tool. It was a list of specific o-ring standard widths under various standards. The hole wizard tool is similar to the groove tool in that it's more specific application but does a lot of the get dimensions from a book work for you. Or you can spec a m4x.7 threaded hole and it'll grab the tap.drill size, give you options for visualizing the major and minor diameters, etc. Same for counter sinks, choose you fastener type and head clearance and it'll make it deep enough. This is super valuable for any kind of shaft fits, choose your nominal diameter and desired type of fit and it'll put an appropriately dimensioned hole in the part for you. Knowing when to use a specific wizard type tool vs build the geometry yourself can take a bit of time but eventually becomes pretty smooth and can save massive amounts of time.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:19
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What appealed to me here about the manual approach(s) would be that they're a more general teaching tool, ie would help me do things beyond this use. And I'm not sure how to use the O-ring tool to just put in a width and offset in mm, and it's not clear what unit the tool shows. And once it's placed, I don't think you can change the O-Ring model without deleting and re-adding the tool... Unlike everything else in the software I've seen. That said, the O-ring tool was very easy to use once I figured out how to add it. A consistent problem with the docs (built-in tutorials, and on SW website) is it'll ask you to click buttons that aren't there, and won't show you how to get them. The tutorials sometimes let you click the button in the tutorial, at which point one will appear from the void in your toolbar... but this doesn't show you where it came from, or why it was missing.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:25
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:The hole wizard tool is similar to the groove tool in that it's more specific application but does a lot of the get dimensions from a book work for you. Or you can spec a m4x.7 threaded hole and it'll grab the tap.drill size, give you options for visualizing the major and minor diameters, etc. Same for counter sinks, choose you fastener type and head clearance and it'll make it deep enough. Does anybody know if there is something like this for Fusion, too? I design a lot of stuff that's e.g. a part has a hole in it that an m3 screw goes to; the part it touches will be threaded m3. I'd like to be able to have one "hole" feature and then say "this part gets minor/tap diameter" and "this part gets slip-fit diameter." Then if I want to change it to m4 or m5, just update the base feature and everything propagates through.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:47
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Sagebrush posted:1. Point object at center of hole (choose e.g. top circular edge) Yes. Planes, sketches, and axes will set you free. They're incredibly powerful tools. Need to make an odd cut? Project a plane and draw a sketch! Library stuff is handy, but can really bog things down if you use the smart fasteners or that sort of stuff. It's great for making derived parts, though. Need to make a bolt with a hole in it, or a groove turned in it? Copy a toolbox part then modify it. The hole wizard is incredibly useful, too. I just wish it would snap to geometry for more than the first hole.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:51
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I have no idea for fusion but in SW you'd define those holes separately, one part would get m3 tapped to x depth and the other would get through hole for m3 fastener and you'd have to change them separately but the specific dimensions would auto update. I was in the process of trying to learn when I got SW at home and I'm not sure if it's from learning SW first but man it's more intuitive. And I'll never forgive fusion from not having an offset both sides function for sketch geometry.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:53
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:I was in the process of trying to learn when I got SW at home and I'm not sure if it's from learning SW first but man it's more intuitive. And I'll never forgive fusion from not having an offset both sides function for sketch geometry. Slot tool with no radius?
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Apr 5, 2021 22:05
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That'd maybe work but I've decided I'll figure out fusion as soon as someone pays me to do so, the licensing getting better for SW and worse for fusion had taken away almost all my interest in learning it. Also having a CAM seat as well, fusion having CAD and CAM was a huge attraction.
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Apr 6, 2021 00:13
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:This is super valuable for any kind of shaft fits, choose your nominal diameter and desired type of fit and it'll put an appropriately dimensioned hole in the part for you. The years of borrowing someone's Machinery's Handbook when I left mine at home are over. I had no idea Hole Wizard could do shaft and hole sizes, that's fantastic. I had never really used it outside of fasteners.
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Apr 6, 2021 00:59
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sharkytm posted:Yes. Yessir! I've also realized over the years how much I abuse the poo poo out of construction lines. They can be super helpful for constraining things. I think there should be a SW gang where the initiation is fully doing the fillets on an intricate casting part, and then touching something earlier in the tree without it exploding.
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Apr 6, 2021 01:30
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It's me. I am the Hole Wizard
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Apr 6, 2021 02:04
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My favorite joke to crack in Essentials classes is to say "We're going to use the hole wizard - not half the wizard - the whole wizard"
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Apr 6, 2021 02:30
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NewFatMike posted:My favorite joke to crack in Essentials classes is to say "We're going to use the hole wizard - not half the wizard - the whole wizard" That's a solid dad joke.
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Apr 6, 2021 02:35
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Here's the info if anybody else is interested. Thanks for posting the link that I was too lazy to! I mentioned this deal to a coworker today, and he said that there's some SWx bullshit where files generated with the student version are incompatible with professional versions, and vice-versa. Is that true? I have a decent collection of parts and assemblies I made for personal projects with my work license that I'd rather not lose.
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Apr 6, 2021 03:30
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Sagebrush posted:It's me. I am the Hole Wizard this is what they called me back in my college days (regrettably i am not joking, but only because i was the first guy to make the joke, instantly earning me the sincere appellation of The Hole Wizard )
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Apr 6, 2021 03:38
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You can open files back and forth between the educational edition and the commercial edition of SolidWorks. However, the educational ones have a little mortarboard icon on them when opened, and it spreads like a virus. Add one educational part to a commercial assembly and the assembly gets tagged with the icon. Save the assembly and every contained part gets tagged. Those parts can go on and spread it to other parts and assemblies. There's no way to remove it. Does it matter? For your use case, bringing work files home to open in the educational version, no. But you definitely can't edit files from work at home and bring them back in unless you want your whole company's PDM system to get infected
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Apr 6, 2021 03:39
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I have given Aspire the ol’ college try, and: jesus christ i wish someone had told me about this* years ago, it’s a perfect solution for the artistic CAD design work i’ve been struggling to pound into a Solidworks-shaped home for years now. it’s much better than Mastercam Art, can’t really recommend the latter for this application unless you’ve already got a MC licence/work in an MC shop *: if anybody did in fact tell me to look into aspire way back when and i did not: please commence feeling smug at your leisure
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Apr 6, 2021 03:43
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Ooh very glad you posted that update - I've got Vectric stuff through the makerspace, and I was super duper curious after you brought up MC Art.
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Apr 6, 2021 03:54
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Sagebrush posted:You can open files back and forth between the educational edition and the commercial edition of SolidWorks. However, the educational ones have a little mortarboard icon on them when opened, and it spreads like a virus. Add one educational part to a commercial assembly and the assembly gets tagged with the icon. Save the assembly and every contained part gets tagged. Those parts can go on and spread it to other parts and assemblies. There's no way to remove it. Yeah a little mortarboard icon is fine with me. Once I migrate all my personal files off my work machine I'll never do the opposite. Even if I did I work at a tiny company that gave me a blank stare when I asked how to access the PDM system when I started. Between that and having half a dozen silo'd projects going at once would stop that from spreading. On an unrelated note, does anyone have any advice on how to convince my coworker that assemblies exist and are worth using? He constantly creates multibody parts that will end up with like 20 bodies in a part file, including Insert Parted fasteners. I'm not talking about master modeling either, he does this without ever creating assemblies. Protip to people learning Solidworks - pretend multibody doesn't exist until your competent with single bodies.
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Apr 6, 2021 03:54
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Hole wizard is great, construction geometry is great, reference geometry is also great. 3d sketches are almost useful EXCEPT for laying out reference geometry stuff really quickly, and laying out curves for lofts and sweeps that are weird. Learning all your shaft fits can take longer than looking up the dimensions though, I'm still pretty bad at it and cheat most of the time by either drawing everything as nominal and than adjusting my fits in tool selection when I make things or in CAM - benefit of doing the whole thing end to end. I didn't realize the o-ring tool was a toolbox feature, I've got no idea how to use those and assumed it was more like the hole wizard than it is. Seems really powerful once you get it figured out though. One of my recent tricks is using more sketches than features, no idea if its good or bad practice but after getting used to layers in Rhino I found separating levels of details in different sketches can be really helpful. I'll draw reference geo to other parts in a sketch, do some big picture layout of my part in a sketch, then go in in new sketches and reference those for half my dimensions as I build solid features but separating it helps me with visual clutter and having common sketches across multiple features without attaching the sketches to other features. I got way to used to being able to hide things and turn layers off in Rhino which doesn't really translate to SW in either thinking or practice, but adding more intentional separation to my sketches has helped. E: oXDemosthenesXo posted:On an unrelated note, does anyone have any advice on how to convince my coworker that assemblies exist and are worth using? He constantly creates multibody parts that will end up with like 20 bodies in a part file, including Insert Parted fasteners. I'm not talking about master modeling either, he does this without ever creating assemblies. Protip to people learning Solidworks - pretend multibody doesn't exist until your competent with single bodies. Mates, tolerance analysis, motion analysis, BOM control, drawings, probably a half dozen other things of varying levels of niceness all depend(?) on assemblies. Easiest way is to just bully him into using them by either refusing to work on assemblies as part files or just turn his parts into assemblies and then send him the assembly back. Seems way harder to do it this way, every time I work in a multibody file I end up welding things together I didn't want together multiple times. meowmeowmeowmeow fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 04:00
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:
This is an extremely rare occasion in which I would recommend calling the police.
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Apr 6, 2021 04:31
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Forcing him to fix his poo poo works most of the time. I'll keep that police option as a backup in case it ever fails. I love me a well structured master model but I'd almost give it up if it would make people stop horribly misusing multibodies. Or get the ProE/Creo option of skeleton models as a separate thing.
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Apr 6, 2021 04:48
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Here's the info if anybody else is interested. Yo, thanks for pointing out the museum benefit! I didn't look into any other perks of the EAA membership other than getting Solidworks. There are some museums on the list I definitely would have paid for in the next year before I knew this.
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Apr 6, 2021 04:59
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:On an unrelated note, does anyone have any advice on how to convince my coworker that assemblies exist and are worth using? He constantly creates multibody parts that will end up with like 20 bodies in a part file, including Insert Parted fasteners. I'm not talking about master modeling either, he does this without ever creating assemblies. Protip to people learning Solidworks - pretend multibody doesn't exist until your competent with single bodies. haha what the gently caress how does this happen. more importantly why does your workplace put up with a workflow that is manifestly someone doing masochist kink play at work
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Apr 6, 2021 05:28
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Ambrose Burnside posted:haha what the gently caress how does this happen. more importantly why does your workplace put up with a workflow that is manifestly someone doing masochist kink play at work Lots of workplaces believe that suffering is part of work and encourage those that add to it.  oXDemosthenesXo posted:Forcing him to fix his poo poo works most of the time. I'll keep that police option as a backup in case it ever fails. Literally the only time I do this is if I'm going to take that file and use it in SolidCAM/CAMWorks to generate a nested CNC part program (because gently caress the programming workflow at the Assembly level for CAMWorks and attempting any kind of toolpath efficiency between part bodies, plus it's a hilarious memory hog and will make the PC lock up for several minutes every time I try to change something when programming at the Assembly level). Why would anybody design a multi-body part intentionally when Top-Down design in Assembly Mode exists?
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Apr 6, 2021 15:37
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Why would anybody design a multi-body part intentionally when Top-Down design in Assembly Mode exists? Weldments, rexroth frames and items like packing crates are a few things that spring to mind i have used multibodies for in the past and are much less annoying than doing by assembly
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Apr 6, 2021 23:10
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Who makes the best solidworks tutorials, who is the lars equivalent?
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Apr 7, 2021 11:51
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His Divine Shadow posted:Who makes the best solidworks tutorials, who is the lars equivalent? I like Gabriel Corbett's tutorials over on LinkedIn (pretty much the only reason I have an account there). Here's a discussion on Reddit about them if you want some more context. https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/g1td86/gabriel_corbetts_linkedin_learning_courses_are/
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Apr 7, 2021 11:59
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Dominoes posted:Current and former military get the $20 deal too. Probably other groups as well. (Students?) Thank you very much for this info. I rarely pursue veteran discounts for stuff, but this was super easy to do and now I'm just waiting for them to email the download link and my key.
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Apr 7, 2021 17:53
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Another SW question - individual solid parts should be separate Parts, and joined in Assemblies, right? I'm trying to use the snap hook and groove tools, but am unable to select the matching part; the tutorials I've found are ambiguous on this topic, and might imply you're supposed to have the same parts open in the same window (?). How do you approach this? Thank you. Ie This official tutorial, this step: Select a face to which you mate the bottom of the hook.. It won't let me select the other part when the dialog is open, and exiting the dialog resets the process, or turns it to a 3D sketch. Edit: After some clicking around, I think the solution is click `Insert` -> `part`. It then moves whatever other part is open into the view. Not sure what other consequences this has etc for "control" of that part, or how to align to (Still can't make the hook due to "not intersecting"); it's ignoring how the parts are mated in the Assembly.) Dominoes fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 22:00
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The workflow for things like that generally assume a multi body single part at that stage of design. This is because most products of this type, e.g. enclosures, are first made from a single body that is split into halves for injection molding using things like the "Split Line" command. You're then able to save those bodies as linked, separate part files. Then, in an assembly, you'd incorporate the PCB, fasteners, both halves of the enclosure, etc, and get your BOM and drawings from there. Unrelated for my fellow CSWE chasers: there are some errata in the Mold Design exam that I'm taking up with SOLIDWORKS. I'll let you know how it goes. To avoid spoilers but give some workarounds: there is a suspiciously small shrink rate in one question. If you get that one, I would advise removing a zero. On another series, your mass may not update if you change from a plastic to the mold core and cavity material. It may be worth exporting bodies as a STEP, importing, and then assigning the mold material. Use your Measure tool to validate that your tooling blocks are actually being extruded as far as you said. Mine was about 0.75mm off, but on a block of that size my mass estimate was hundreds of grams off. Editing the tooling split feature showed the correct dimension, so just be careful. I hope those can help!
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Apr 7, 2021 23:36
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Thanks homie. Perhaps it's better (for initially-3d-printed-parts) to design the hook manually, or perhaps ditch the assembly concept, and save the mutli-body-part as separate STL files when printing. Edit: Got the feature working using the multi-body part approach, but am a bit unclear how to proceed with overall design here and elsewhere. Maybe multi-body parts for the enclosure, in an assembly with the PCB, buttons, etc. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 23:42
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If you're not needing to like do clearances, simulations, bills of material, motion studies, and things like that, then yeah just go straight to the 3D printer from the part file. This is one of those things where SOLIDWORKS is obviously built for teams. Change orders coming through, but only having to change one dimension of a "master" part is enormously useful. But if it's all just you, then save yourself the extra 3 steps or whatever to get that all into an assembly and mated properly. It tracks if you're in the main audience, but it's definitely fucky if you're coming from the hobbyist side like I did. E: definitely get all that poo poo into an assembly if you're doing more than just an enclosure. Interference and distance checks are enormously useful and can save you a lot of time and filament. Check out some tutorials on split lines and split commands. The end goal is to get everything into an assembly so you can make use of those interference and clearance tools. NewFatMike fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 23:54
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