Are you ready to ‘test-drive’ the future of electrical systems design & PCB?
With SOLIDWORKS Electrical, we use a purpose-built electrical schematics tool to drive a real-deal SQL database. In turn, it automates our workflow and completely automates report creation. We know it’s not enough to read about or see it in a video – you want to see it for yourself! We have an event for you to come!
In addition, you can also join us to learn how to amp up your Printed Circuit Boards designs by driving mechanical constraints earlier in the process, providing real-time collaboration of electromechanical changes and automated engineering change orders while compiling documentation to support the project.
Come and get your hands on it, verify that it’ll do what you need it to do for your business at an Electrical and/or PCB Hands-on Test Drive near you.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Test Drive
Learn how to simplify your life with SOLIDWORKS Electrical real-time multi-user 2D and 3D design, collaboration, and creation of all your manufacturing documents. In addition, you can look forward to:
Manage complex schematic designs with ease, across multiple users
Leverage single line schematics into multiline power and control and PLC schematics, with automatic wire numbering and component tagging
Reuse existing designs efficiently, and intelligently
Have SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD reference your schematic to create all your realistic wires, cables, and harnesses
Use the automatic report creation to produce all your electrical manufacturing documents – Bills of Material, wire/cable lists (with actual lengths), from/to lists, wire tags, and more!
PCB Hands-on Test Drive
Understand how to design printed circuit boards within a Unified environment for schematic, pcb and electromechanical integration
Design schematics by using built-in Symbol Wizard and adding Supplier Links to allow the procurement of components to be streamlined
Utilize the Automated Engineering Change Order to update all schematic information to the PCB
Finalize the pcb design by placing Components, Routing traces, and creating the Fabrication and Assembly outputs for documentation
Ensure the mechanical constraints are met by mating the printed circuit board to an enclosure and making modifications in SOLIDWORKS that are synchronized with the Electrical design.
We look forward to seeing you there. Find a location near you:
GoEngineer Continues Its Legacy of Supporting Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
GoEngineer is stepping up again to encourage the involvement of girls and women in STEM careers by supporting the Female Researchers Chapter (FRC) of the International Association of Computational Mathematics (IACM), which aims to promote gender balance in STEM-related careers. “I have daughters in school right now that I would love to see them more involved in science and engineering activities,” says Brad Hansen, president of GoEngineer.
The chapter chair and founder is Professor H Alicia Kim, Professor of Structural and Material Optimization at the University of California San Diego. She leads the group with a number of other committee members. “In computational mechanics, women tend to be the minority,” says Kim. “Our goal is to promote gender balance and provide a supportive network for female researchers.” The FRC chapter started about two years ago as a networking group within the IACM. There are currently about 100 members who attend various international events.
Increase Efficiency & Productivity with SOLIDWORKS PDM
SOLIDWORKS PDM was designed to help users be more efficient and more productive in their day to day work. To help achieve this goal, SOLIDWORKS PDM was created to look and work the same as any regular Windows folder. What’s extra are the features added in to enhance the user’s capabilities.
Accessing a PDM vault is as simple as clicking on the PDM folder icon. This action opens up a standard Windows Explorer window; upgraded to provide extra PDM features and capabilities. File functions, such as copy/paste and drag n’ drop work in the same familiar way as for any average Windows folder. This allows SOLIDWORKS PDM to look and feel just like the Windows environment you’re already used to. The goal? To make it easier to learn and more convenient to work with.
Happy New Year! Last year, we hosted design engineering webinars produced by GoEngineer. If your goal is to learn more and grow in your design role, check out our top 10 most viewed engineering webinars to get a jump-start on your goals!
1. SOLIDWORKS 101 – Best Practices For Creating Your First Part
Learn best practices on basic fundamentals of sketching and creating your part in SOLIDWORKS.
3D printing solution makes it all possible – one step at a time
Imagine an automated way to feed your pets. Think of the time you’d save. Think of the hassles you’d eliminate. My kitties need to be feed twice daily, so I set out to make the process easier using both CAD and 3D printing.
For the manual method of food delivery to my cats, I have to measure out 1/3 cup of kitty kibbles with a measuring scoop and then deliver the food into each respective dish.
I have two cats, so I have to do this for each bowl, twice a day.
It would be easier just to turn a handle, and in a matter of seconds, deliver the proper amount of food to each kitty at the same time – at least, that’s what I hoped.
In Flow Simulation, a vortex is a region in the fluid domain which causes a swirl in a region where there is asymmetric drag in the flow field. The vortex itself is an expected phenomenon which itself is not problematic. When that vortex is allowed to generate across a theoretical boundary within a CFD analysis that can cause the results to deviate from reality in the immediate vicinity of the boundary or also cause the solver to fail to produce results at all. For that reason, it is important to note where this is happening in an analysis and take steps to avoid it.
How can this be fixed?
The vortex itself is generating because of the local solid geometry near the pressure boundary of a CFD setup. If the flow through the boundary is not symmetric, a low-pressure region can generate in front of the boundary allowing fluid to pass the wrong direction through the boundary as intended. The fix for this is to “build out” the model geometry. What does this mean? The solid model needs to have more real life geometry added to the setup so the flow field can be allowed to have the vortex and then transition into a unidirectional flow.
Solution 1: Add Geometry
An example of a vortex across a boundary would be directly from the first Flow Simulation tutorial in SOLIDWORKS.
(The tutorials can be found under ‘Help’, ‘SOLIDWORKS Simulation’, ‘Flow Simulation Online Tutorial’ once the Flow Simulation add-in is turned on). The ball valve, as it is setup in the tutorial, has two lids that are positioned closely to the ball of the valve. In situations where the ball valve is not set completely open the flow through the valve is forced to be asymmetric as it passes through the pressure outlet.
The asymmetric flow out the pressure boundary allows fluid to backflow through the theoretical pressure boundary and creates the vortex that is seen below. (more…)
SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2017 is here and we are super excited about some of the new features and enhancements it provides. Although SOLIDWORKS Electrical is still a relatively young product to SOLIDWORKS; it’s users have been actively putting it through its paces and making suggestions to make it even better. This year we not only see some great enhancements, we got some great new capabilities.
1. 3D Layout – Use existing assembly
You can now use an existing SOLIDWORKS Assembly to insert your electrical components to route your wires, cables, and harnesses. They have also renamed the command, it’s still under the process tab but it’s now called “SOLIDWORKS Assembly”. You can still have electrical create a new assembly or select an existing assembly from your local drive, network or Enterprise PDM.
2. Add data file shortcuts
When adding documents to your projects, such as a PDF, you can now link to the document. This is awesome because it allows you to store your reference material where you traditionally keep it instead of making copies within the project.
3. Replace attribute and renumbering documents
Both commands received huge improvements as well as new interfaces. Both make it easier to incorporate changes faster and more accurately.
Recorded Webinars – A Tool for Personal & Professional Development
It’s hard to believe 2016 has come and gone. Were you successful in completing your 2016 resolutions? I found personally, that setting obtainable goals worked best and were much more fulfilling in hindsight. Here are 3 rules I live by:
Commit to a Resolution that is obtainable – Start Small.
Tell everyone close to me for accountability purposes – Talk about it.
Don’t quit when steps aren’t achieved as quickly as intended – Never Give up!
So, now that we’ve outlined how to set a resolution and stick to it, let the learning begin! Below you will find a short list of Top GoEngineer webinars of 2016.
Sit back, Grab a cup of coffee or tea, and hit play!
For this first video, you will learn about New and Enhanced Features of SOLIDWORKS 2017 according to Sean Stone, Applications Engineer. Here Sean shares some of his favorites from this years’ launch events as well as some buried in the What’s New document.
Visuals are important to the design process, stories, social media and more. They are dominating Pinterest, that’s for sure. In this webinar, you will learn tips and tricks to the Visualize Interface and ideas for new graphical content you can bring to your company.
A singularity is a function’s divergence into infinity. Simulation occasionally produces stress (or heat flux) singularities.
How do they occur? Mathematically, the solver uses matrices to represent the elastic field (displacements of the elements). When a highly localized load is applied, the gradients of the displacement vectors begin to diverge, causing the roots of the matrices to go to infinity. For a simplified explanation, see the stress equation below. Stress goes to infinity due to force applied in a very small area.
Where do Singularities occur?
Singularities are usually seen at points, edges, or reentrant corners. Reentrant corners are interior corners, with angles pointing into the part. The high stress concentrations are usually seen near 90 degree corners, but can potentially occur for any angle less than 180 degrees.
Why don’t they occur in real life?
Think of the common case of singularities created on interior corners. In software, that corner is perfectly sharp. In real life, there will always be a slight bend. Also, the part may deform slightly, or “slip”, and allow the faces of the corner to slide against each other. The slight bend and additional friction allow for a converging stress.
“Adjust your legend’s color settings to grey out above the material’s yield point. This prevents singularities from overshadowing other important stress results!” – Joe Engineer, Know It All, GoEngineer
I write lists. On paper. With a pen. Writing helps me remember, while typing with my thumbs on an itty bitty screen does not. Then I struggle to coexist between a paper and paperless world. But Livescribe solves that. It’s a Smartpen that houses an infrared camera, ARM processor, Bluetooth Smart chipset, flash memory and lithium ion battery all work together to bring your notes to life on your tablet or smartphone. Android and iOS friendly.
SOLIDWORKS Electrical Test Drive
