What Else Can SolidWorks Do?
By Richard Williams 07/30/08
The pictures down below my remarks were done with a 50 dollar program to get my ideas going. I use this program as a conceptualization program and then draw my ideas into the SolidWorks program. This program works well but is limited in many ways. It certainly cannot do highly detailed work like we are used to doing inside of SolidWorks. This scene is looking at a conversion of three Cargo Shipping Containers placed adjacently together and converted into a dwelling for 8 workers on various construction projects anywhere in remote areas. You are looking through the glass of a main side door, 24 feet away across to the other side of a third Cargo Shipping Container.
House furnishings even with a cheap program can be clicked and dragged on into the graphics area and placed but they sometimes move around on you because there is no mating like there is in SolidWorks. But it is quick and pretty easy with a very short learning curve and it is hard to beat in the conceptualization phase of any project. It works for me.
What I was asked to do was to come up with some ideas on how to house the greatest number of these workers using these cargo shipping containers in quick easy conversions. They would also have to be all solar powered and there are some excellent ideas already put out by others that could be adapted into these units. The USA has all too many of these things sitting around getting rusty because we are no longer an exporting nation anymore. If these ideas can be adopted we might put some of our own people to work again and give livable living quarters to those construction workers willing to travel to very remote areas. Down below here I have designed a four apartment unit using three CSC’s., with two workers per room and common areas. As a parameter that I was given by our local university, all plumbing and electrical systems were to be located in the middle container only.
This is a look from just entering one side door and looking 24 feet across the three units to the other main side door.
Another view showing the whole idea of the layout that I was able to come up with.
A screen shot or closer look at one of the bedrooms with bunk beds set up for the two workers per bedroom. When I was in the US Marines I shared a similar set up but with less than half of the size designed down below here. We also had no closet or bedroom door. Wall lockers and foot lockers were our allowed storage.
This shows the Middle Cargo Shipping Container being utilized as the common areas for cooking, bath and laundry facilities and systems.
This is the last screen shot of the inexpensive but easily used program I used to get some ideas going. It is called Floor Plan that is owned by IMSI Corporation. Well worth the price if anyone is interested.
Now using SolidWorks for doing architectural design and drawings is not an easy thing to do by any means because there are no pre-drawn click and drag components that are in the program. Everything down below as far as house furnishings I had to draw out.
I’m still not done by a long shot. I have much more to do on this Triplex that I call it. I’ve learned some valuable things doing this project with SolidWorks and my computer’s power. I had to do this project as a massive assembly a few times because my computer’s memory is obviously not enough to show fully rendered SolidWorks files. These containers are showing the smooth side versions I had to do over again because the rendered version would suddenly lock up my computer and I was no longer able to open that particular project again and I had to start over. This is a problem with only 2 gigs of RAM memory in my computer and not that of the SolidWorks program. After adding all the furniture I decided to make all doors open and close like they would in real life. Even the bi-fold closet doors where all working and there were four of them plus six regular doors and two front entry doors. That was a lot of number crunching and my two gigabytes of high speed RAM along with the rest of the project could not take it and crashed, taking the whole project with it. My birthday is next week and I think I will be surprised by some new RAM chips. Otherwise I will just have to get them J myself.
I still have to finish things on the Triplex down below but I have another single unit that will have pop outs on the side being finished soon.
This is the last shot of the Triplex Cargo Shipping Container.
Down below here are some extra screen shots of the different SolidWorks modeling that I have done already. I hope you enjoyed this tour but down below shows the real level of detail that SolidWorks can do and Floor Plan at the top cannot do. Realism is what I was shooting for because I wanted to try doing this all animated which I have not done yet. A walk through and a setting up in the desert is what I am going to try to accomplish.
Tin corrugated roof.
I had the four cargo end doors all working as well but now I have locked them and thrown the keys away. The level of detail that SolidWorks can do is much more than any 50 dollar program can do but now you might be able to see what great advantage there would be to the user base with an optional architectural add on.
The parameters of the Containers I was asked to use are the 40 foot long, by 8 feet wide, by 9 foot six inch high (high cube) units only. The little extra height makes them much more usable for the average height of people unless you are a small guy like me. J
This was my first design using only one single container. The side opening is 32 feet wide by 6 feet 8 inches high. I am designing pop outs that should double the floor area of the single one along by itself. These units are very portable as they are used around the world to ship manufactured goods to other countries. Loaded aboard cargo ships, these modified conversion units can be shipped all over the world as portable housing units or emergency shelters. They are very strongly build and not of the meager strength of what we see around the USA as mobile homes. I lived in one for five years that was 12 x 60 with my young family of four people. A 40 foot unit weighs in at 8400 lbs on average. They can be easily stacked upon each other for shipment or even as a second story to other designs.
I hope someday that SolidWorks will consider the possibility of an Architectural add on so we can design even other things as well. When I first heard of an architectural add on by some of our Blog Squad Writers, I was instantly enthralled with the idea. I know I would want it and use it in my creations. It would be used.
Richard Williams
