SolidWorks

SolidWorks

Developer(s)	SolidWorks Corporation
Stable release	SolidWorks 2008
Operating system	Windows
Type	CAD software
Website	www.SolidWorks.com

SolidWorks is a 3D mechanical CAD (computer-aided design) program that runs on Microsoft Windows and was developed by SolidWorks Corporation - now a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, S. A. (Suresnes, France). SolidWorks is a parametric feature-based solid modeler, using the Parasolid geometric modeling kernel. SolidWorks was introduced in 1995 as a competitor to CAD programs such as Pro/ENGINEER, I-DEAS, Unigraphics, CATIA, and Autodesk Mechanical Desktop, and is currently one of the leading products in the "midrange" or "mainstream" mechanical CAD market.

History

Solidworks was founded in 1993 by Jon Hirschtick, with its headquarters at Concord, Massachusetts, and released its first product, SolidWorks 95, in 1995. In 1997 Dassault Systèmes, best known for its CATIA CAD software, acquired the company and currently owns 100% of its shares. The company was headed by John McEleney from 2001 to July, 2007, and is now headed by Jeff Ray, CEO.

Market

Solidworks is used primarily by mechanical engineers and designers. Its user base ranges from individuals to large companies, and covers a wide cross-section of manufacturing market segments, with its only significant weaknesses among large aerospace and automotive companies (which have historically been users of CATIA and Unigraphics CAD software.) US Commercial pricing for SolidWorks ranges between $4,000 to $8,000, depending on configuration. Commercial sales are made through an indirect channel, which includes dealers and partners throughout the world. Directly competitive products to SolidWorks include Autodesk Inventor, Solid Edge, and Pro/ENGINEER.

The SolidWorks approach

screen shot captured from a SolidWorks top down design approach.

SolidWorks employs a parametric, feature-based approach to creating models and assemblies. Parameters refer to constraints or conditions whose values determine the size, shape, characteristics, and behavior of the model or assembly. Parameters can be either numeric, for example dimension values such as the diameter of a circle or the length of a line; or geometric, such as conditions like tangent, concentric, coincident, parallel, horizontal, and the like. Numeric parameters such as dimensions can easily be related to each other through equations to capture even the most complicated design intent.

Features refer to the building blocks of the part. They are the shapes and operations that construct the part. Shape-based features would include slots, holes, bosses and the like that either add or remove material from the part. Shape-based features typically begin with either a 2D or 3D sketch. Operation-based features generally don’t have sketches. These types of features include operations like filleting, chamfering, shelling, or applying draft to a part.

screen shot captured from a SolidWorks top down design approach.

Building a model in SolidWorks usually starts with either a 2D or 3D sketch. The sketch consists of geometry such as lines, arcs, conics, and splines. Dimensions are added to the sketch to define the size and location of the geometry. Relations are used to define attributes such as tangency, parallelism, perpendicularity, concentricity, and such. The parametric nature of SolidWorks means the dimensions and relations drive the geometry, not the other way around. The dimensions in the sketch can be controlled independently, or by relationships to other parameters outside the sketch. For example, you can sketch a rectangle and dimension its height and width. Then you can extrude the rectangle to create a rectangular prism. You can then relate the length of the extrusion to the height of the rectangle so that if extrusion gets longer, the height changes accordingly. Furthermore, you can subsequently add a hole in the face of the prism and create another relationship so that the diameter of the hole, which was created after the prism, drives the width of the prism. This way, if the hole has to grow larger, the prism’s dimensions would also increase to accommodate it.

Another aspect of the feature-based nature of SolidWorks is you can roll back into the history of the part in order to make changes, add additional features, or change to sequence in which operations are performed.

In an assembly, the analog to sketch relations are mates. Just as sketch relations define conditions such as tangency, parallelism, and concentricity with respect to sketch geometry, assembly mates define the same relations with respect to the individual parts or components. This means you can assemble parts with the same easily edited intelligence that you have in part modeling. Beyond the simple mates are advanced mates that include gear and cam and follower mates.

In addition, SolidWorks has a hierarchy of putting all the things together, which can be traced as follows:

Parts

Parts are modelled following a feature-based approach. A sketch must be created first in order to define the primary geometry of the part.

File:01sketch1.png	File:02extrude1.png	File:03sketch2.png
First, a sketch is created on a plane. Lines are drawn to define the basic shape of the part and then dimensions are added to constrain the size of the part.	Next, a feature is applied to create volume. The sketch depicted here has been extruded outward.	Then, using the front face of the extrusion feature just created, another sketch is created. This time, a circle has been drawn, and constrained in diameter and distance from the edges of the reference plane.

File:04extrude2.png	File:05sketch3.png	File:06cutextrude1.png
Then, the last sketch is extruded. Both extrusions are automatically merged to create one solid body.	Using the front face of the last extrusion, a new sketch is opened and a circle is drawn. Then, using relations, it is made concentric with the larger circle.	A “Cut-extrude” feature is applied. Using the "through all" option, a hole is cut through the whole solid body.

File:07fillets.png	File:08shell.png
Fillets are added accordingly to the main design intent. A constant radius can be specified, or multiple radii for multiple edges.	The part is then shelled to a given thickness, the shell feature applied to the back plane.

Drawings

Drawings can be created either from parts or assemblies. They are drawn automatically, just by clicking on the window that contains the part or assembly to draw. The drawing module includes most paper sizes and standards (ANSI, ISO, DIN, GOST, JIS, BSI and GB).

Editions

SolidWorks CAD software is available in 3 commercial editions and 3 educational editions.

Commercial Products

• SolidWorks
• SolidWorks Office Professional
• SolidWorks Office Premium

SolidWorks Office Professional

The SolidWorks Office Professional bundle includes the SolidWorks core product plus several add-in programs. These include:

• Animator (Create AVI animations of a model in motion)
• Design Checker (Checks notes, dimensions and other settings in drawings to make sure they adhere to company standards
• eDrawings Professional (Adds markup and measuring capabilities to the free eDrawings viewer)
• FeatureWorks (Adds editable features to "dumb" imported geometry)
• PDMWorks Workgroup (A workgroup level document management program to manage SolidWorks files as well as other file types)
• PhotoWorks (Realistic Photo rendering)
• Task Scheduler (Schedule SolidWorks to bulk print, import/export files, and create eDrawings)
• Toolbox (A collection of common fasteners and hardware, Screws, Nuts, Washers, etc.)
• Utilities (Additional tools for selecting features and comparing features and geometry)
• 3D Instant Website (Publishing an HTML document of SolidWorks documents, uses eDrawings for viewing)

SolidWorks Office Premium

The SolidWorks Premium bundle includes the SolidWorks core product and Office Professional add-ins plus the following:

• CosmosWorks Designer (Finite Element Analysis)
• CosmosMotion (Motion analysis)
• Routing (Piping, Tubing, plus Wiring and Harness layout)
• ScanTo3D (Utility for converting scanned data into solid models)

Educational Products

• SolidWorks Student Design Kit
• SolidWorks Education Edition
• SolidWorks Student Edition

SolidWorks Student Design Kit

The SolidWorks Student Design Kit is a limited-term trial version of the SolidWorks Education Edition. It does not include all of the features that the licensed edition does.

SolidWorks Education Edition

The SolidWorks Education Edition is a licensed version of SolidWorks. It is intended to educate students in grade schools, middle schools, high schools, vocational schools, colleges, and universities. It also includes CosmosXpress

SolidWorks Student Edition

The SolidWorks Student Edition is intended for individual student use outside of the classroom. It includes all of the same features as the SolidWorks Education Edition.

Subscription Services

SolidWorks has an initial purchase price with an option to buy a yearly subscription service termed "maintenance". The subscription service entitles you to service packs, new versions, comprehensive hotline support, access to the customer website which contains helpful information, an online knowledge base, enhancement request form, and discussion forums.

Version History

Past Versions

• SolidWorks 98 Plus
• SolidWorks 2000
• SolidWorks 2001
• SolidWorks 2001 Plus
• SolidWorks 2003
• SolidWorks 2004
• SolidWorks 2005
• 
  SolidWorks 2006

Supports Windows XP x64

• SolidWorks 2007: A Beta version for Vista exists with limited support.

Current Version

• SolidWorks 2008: Includes full support for Vista x32. Out in October, 2007

Future Editions:

• SolidWorks 2009: Due out in September, 2008. Will support x64 for Vista.

Add-in Products

COSMOSFloWorks

COSMOSFloWorks is a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) product for SolidWorks users. It is embedded inside SolidWorks and can perform fluid flow and heat transfer analysis for all types of fluids (liquids, gases, Non Newtonian liquids, Compressible liquids).

COSMOSMotion

COSMOSMotion is a SolidWorks module for multi-body kinematic simulation of mechanisms. It can handle complex component collisions, accept formula for motion laws and supply reaction values to COSMOSWorks for further FEA analysis. It is included in the SolidWorks Premium license.

COSMOSXpress

COSMOSXpress is a feature designed to perform a very limited range of linear static analysis of part geometry. Geometry is limited to a single solid body and the choices for creating boundary conditions are extremely limited which can affect the applicability of the results to the actual problem being solved. Results are limited to a graphical representation of Von Mises stress and deformed shape although actual displacements are not available. COSMOSXpress is included in the very basic SolidWorks license, but is considered superseded by COSMOSWorks Designer (included in SolidWorks Premium).

COSMOSWorks Designer

COSMOSWorks Designer is a module providing a richer set of tools for linear static FEA. COSMOSWorks Designer can deal with parts and assemblies using solid, shell and (starting from release 2007) beam elements.

It provides a fully associative environment to perform FEA studies inside SolidWorks, with several features for pre-processing as well as for post-processing and a very rich set of connectors and boundary conditions, like virtual bolts, bearings, spot welding, links and pins.

A tool for designing multiple batch calculations (Design Scenario) is also provided.

COSMOSWorks Designer can handle locally non-linear contact and includes a partial support for geometric non-linear analysis (large displacement). It is included in the SolidWorks Premium license.

COSMOSWorks Professional and Advanced Professional

COSMOSWorks license upgrades including a larger set of solvers.

COSMOSWorks Professional:

• Buckling
• Frequency
• Thermal
• Fatigue
• "Drop test"
• Shape optimization

COSMOSWorks Advanced Professional:

• all of the above, plus:
• Composite analysis
• Seismic
• Post-dynamics
• Complete non-linear analysis

PhotoWorks

PhotoWorks is a raytrace renderer built into SolidWorks, powered by Mental Ray

Toolbox

SolidWorks Toolbox is a library of predefined fasteners, gears, cams, pins and other accessories, based on information found in Machinery's Handbook. The library is database driven and this database can be modified. Also user defined standard parts can be created and added to the Toolbox for later use in other projects.

SolidWorks Toolbox allows for "drag and drop" insertion of fasteners into assemblies. It also is integrated with SolidWorks "SmartFastener" technology to allow the automatic population of hole features with the appropriate fasteners.

Animator

SolidWorks Animator has the capability of exploding assemblies and animates the way components explode, join.

It relies on standard SolidWorks kinematics, but can also accept motion simulation results from COSMOSMotion, as well as a thorough manipulation by the user.

It can also produce video output and supports rendered animations using PhotoWorks.

FeatureWorks

This module recognizes different design features (fillets, cut-extrudes, extrudes) on imported models. The underlying methods for the recognition of different features in the dumb solid are mainly identified as Feature Recognition technologies in the CAD/CAM industry.

ScanTo3D

Module to perform Reverse engineering, starting from point-cloud or STL/VRML files, as well as using 3D scanning. Included in SolidWorks Premium, starting from release 2007.

API

SolidWorks also includes an Application Programming Interface (API) for macro and third party development.

2007 Enhancements

screen shot captured from a solidworks as example of surfacing products with SolidWorks.

Some noteworthy additions or enhancements to SolidWorks Office Premium for 2007 over previous releases are in

• SWIFT™ technology
• file searching
• COSMOSWorks weldment analysis
• surfacing tools
• a Freeform feature
• optimization for COSMOSXpress
• blocks
• ScanTo3D
• drawing capabilities
• assembly belt motions
• general unspecified improvements
• Design Checker
• rack and pinion motions
• sheet metal tools
• spline capabilities
• RealView
• PhotoWorks materials
• Pack and Go file saving
• Routing
• Animator
• COSMOSWorks Designer
• COSMOSMotion
• a decreased file size over previous years
• an Isolate command
• 3D PDF support
• PDF support in the DWGeditor

See also

• Associative engine

External links

• SolidWorks Web Site
• COSMOSFloWorks Web Site
• SolidWorks Community
• Google Groups comp.cad.solidworks Usenet group active community
• SolidWorks Forum Official SolidWorks users forum (customers only).
• mCADForums.com Inventor, Solidworks & ProE Discussion Forums
• Video based SolidWorks training courses
• SolidWorks User Group of Manchester (SWUGOM) First Official UK SolidWorks User Group
• SolidWorks Mentorship site with dedicated SolidWorks Google search
• Eng-Tips Solidworks 3D CAD Products Forum