Hawk Ridge Systems Blog Archive for March, 2018SOLIDWORKS: Tips for Creating Organized Title BlocksThursday, March 29th, 2018
There’s a lot that goes into creating SOLIDWORKS drawing templates – sheet formats, linked custom properties, document properties, and more. With all of this, one topic that often gets overlooked is how to keep your title blocks neat and organized. Here are some tips to help. SOLIDWORKS: Continuity and Curvature Part IISaturday, March 24th, 2018
In Part I of this series, we looked at how the smoothness of curves can be analyzed and controlled. Now we’ll be taking a look at some additional analyses tools to further evaluate our surfaces as well as ways to improve our curvature continuous connections.
The zebra stripes tool (view>display>zebra stripes) allows us to see small changes on a surface that may be hard to see with a standard display. This tool mimics the reflection of long stripes of light on a very shiny surface. With zebra stripes, we can verify that two adjacent faces are in contact, are tangent, or have continuous curvature. As can be seen in the image below, the zebra stripes for contact do not have the same direction or size. The zebra stripes for tangent have the same direction, but change sizes where the tangency occurs – there are two points of tangency. And the curvature continuous stripes share the same direction and the same size throughout the entire surface. SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation: Solving the Bucket ChallengeTuesday, March 20th, 2018
For all the SOLIDWORKS designers and engineering enthusiast out there, I’m sure you have seen something like this come across your social feeds at one time or another cause I know I have. The question is which bucket will fill up first if water is poured continuously into the first bucket. I have spent some time in the comments sections of these puzzles and been baffled by some people’s logic and responses. Most of the time there is a trick like a closed drain or hole in a bucket but some people were so confident in their wrong answer that I started to doubt my own intuition. So I decided to make a puzzle of my own and verify my intuition with SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. The modeling was very easy with some revolves and thin extrudes and below is what I came up with. If you were at any of our rollout events this should look familiar.
I modified the problem statement a bit with some assumptions so everyone can understand the intent of the problem and to potentially combat any over-analyzed responses. Water will be poured into bucket 1 at a slow enough flow rate that it will drain before it begins to fill. The system is open at the ends so there will be no buildup of air. Which bucket will fill first? I had to modify the problem statement for a couple of reasons because if I dumped the ocean into the problem bucket 1 would fill first so we are assuming the flow rate is ideal for the buckets drain faster than they fill. This cross-sectional view shows lids on the buckets and those are only there to help define the boundaries in the flow simulation but are considered pipe openings so there will be no air buildup. I challenge you to examine this puzzle and determine which bucket will fill first. Before I give you the answer I am going to talk about the free surface flow simulation that I used to solve this puzzle. Free surface lets you simulate flows with a freely moving interface between two immiscible fluids. It’s like water flowing in an open channel or a half full pipe. It uses the volume of fluid method for tracking and locating the free surface interface of gas-liquid or liquid-liquid pairs. Any phase change, rotation, porous media, or fans are not allowed. For more information and an additional example of free surface flow inside of SOLIDWORKS flow simulation check out this BLOG.
So now I present the solution brought to you by SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation. I am happy to say that the simulation went just as I planned, giving me a lot of confidence in my own intuition and the capabilities of SOLIDWORKS flow simulation. For more information, check out our website to get a SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation Quote or contact us at Hawk Ridge Systems today. Thanks for reading!
Dual Graphics Cards Causing Issues with SOLIDWORKS Graphical DisplayWednesday, March 7th, 2018Note: This blog is intended for users who have a combination of either onboard Intel HD Graphics + NVIDIA graphics cards or onboard Intel HD Graphics + AMD graphics cards on their computers. Let’s start this blog post with a little story. I was so excited when I found out I was going to be getting a new laptop that had better performance specifications. Mainly what mattered is that I was going to get better performance for my SOLIDWORKS designs. After security and antivirus program installations were done, it was time to install SOLIDWORKS! The software managed to install itself with a smooth sail and my next step was to download my SOLIDWORKS settings from my previous computer using the Copy Settings Wizard that comes with any standard installation of SOLIDWORKS. With my customizations set in place, I was ready to play! So, my final step was to open my model and keep adding more details to it but I encountered a graphical issue I did not expect. Every time I would try to rotate or move the model, my screen would get really glitchy and the graphics didn’t want to update and I became frustrated very fast. My first thought was that I did not have the latest driver for my NVIDIA graphics card. In order to do this, there are two options how a user can check the latest driver available for their graphics card: 3D Printing: Creating Fully Functional Medieval Armour Part 1Thursday, March 1st, 2018Here at Hawk Ridge Systems, we have three digital manufacturing labs which are a great place to experience additive manufacturing. The lab’s house some awesome technology in the form of 3D Scanners and Printers. They recently just got the new HP Jet Fusion 3D and asked some of us application engineers to make some designs that they can print. After hearing this I took full advantage of the situation because, how often do you get to use production quality machine for your own amusement? The new HP machine is unique and revolutionary because of its immense speed, precision, recycling capability, and cost. The material it prints with is called VESTOSINT, which is a Nylon 12 Polyamide, and each print can use up to 80% recycled powder. HP generates a product that is almost isotropic with only 6 percent difference in tensile modulus for the Z print direction. This is achieved by using a fusing and detailing agent and saving the fusing process till near the end of the print. |
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