Is anyone using TolAnalyst? If so, do you have best practice suggestions?

[CarrieIves]

I currently have some time at work to try learning parts of SolidWorks I am not as familiar with.

I have looked at a couple of videos that some VARs have posted, and was able to stumble through my first couple of tolerance studies.

I am struggling with adding the DimXpert dimensions. I am also not sure I am mating my parts in a way SolidWorks will analyse.

We currently tolerance our drawings with +/- tolerances rather than GD&T.

We do a lot of enclosures for circuit boards. Right now, it seems like most of the things I work on is shield cans for those circuit boards. We are installing those shield cans using surface mount clips. (For those not familiar with surface mount technology, the board has solder paste on component pads. The components are placed by machine onto the correct location on the board. The board assembly then goes through an oven where the solder paste melts so the components get soldered on.)

I started out trying to add dimensions to my imported clip part. It's a stamped part.

This was giving me some trouble, so I created a simplified model to use instead. The simplified model is shown in pink. The orange shield can is held in place by the clips. The grey block is representative of some component.

A board will typically have a tooling hole that is 0,0. Components are placed relative to that 0,0. I have placed my simplified clips with distance mates. Is this OK for my analysis? I have attached a pack and go of my assembly. Study 1 was just to see if I could do something simple - the component to board edge. Study 2 is about the distance between the clip and the wall of the can. Study3 uses the suppressed components. I was just looking at a stack to see if I got different behavior as I set up the study. When I set up the study, it seems like it isn't offering me enough constraints when applying the assembly constraints. Is there a different way I should be going about this?

I'm using SolidWorks 2020.

Thanks,
Carrie

[CarrieIves]

Based on the number of replies, should I conclude that no one is using this? Or that no one has best practices for it?

[mattpeneguy]

Based on the number of replies, should I conclude that no one is using this? Or that no one has best practices for it?

I've never used it. I wonder if your VAR could help? @Alin, you or anyone with javelin got any help here?

I know that functionality has been around for a long time.

[zxys001]

Based on the number of replies, should I conclude that no one is using this? Or that no one has best practices for it?

I don't have it (STANDARD, something we requested >20yrs ago)...

[mattpeneguy]

I don't have it (STANDARD, something we requested >20yrs ago)...

Do you even know if it's useful? Could be as useful as this?:

image.png (7.79 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

How about this one (honestly have no idea if anyone uses it or if it's useful)?

[zxys001]

Do you even know if it's useful? Could be as useful as this?:
image.png
How about this one (honestly have no idea if anyone uses it or if it's useful)?
image.png

It could be... I just have not had a need yet or I do a quick tolerance stack when/if I think it's needed,.. it's rare for proto stuff, unless I'm asked.

[mike miller]

Do you even know if it's useful? Could be as useful as this?:
image.png
How about this one (honestly have no idea if anyone uses it or if it's useful)?
image.png

Check this one out.

[DanPihlaja]

I have never used it, although it was batted around here to maybe use it for a bit, but we decided not to.

That being said, here are a couple of articles in case you missed them:

https://centralinnovation.com/technical ... olanalyst/



(And now that I see the preview for my post, I didn't realize that it has a reddit plugin. [if that is, indeed what that is above @matt ] LOL)


Also attached is a PDF file that I found from Javelin.

Hope that helps...

[mattpeneguy]

I have never used it, although it was batted around here to maybe use it for a bit, but we decided not to.

That being said, here are a couple of articles in case you missed them:

https://centralinnovation.com/technical ... olanalyst/



(And now that I see the preview for my post, I didn't realize that it has a reddit plugin. [if that is, indeed what that is above @matt ] LOL)


Also attached is a PDF file that I found from Javelin.

Hope that helps...

Dan,
That pdf was pretty explanatory. Seems it could help identify fit issues. And I guess it could be useful for what we do to some extent.
But, to the point at hand, does anyone actually use it? Is this just something that SW came up with that isn't finished and so isn't useful? Or do people just use spreadsheets still because even though SW claims it does X or Y, it's just not useable?

[matt]

When I wrote the 2018 Mastering Solidworks, a chapter on Model Based Design (including TolAnalyst) was in the original table of contents. Alin V was my technical editor, and we talked about the products a bit. Alin is of course brilliant and a great optimist. I also spoke with some other people, probably on the old forum, and got a less happy picture. In the end, I chopped the entire chapter, having been left with the opinion from users that the software was about half way there, or maybe more, and that I could only find one person who was using a portion of it in production workflow. To me, it just wasn't worth a week of research and model/drawing creation followed by another week of detailed analysis and writing.

They developed it to the point where it fills a checkbox on a demo checklist, and never really took it to true production capability. I think that goes for the whole stack of functionality from MBD through TolAnalyst down to DimXpert. To be fair, I haven't checked on it in 3 years, but don't have any reason to expect anything has changed.

[mattpeneguy]

When I wrote the 2018 Mastering Solidworks, a chapter on Model Based Design (including TolAnalyst) was in the original table of contents. Alin V was my technical editor, and we talked about the products a bit. Alin is of course brilliant and a great optimist. I also spoke with some other people, probably on the old forum, and got a less happy picture. In the end, I chopped the entire chapter, having been left with the opinion from users that the software was about half way there, or maybe more, and that I could only find one person who was using a portion of it in production workflow. To me, it just wasn't worth a week of research and model/drawing creation followed by another week of detailed analysis and writing.

They developed it to the point where it fills a checkbox on a demo checklist, and never really took it to true production capability. I think that goes for the whole stack of functionality from MBD through TolAnalyst down to DimXpert. To be fair, I haven't checked on it in 3 years, but don't have any reason to expect anything has changed.

Thanks @matt. I guess that settles it unless we hear from some actual users of this functionality. Anyone?

[SPerman]

Define solidworks in two sentences.

They developed it to the point where it fills a checkbox on a demo checklist, and never really took it to true production capability. I think that goes for the whole stack of functionality from MBD through TolAnalyst down to DimXpert.

[jcapriotti]

They developed it to the point where it fills a checkbox on a demo checklist, and never really took it to true production capability. I think that goes for the whole stack of functionality from MBD through TolAnalyst down to DimXpert. To be fair, I haven't checked on it in 3 years, but don't have any reason to expect anything has changed.

Way back around 2004 was when it was being developed. I had went to another company using NX and this guy was brought to train us in GDT and tolerance stack up for about 3 weeks. He mentioned a CAD company he was consulting with that was writing software to do this. Turns out it was TolAnalyst.

Big problem with this stuff is it's too niche. Even after learning to do this manually it didn't come up that often. You would have to go back through the tutorials each time you used it to remember how.

[Alin]

I remember writing this, back in 2015: “CETOL 6σ tolerance analysis software by Sigmetrix makes SOLIDWORKS own TolAnalyst look like an Xpress add-in. Compared to TolAnalyst, CETOL 6σ is really a 3Dimensional tolerance analysis software that can be used on complex assemblies”

[jcapriotti]

I remember writing this, back in 2015: “CETOL 6σ tolerance analysis software by Sigmetrix makes SOLIDWORKS own TolAnalyst look like an Xpress add-in. Compared to TolAnalyst, CETOL 6σ is really a 3Dimensional tolerance analysis software that can be used on complex assemblies”

Big problem is SolidWorks doesn't charge extra for these tools sometimes and they never get further developed. It gets thrown in the bundle with so many other things. While we as customer like getting nearly free stuff, free doesn't help if its barely functional.