Gabi Jack's Blog

Gabi Jack's Blog is moving

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To all of you that read this blog and to all of those that may stumble upon it, I want to announce that I’ve moved it to a new location. You can now find it at http://www.gabijack.com   Every single post, video and image ever published in this blog is already available in the new location, so you won’t miss a thing, but I haven’t found a way to redirect pages from Typepad to the new location, so this blog will continue here for a little longer, just to let people know of the change, however it won’t be updated anymore, so I urge you to visit the new one for fresh content.  It is still a work in progress. I still have a lot of tweaking to do until I get it just the way I want it, but it feels good to have more control over links and design in general than I did before. And of course I will continue to blog about SolidWorks and my journey through learning, only I will do it now from my own blog. If you subscribed to the feed in the past, you don’t need to subscribe again, because I’ve managed to transfer it to the new blog, so you will continue to receive fresh content. If you haven’t subscribed yet, well, what are you waiting for?

I want to thank SolidWorks for kindly hosting my blog all this year; to Richard Doyle, for introducing me to  blogging in the first place; to Patrick Cook and Matthew West, for all their support in setting up and maintaining the blog all throughout this year, and to Ricky Jordan and Anna Wood for their advice.

I’m really excited about the new blog. My idea is to incorporate the Spanish blog in there too, as a page, to keep it all under one roof and make it easier for me to manage and for the visitors to access. I’m also thinking about lots of new content that I’ll be adding soon. As usual, suggestions are also welcome.

Hope to see you there, at www.gabijack.com !

3DConnexion's SpacePilot for SolidWorks 2009

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This is really a post that began a few weeks ago, when I was kindly given the opportunity of trying out one of 3DConnexion’s new 3D mice for SolidWorks 2009, the SpacePilot. For those of you that haven't heard of it or don't know what the big deal of a 3D mouse is, this device allows you to manipulate 3D models and scenes using six degrees of freedom, which is practically impossible to do using an ordinary mouse.   I must confess that I was curious about it, given that I had heard so many people talking about  the benefits of having one these, how much easier and faster it was working with it when compared to  an ordinary mouse, etc., so I was very excited when the opportunity came for me to finally try one.

After plugging in the device and installing the software, I was a bit overwhelmed reading the instructions on how to use the SpacePilot to manipulate parts and assemblies in SolidWorks.  I tried the mouse first on a 360° image that is provided as a practice example, but panning and tilting didn’t seem to go according to how the instructions said it would be.  I was beginning to wonder if I had done something wrong, but when I finally opened SolidWorks 2009 it all became clear to me, as I realized that the instructions referred more specifically to how to use the 3D mouse inside SolidWorks 2009.

The SpacePilot is fully integrated with SolidWorks 2009. As soon as I opened SolidWorks, a welcome message showed up in a window, and more instructions on how to use and configure the unit were also provided. 

A new toolbar had also been added on top of the command manager.

An extra menu, 3D Control, in between Tools and Window menus, was added as well, and a small icon in my systems tray, from which I can access the 3DConnexion Control Panel to configure the device for preferences on speed, buttons, which movement in the mouse (the cap part of the 3D mouse) you want to associate with zooming, etc. I can also obtain help from here.

Moving and rotating objects using the Spacepilot takes some time getting used to, especially when you are right-handed, like me, and are not used to operating anything with your left hand, but once you do, you don’t seem to notice it anymore. It blends so nicely into SolidWorks 2009 and the control and precision you have with this device is certainly something I didn’t think possible. Plus, you still have the use of your 2D mouse for other design operations. It was hard to envision working with both at the same time, but it really doesn’t take that long to get used to it.

It’s amazing how sensitive to the sligthless movement of your hand this device is and how fast and smooth the movement of parts and assemblies can become when you use one of this. No more “hiccups”, like with an ordinary 2D mouse!  Push the cap a bit and your part or assembly pans down, pull it and it pans up,  tilt a bit and the part rotates, twist it and the part spins. In the beginning, I found the device was at times a bit too sensitive for me, so it was very convenient that the sensitivity can be decreased using one of those buttons in the toolbar. I found that by doing this it was a lot easier to get used to it. You can also configure the device in order to limit the rotation to only one dominant axis or disable zoom or pan, thus facilitating the use of the 3D mouse even further.  So far, I haven’t done that, although I realize it may be convenient at certain times.

There are a couple of things that I particularly like about the SpacePilot. One of them is that you can easily select a point in your model (like a vertex or the center of a circular face or edge) and rotate the model about that point, or you can also select an edge, a line in a sketch or a temporary axis and designate it as the new axis of rotation for the part or assembly simply by using the buttons in the toolbar. I don’t know about you, but I find it tremendously helpful to be able to select any axis, line or edge on my model and be able to rotate the model exclusively about that axis.

My second favorite (although not necessarily in that order) is the programmable buttons that come with it. Button Mapping, as they call it. This SpacePilot has six different buttons that can be associated with macros that match your keyboard shortcuts or with practically any command available in SolidWorks as easy as dragging and dropping from a list to each of the buttons in the Button Mapping Panel (access this panel by clicking on the icon in the toolbar).  I know a lot of people love their hotkeys and shortcuts. I don’t usually use them, because I have an awful memory for remembering them. I would probably need a list of them pasted right next to my computer and then look for the one I need in that list… and that would defeat the whole purpose of the shortcut keys altogether. This device makes it a lot simpler, just programming a few buttons with some of your most commonly used commands and macros, and their names always get to appear in the SpacePilot’s LCD screen, to remind you what each button is for.  I know what you’re thinking, six buttons isn’t really that much. Perhaps not, but you can create (and save) multiple configurations, each with six different commands and/or macros, if you wish.

 

Another neat thing of this device is that, when working with assemblies, you can toggle between manipulating the whole assembly and manipulating only a part or component in the assembly, simply by pressing a button in the toolbar. If you are moving a part in the assembly, the rest of the assembly remains anchored in place. When you are done, simply toggle back to moving the whole assembly. Really nice! Oh, and it can also detect collisions between parts and components while rotating them, although I still struggle manipulating the component of the assembly when this option is turned on. I find that the movement is not as smooth, even when I don’t select the option to stop the movement when collision is detected.

So, as far as I’m concerned, everything I heard about it was true. The praises were all for very good reason. This is an extremely useful device for anyone that works with SolidWorks. Sure, it’s also fun with Google Earth, but in integrates so beautifully, that it seems as if it had been especially made for SolidWorks. It really makes your life easier, but be careful because once you try one of these, you get hooked, and you really don’t feel like going back to 2D mouse and keyboard ever again!

For more information on the 3DConnexion products, visit their web site located at www.3dconnexion.com

Something neat to share

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I stayed up late last night watching a long collection of sheet metal related videos. Some were tutorials on how to bend metal by hand or with simple tools, with a hammer, a leaf brake or a box and pan brake; some others dealt with the design of tools and dies. I know this doesn't replace visiting a real shop and (hopefully) getting a try at bending a piece of metal myself, but the videos were extremely detailed, with lots of close up views, and at least I got to see different kinds of presses in action. This one is one of my favorite ones. Just wanted to share with you here, for those that, like me, had never seen one this before.

Maxform Press Brake on MachineTools.com

Bending Sequence

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One thing I’m learning quickly about Sheet Metal product design is that coming up with a sheet metal part or assembly in SolidWorks (or even a hand-drawn pattern for that matter) is only the first part of the story.  The interesting part is now figuring out how it is going to be fabricated! This means that, besides a pattern, we also need to come up with a sequence of operations that takes into account the kind of tools or equipment we have at hand. Jeff Cox has some very interesting thoughts about it in his blog. Check it out! It’s really an eye opener for those of us that are just learning.

And now, let me tell you a bit about the sequence for fabricating that little tote tray I told you about in a previous post. Take into account that all that’s available is a small leaf press and some hand tools, like shears, hammers, a pop-rivet gun, etc. Not really a big shop… but still good enough to learn!

Anyway, once the stock has been cut out to size according to the pattern, the question that comes to mind is “What do we bend first?” I was under the impression that we simply had to do it in the same order as the flanges and hems were added to the part in SolidWorks, but it turned out to be quite the opposite.  In my SolidWorks model, for instance, the hems are the last thing to be added, but as it turns out, hems should be the first thing to do, since it would be very difficult to fold them after the sides of the tray are bent up. Also, we are supposed to look for ways to make several operations at the same time, rather than one by one, to make it more economical. There are also operations that won’t be possible with the kind of equipment at hand. I was told we can bend the sides using the leaf press, but not the ends of the tray; those will have to be bent by hand. We could bend them if we had a press brake, although I’m not exactly sure what the difference is, and why the press brake could do it while the leaf brake can’t.  I sure would love to see a press brake in action! This is a fascinating area that I wish I could learn more about!

Back to the example… It is possible to convey information about the sequence of operations to bend your part simply by creating a few configurations and suppressing a few bends.  Here is how. In the feature manager, locate the feature Flat Pattern. This is usually suppressed when the sheet metal part is folded.  Click on it to expand it and you’ll see a list of all the bends in the part.

Create a new configuration for the part and name it Flat, make this configuration active and unsuppress Flat Pattern. This will be our starting point.

Next, we need to create a new configuration and name it STEP1. We can simply make a copy of FLAT, since most of the model will be flattened, except for a few of the bends. In the Feature Manager, we expand Flat Pattern (which should be unsuppressed in this configuration) and look for the bends that correspond to the hems in the part to suppress them. This can be a little tricky when you have bends that have been mirrored.

Now we need a new configuration for the following step in the sequence, STEP2. The easiest way is to make a copy of STEP1, since we’ll just continue suppressing more of the bends in the list, in addition to those we already suppressed.  For STEP2, and according to the pattern I had originally, we should  find and suppress the bends for the sides and tabs, so they could be folded together in one operation. However, I wonder if the sides and tabs can really be folded in one operation, because the bend is not exactly located on the same line for both. See?

Assuming they could really be folded together, this is how STEP2 would look like after suppressing the bends.

The last step is to bend up the sides, which leads us back to the default configuration of this sheet metal part, which I’ve renamed FOLDED.

Like I said before,  I think Sheet Metal design is very interesting and I really want to learn, so I would appreciate if those out there reading this that may have more experience than I do  would take some time to explain how they would approach the sequence of steps for the tabs and sides… one step for both? Two steps? Which one would go first? Your advice and expertise is always welcome and greatly appreciated!

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SolidWorks World 2009 here I come!

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A few days ago I received a press pass invitation for SolidWorks World 2009. Ever since, I have been dying to climb a mountain and shout it to the world, but there aren’t any tall enough mountains around this area for the hike to be really worth it and,  to make matters worse, I’ve been saddled with a lot of work to do and little errands to run. Why does this have to be such a busy month? Everybody that could possibly get sick will get sick in December and everything that may break or need to be replaced will break or have to be replaced in a hurry, also in December, of course.

I must confess that I had been anxiously hoping and waiting for this invitation for almost a whole year, ever since I found out that several of my fellow SolidWorks bloggers got a press pass for last year’s event. I didn’t want to give it much thought just in case I didn’t get an invitation, but every now and then someone would mention just how awesome SolidWorks World was last year or the year before, someone would publish the pictures or video that they took during the event,  someone would make a reference to what was said during one of the sessions, someone else would remember the excitement when the mystery guest showed up or describe everything they saw in the partners pavilion, the robots, the marvelous products designed in SolidWorks… and then my imagination would run wild again, thinking about  SWW2009 and just how badly I wanted to attend.

Since I couldn’t be certain that I would be invited just for being a blogger (remember I only started blogging last January), I started hatching my backup plan to get myself into SolidWorks World, and began saving all the leftover money from my weekly budget in my “SWW fund”. That and getting rid of a few things I didn’t really need, and perhaps… OK, with this economy you really can’t raise much money that way, but you got to start somewhere, right? As a matter of fact, I did raise quite a bit of money, although still not nearly enough to cover for the conference and accommodations. So I came up with the backup plan for my backup plan: beg and nag and nag and beg my husband day and night to help me out with the difference until he got so sick and tired of listening to my pleas and my insanity and decided that the best for all of us was to send me far, far away… to Orlando, Florida! OK, I know that’s a lame plan, but what did you expect? After eight long years as a stay at home mother with not much food for your brain and forced to go through endless days of baby talk and little movies with silly stuffed animals and four very grown up Australian blokes singing about cold spaghetti and mashed bananas, most of your brilliant ideas begin to wither and die a painful and very lonely death, and as your brain agonizes, in the background you can still hear the  voice of your four year old telling you the same knock-knock joke that makes no sense at all for the hundredth time… and as usual, you are expected to laugh. 

OK, that’s too much drama, but seriously, I know it was a lame idea. And it wouldn’t have worked, anyway, because, as usual, Murphy strikes again, and we suddenly had a furnace that needed replacement and wasn’t covered by any insurance, a member of our family that needed complicated (expensive) and extremely urgent oral surgery, and a myriad other repairs around the house that just couldn’t wait.  Three thousand dollars here, five hundred there, another six hundred over there…  Hmmm… In view of all this and seeing that my search for a flexible job hadn’t been exactly successful, I decided that the best to do was to wait and see what happened and just hope for the best. Hoping for the best was the hard part! Too much Sartre, perhaps…

So, as you can see, I’m really glad and grateful that I got invited to the event this year. Thank you Nancy for including me in the list of lucky ones that gets to go as press! Thank you to the folks at SolidWorks for their kindness and generosity! Now I only wish I could clone myself to attend all the conferences that I’m curious about, even when they take place simultaneously. I’m also excited about the CSWP event.  From pictures and stories other people told me about the previous events, I came to think that it was a big party with lots of food, drink, music and pretty girls dancing, but according to the invitation I got by email, this year is going to be really different than previous years, and lots more fun than just a party. There’s going to be a design contest that involves one of those really cool toys in my eight year old son’s Christmas list: the icoaster.  He is as excited as I am about the event and the contest, maybe even more.  He’s made me promise that if I enter the contest and  if  I win any toys or anything at all, it will all go to him. Of course… Who do you think owns my SolidWorks baseball cap and the backpack I got at one of the Tri-Valley SWUG meetings?

Anyway, sorry for the rambling! I’m just really excited. I can only imagine how big this event is and all that I will see there!  I better pack a pair of extremely comfortable snickers and tons of ibuprofen for my aching joints. I hope to meet  a lot of people and bloggers that I’ve only met online so far, like Ricky Jordan, Jeff Mirisola, Rob Rodriguez, Anna Wood, Alex Ruiz, Mark Biasotti  (awesome video “Kill Another CAD”) , Charles Culp, and many more. Maybe I’ll also meet some of the people that read this blog there too!

See you in Orlando!

Decals and masks revisited

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This is meant to be just a quick post to answer Chris’s question about the color effect on the front of the Mach 4 image that was my entry for last month’s Rendering Contest. 

In short, that effect is achieved by using a solid color as a decal and a mask, only instead of black and white the mask is a gradient of grey tones that act pretty much like a sifter, allowing more of the color to be seen in the areas where the gray is less concentrated, thus creating the effect that the color is more or less intense on one side and then goes gradually vanishing until it completely disappears.  I took the idea from the Step-by-Step PhotoWorks Self-Study Guide. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, yet again, I strongly recommend you get yourself a copy of the book. It’s really good!

While I’m not a PhotoShop expert, I can at least create a gradient and a doodle with an airbrush. This is more than enough (for now) to explain about this kind of use for a decal and a mask. The decal can be a solid color or a Photoshop (or any other similar software) pattern or texture.  The mask can be a gradient such as this one.

 

Or it can also be a doodle like this one that I made in Photoshop by using an airbrush tool and blurring it a bit afterwards.  My idea with this one was to create an effect of graffiti over a wall.

So, as a decal I used the following image, which is merely a 2 in x 2 in square of solid color.

 

And my mask was the doodle show previously. Notice though that I had to invert the mask in the decal property manager. This is because Photoshop will only let the color through the white or lighter areas in the mask.

The effect kind of looks like a wall that got scribbled with graffiti, doesn’t it? At least a bit?

 

 

 

Sketch Relations, Snaps and Grid

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I’ve been asked this same question quite a few times, mainly from those who are coming from AutoCAD and/or getting started in SolidWorks for the very first time. I know the answer to this one is very obvious for those of you who have been using SolidWorks for a while, but since I’ve been there myself, I thought it would be a good idea to dedicate at least a few lines to it. 

The question is how to activate and make use of something similar to AutoCAD’s OSNAPS and Polar Tracking while sketching in SolidWorks?

As most of us know, because we’ve used AutoCAD at one time or another, OSNAPS and Polar Tracking are some of the handiest tools available in AutoCAD, so much that getting accurate dimensions would be really difficult without them. OSNAPS (object snaps) make it easy to snap to objects in the sketch, or more exactly, to parts of that object, like the center of a circle, the midpoint of a line, etc. Polar tracking, on the other side, facilitates sketching lines at a predetermined angle.

SolidWorks, has several options for snapping to objects, such as center points, mid points, intersections, etc. It also allows you to add relations automatically and to customize and display a grid and snap to it, as well. All without having to use no 2D emulator! To activate all this goodness, all you have to do is go to Tools, Options,  System Options,  Sketch, Relations/Snaps and select  Enable Snapping, Snap to Model Geometry and Automatic Relations.  Right underneath these options, you are going to see a list of possible objects to snap to, such as end points, center points, nearest, etc. You are pretty much covered by selecting all of them, because it will only snap to those objects you pre-select from that list.

Almost at the bottom of the list, you’ll notice an option named grid. If you select this option, you’ll be able to snap to points in a grid that is also fully customizable.  Simply click on Go to Document Grid Settings and a new set of options show up. From these options, you can select to make the grid visible by choosing Display Grid, or change the grid spacing, for instance.

OK, so now all this stuff is activated… What does it mean? Well, It means that the next time you open or edit a sketch in SolidWorks you are going to see a grid (if you chose to display it) and you’ll be able to snap to the points in this grid, and it also means that you are going to notice changes in your cursor as you sketch your different entities, like the ones you see in the images.  Those little symbols let you know what kind of relation will be applied to the different entities of your sketch. For example, in the image, there’s a coincident relation between one end point of the line and the origin, and a tangent relation between the arc and the circle. Although relations and dimensions can be modified later, this is a great tool that can save you time and effort.

Sheet Metal Tote Tray

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Unlike others, I was never introduced to sheet metal forming techniques while in high school or even in college. There was a class we all were required to take on manufacturing processes, where it was briefly discussed, and we also had a shop were we learned to use a few tools and machines, like the lathe, as well as several welding methods. I used to cut and prepare metal for welding, but I can honestly say I never learned how to bend it and form it. I’ve bent tubes in the past, though if that accounts for anything…

Anyway, I’ve been curious about sheet metal, so I’ve been doing some research and, with a little bit of help from here and there, learning about basic techniques with a small leaf brake. One of the beginner’s projects is a tote tray. The pattern seemed really simple, so I thought I would try and model it in SolidWorks. It was certainly a good exercise, and not as simple as I thought.

The tote tray is an assembly of two parts, the main body of the tote tray and a handle, as you can see in the following image.

I started modeling the main body by first creating a rectangular base flange. The pattern called for 24 gauge metal. I assumed it should’ve been galvanized steel, but I only have a couple of tables that come with SolidWorks, and the only 24 gauge metal available was Aluminum, so I used that one. Once I had my rectangular flange, which is actually the bottom of the tote tray, I proceeded to add an edge-flange on one of the short sides. To do this simply select the edge and click on Edge-Flange on the Sheet Metal toolbar.  You will see the Edge-Flange property manager on the left and a preview on the graphics area.

The arrows you see in the preview allow you to modify the direction of the bend to go up or down. You can also modify the angle of the bend through the property manager. I need an angle of 90°.  I’d also like to mention something else that you can’t appreciate from this image: when you first add an edge flange to your part, the shape of the flange is going to be rectangular, just running all along the edge. The reason why my edge-flange looks different is because I modified the sketch used as the flange profile. It’s not hard to do, just click on  Edit Flange Profile in the property manager, modify the sketch and then click on Finish in that little dialog box, as long as it says that your sketch is valid, of course.

Next, and still following the pattern, I added a hem to two of the edges.  From the property manager, I chose a closed hem and material inside option.  Unlike with the edge flange, it does make a difference which edge we choose for the hem. If I had chosen an edge on the outside face of the flange, then the hem would’ve been added to the other side.

After mirroring the first edge flange and its hems, I added another edge flange to one of the sides and then a third smaller one that the pattern calls for and that, I believe, will help close the box. My choices for this one had to be slightly different than for the rest, to accommodate for the material in other parts of the box. The pattern I had didn’t mention this. Anyway, for this flange I had to choose to have the bend outside, since choosing material inside or even material outside would cause interference with the other parts of the box. You can appreciate in the image that there is a small gap between this flange and the second one I made on the side previously.

The rest of the flanges and hems were made in a similar fashion, I mirrored whatever operation could be mirrored and then trimmed the corners.

I had a pattern for the handle of the tote tray, as well, so I first tried to make the part and assemble both together, but it wouldn’t fit right; there was a lot of interference between the two parts. So, I decided to try modeling the handle in context.  For this purpose, I added a plane to Tote Tray 1 (the main body of the tote tray), where the bottom of the handle would be placed.  The first thing I noticed was that I needed to find a way for the sides of the handle to clear the hems of the first part, so while sketching the flange for the bottom of the handle, I left a gap big enough to make sure there would not be any interference (the thickness of the metal plus a little bit more to allow for the gap in the bend of the hem). This can be better appreciated in the following image. Notice how the hem passes behind the flange and both parts don’t interfere with each other no more.

A similar consideration needed to be made for adding what the pattern calls a “hook” for attaching the handle to the main body of the tote tray. I did this with another hem, choosing for it to be open, with the bend outside and a gap distance big enough to clear the gap I had left in the beginning, when sketching the bottom flange, plus the thickness of the metal, as you can see in the image.

Once again, I added a couple more flanges to the sides and mirrored whatever could be mirrored to obtain the final result.

I don’t know if this is the right or even conventional way to do design in sheet metal. When I unfold the parts, they look pretty much like the pattern I had, but the measures just don’t quite match, because mine takes into account all those issues with interference that seemed ignored in that other pattern.  It’s almost as if the other pattern assumed that the bends wouldn’t take space at all. Hmmm…