If you plan to move your SOLIDWORKS Composer license to a different machine, you must deactivate it. It is also best practice to deactivate Composer—and any other SOLIDWORKS products—prior to major changes to your computer like replacing the hard drive.
Often, engineers need to include their company’s logo or another image in part files. However, this can be difficult if you only have vector images of your logo. Currently, SOLIDWORKS is unable to directly import .svg, .eps, and other vector image files as sketches or use them as sketch pictures or decals. An easy workaround to this is to use a third-party vector editing software to convert the vector image to a .dxf file, which SOLIDWORKS can import as sketch entities.
When using the Area Hatch/Fill tool in a SOLIDWORKS drawing, you can modify the scale and angle of the default pattern with options in the PropertyManager. If you constantly need to make changes to get the pattern you want, or if none of the out-of-the-box patterns fit with what you need, you can modify the SOLIDWORKS Hatch Pattern file to create a custom pattern.
Each node in a model meshed for a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) study has six degrees of freedom or DOF. Three are translational and three are rotational. In order to stabilize the model, the nodes’ DOF must be constrained.
Iso Clipping is a post-processing tool available in SOLIDWORKS Simulation. It allows us to modify the display of a result plot to cut away regions of the model above or below a certain value. It can also be used to show a range between two values and view surfaces of up to six specified values. Isolating areas of very high or low stress can be informative when investigating failures and optimizing designs.
This article is a companion to this SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation Tutorial. In it, Free Surfaces are used in combination with time-dependent gravity to simulate water flowing out of a pitcher when rotated 90 degrees. The Transient Explorer is employed in order to view the results of this study, specifically the motion of the water over time.
Design Studies are a tool in SOLIDWORKS Simulation that allows us to evaluate or optimize designs by seeing how they perform when selected parameters are changed. These parameters can be model dimensions, global variables, Simulation or Motion study properties, or materials applied to bodies.
In order to run an internal flow analysis in SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, we need to be working with an enclosed volume. If our model has openings, then we need to close them by adding bodies called lids. SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation includes a tool called Create Lids that will, as the name suggests, create lids automatically.