CAD Forum

HerrTick

I the past (and, almost certainly, the future), I spoke derisively about users who try way too hard to minimize mouse-clicks and feature count. While these things measure CAD gamesmanship, these things are never what accelerates a project. CAD acumen is not tested by what you can make, but what you ...

HerrTick

A weird bug. Switch to Flat View before checking "Include Drawings".

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HerrTick

I had more success using SaveAs --> PDF than with printing. Don't know if newer versions are different.

HerrTick

I have used Dwight's solution to make conic springs. It has some advantages. You get a graphic representation of the results. Also, you can decouple F(x,y,z) into F(x,y) and F(z). As far as the equal step between revolutions, that depends entirely on your equation. SW has a spiral function embedded ...

HerrTick

We've reached a point in FEA history where differences in platforms are little more than cosmetic. Every simulation software does what you ask. Learn to ask better.

HerrTick

Thanks! Will try it out! Could you explain why should the fill command be avoided? It doesn't give much flexibility, but for me it did the job. First, resorting to fill often occurs because the designer has not carefully considered the situation he has created. Take a few steps back and see how you...

HerrTick

Splitting the job into multiple features just adds additional sources of error.

Only if you do it wrong. The key to doing things well is doing them right.

HerrTick

Just a few random thoughts. I only know you (Toby) by reputation, so don't take anything too personally. Big fish, small river. How much of your talent bandwidth did that (or any) job actually take? They'll find someone to meet their needs. Someone with less talent and more pliability, most likely....

HerrTick

Divide such that you have two 4-sided regions.

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Even better if you divide to match part topology.

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Fill is a last-ditch gambit to be avoided.

HerrTick

I'd love to know details, but it is in your best interest to shut the hell up until you secure your next gig.

Might be a good time to start a career in design.

HerrTick

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HerrTick

I see no need to have a skeleton sketch in a separate part. The master sketch can reside at the top level assembly, and then copied in-context down through the assembly tree. This has always worked well for me.

HerrTick

The ideal is as much as you can possibly cram into your RAM slots. Every KB that puts distance between you and pagefile.sys swapping is worth it.

HerrTick

The object chain for dimensions is long and convoluted. It could be any one of a number of objects. Keep sifting and probing.

HerrTick

interesting...

HerrTick

Just an anecdote about CAD knowledge spilling over into the non-CAD world... My friend's aging Dell laptop was acting squirrely after the latest Windoze update. Graphics were acting really strange--blinking out, odd lines, slow response. My friend said he tried everything he could think of. The lap...

HerrTick

What can Solidworks do that Solid Edge can't?

Provide steady employment.

HerrTick

"Bottom-up" doesn't get a lot of discussion because there really isn't much to discuss.

You build, you assemble, maybe assemble some more. No context. No continuity. Easy-cheezy.

HerrTick

A while back, I worked in a place with a lot of senior people who complained a lot about readability. I circulated drawing samples with different fonts for a poll. Century Gothic was the winner by a wide margin.

HerrTick

What you really need to do is repair the relationship with the vendor. See what you can do to get directly in touch with the people who can do the most. This may take patience and persistence. Companies are loathe to connect their engineers directly with each other. Mostly because there are people w...

HerrTick

Revision descriptions are important to inform the reader what they are looking for. However, it should be known and understood that the ECO is the master document and the revision description is reference only.

HerrTick

Coordinate systems were a big deal 25 years ago... It's not an innovative idea... No, it's not innovative. It's a function so fudamental to geometry creation that it's shocking it was not included from Day Zero ...it doesn't add anything to the software that we haven't been able to accomplish... .....

HerrTick

Yeah, sorry if I came across brash; as you pointed out I need to calm down. I have several raw spots that have been open for nearly two years from this whole migration thing. We are into the thousands of hours of lost time redoing SW models due to poor planning and bad guidance from people who supp...

HerrTick

That's a bunch of rubbish. You are missing some use cases in your bold assumptions. A boldness borne from nearly three decades of experience in multiple CAD packages in multiple fields. Which particular cases would you say my assumptions are rubbish? I'll wait while you calm down and collect your t...

HerrTick

There's an persistent and pernicious dogma in CAD (not just SW) that sheet metal parts must consist of only sheet metal features from the sheet metal app. Utter tosh! Z-bends (including jogs) are a great reason to ditch this dogma. In many cases, it is far simpler and better for the design (you know...

HerrTick

Just curious, what would you use them for? I never had the need to do what you're showing but I'm sure in some industry its needed or NX wouldn't have added it. image.png "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater." --Albert Einstein And,...

HerrTick

image.png Real-life example from recent project. I had a large thickened set of B-surfaces. I had to repeat a number of multi-feature sets across the body, normal to the surface at each location with varying orientation. In NX, I could create coordinate systems ("CSYS"), define the featur...

HerrTick

These are all of the options available for defining coordinate systems in NX. For most of these, the references can be associative (unless chosen otherwise). This includes points, vertices, parametric point-on-curve, surface normals (even normal-at-point), and edge direction at point. As I recall, C...

HerrTick

Alin wrote: ↑Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:59 am@HerrTick, you explained it so much better than I did in the article. May I quote you going forward?

Properly attributed, contextually-correct quotes allowed and welcome for all.

HerrTick

I don't know much about NX but maybe @SPerman or @HerrTick could enlighten us plebeians. :D NX and Creo have had fully-functional coordinate systems ("CSYS") since I first laid eyes on them (as UG and Pro/E) back in the 90s. A CSYS can be defined and redefined in just about any way one ca...

HerrTick

SW beginning to catch up to where NX and Creo were over 25 years ago.

HerrTick

I've had nothing but bad luck mirroring curves beyond applying symmetry to individual lines and arcs in a sketch. Splines and conics? Forget it!

I've resorted to making surfaces from sketches and mirroring the surfaces to ensure stable results.

HerrTick

Comma-users are quick to adapt to point. Not so much the other way around.

Neither is difficult. Training to recognize in both should take all of 30 seconds. Might be a good opportunity to weed out some dead weight.

HerrTick

Once in a while I will use a temporary 3-face fillet to establish ideal silhouette edge to make a pair of tangent fillets.

HerrTick

3-face fillets are cool. They can yield a great-looking smooth edge with minimal effort when they work right. However, I find that often the resulting surface of a 3-face fillet is very "heavy", with dense pole structure and slow regen times. Also, these surfaces can be prone to corruption...

HerrTick

It's called "coining". Not really a form, per se.

Conservation of volume applies. Usually the hole is shallower with wider diameter than the protrusion.

That's way too much thickness variation. Maybe too much. Switch to tighter tolerance sheet stock. The extra cost pays off.

HerrTick

Ultimately, the tool designer and manufacturing need to own the tool and process design, including making sure flat and any intermediate stages AND final product are correct. You can refine your design process all you want (and probably should), but in the end, each piece and each tool has its own p...

HerrTick

One client has revisions for parts and sub-revisions for drawings. The drawing revisions sync with the part revisions, plus have a sub-revision. The allows for changes to the drawing like dimensions, notes, and callouts that do not impact the 3D model.

HerrTick

Perfectly valid safety check. Not only does SW need to be running, but the code needs a valid SW application object. If that object ("swApp") gets disconnected somehow, then all of the code will not run.

HerrTick

I'm cautious with offsets. If it's only a couple entities, I do it the hard way. If I'm ever forced to sketch a full sheet metal section, I don't use offsets. To much risk of disruption if entities need to be added or subtracted from the offset chain.

HerrTick

I don't understand the connection between being a "real" engineer and SolidWorks, let alone any specific version. If you're defining your level of professional achievement by CAD platform usership, you're basically a technician.

HerrTick

I would start out with a revolved outer surface to define outline in 3D. Facet apexes would be on that surface. Maybe also a surface to define the "bottom" edges of the facets.

HerrTick

A bit different for us (Surfaceink), as we are a service firm with many different clients with different platforms. Must of us are adept at more than one.

Mostly NX, SW, and Creo. We haven't had to consider Inventor or OnShape at this point.

HerrTick

Maybe if you name the face before deleting the hole?

HerrTick

Lots of arms and heads.

HerrTick

While in SW you can enter the parameter representation of the curve via the feature "Equation driven curve", it is not possible to create a closed sketch element, because start and end point must not be identical What the heck do you want? Functions have ranges. Ranges have a beginning an...

HerrTick

Schwarzen!

HerrTick

HerrTick

Is it really that easy to just scan and copy? Not really. There is plenty that goes into making all but the simplest products beyond the physical shape. Just getting molding processes under control can take Herculean effort. What about material specs? What about tolerances? Electrical and thermal? F...

HerrTick

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