Whether you call it cornhole or bean bag toss, bags or sack toss, we can all agree on one thing: the game where you throw bean-filled pouches at a hole on a board has Americans interacting with family members and avoiding political arguments since 1974!

Here, in Minnesota, we affectionately call this game, “bags”. I’ll refer to it as such from now on. I’m not here to talk about how to play bags, but you can find rules here. We’re here to talk about how SOLIDWORKS design, costing, and rendering tools helped my stakeholders – in this case, my boss – approve decisions faster.

The Pitch

Our local office – located in beautiful Eden Prairie, MN – needed an entertaining space. The office is paired next to vacant patio that overlooks Lake Smetana to the east, and 494 to the south. What better way to spend an afternoon in June throwing bags with my colleagues? How can I make these to align with our corporate branding? The obvious answer was to make it myself. But I needed two things: a buy-in, and a budget.

Fortunately, SOLIDWORKS does both – easily.

The Design

Probably one of the easiest projects I’ve ever taken on is designing a bags platform. Let’s look at the official requirements for it:

• Hole diameter is 6”.
• Hole is centered, 9” from top.
• Board is 4’x2’x1/2”.
• Board angle is approximately 10-degrees.

One workflow I’ve been enjoying storing these parameters as global variables under Tools> Equations. This way, I can call out any of the unique measurements to the design. It also makes it easier to link values on the fly by building equations.

The design will be made up of weldments and sheet metal. This allows me to get the nominal dimensions for the framing, legs, and board. My custom weldment profiles included several standard sizes of lumber members. To learn how to customize weldment profiles, visit here. My cut list is more descriptive than a standard BOM because it features the cut lengths of members. This can also be used to extract part costs using SOLIDWORKS Costing. We’ll get to that later.

The “sheet metal” component cut list property description has been modified to include the bounding box length and width.

The Buy-in

It’s time to take the design a bit further. If my boss has any chance of approving this, I will need great visual supports. Insert: Visualize.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize helps create hyper-realistic product renderings using the same CAD SLDPRT and SLDASM files. It’s more robust than other rendering options in SOLIDWORKS like Photoview 360. It’s also not the easiest to learn. Therefore, adding appearances directly within SOLIDWORKS can save time.

The appearances tab applies 2D cosmetic textures to faces, features, bodies, or parts. We can apply these and import this model directly into Visualize.

The first pass seems good at first, but a closer inspection shows that some of the model face patterns are going in the wrong direction.

This just won’t do. How will my boss be wooed into agreeing for an office “bags” set? Luckily, SOLIDWORKS appearances can address this issue quickly.

I can fix some of these faces by accessing some basic appearance controls in the PropertyManager,. First, I’ll RMB (right-click) the face where the pattern isn’t matched.

I will select my “face” filter on the mispositioned face. It may be necessary to re-apply the wood appearance.

Let’s point out a few things in the Appearances PropertyManager. The first, labelled “1”, is the “tack”. This will allow you to continuously apply appearances without having to RMB again. The “Mapping” tab allows users to control the mapping style, direction, and scale of the appearance. The “Axis Direction” allows you to change the angular reference direction. Lastly, rotation is what allows you to re-position the texture.

Make sure to select all the faces that you expect to have the same grain direction before applying the mapping controls. For more information, visit this SOLIDWORKS help page.

The rotation can be manually defined with number keys, left-clicked on for 45-degree incrementation, or click-dragged for 1-degree incrementation. Since the board angle must be 10-degrees for the regulation-size bags board, I’ll type in 10 degrees. I may have to use 170-degrees to get pattern rotation in the other direction.

I’ll continue this process until I have the expected grain directions.

Launching Visualize

Visualize Standard is free for members with active subscriptions with SOLIDWORKS Professional or Premium. To learn more about the benefits of Active Subscription, click here.

There are a few settings to know when importing your Visualize project. The first is the Part Grouping. Since this model is built through multi-body design with weldments and sheet metal, I’ll enable component/part/body/appearance as the part grouping. This allows me to apply a unique appearance to each body.

I’ll also make sure to enable “Monitor File”. This ensures the Visualize model will update according to any changes saved in the SOLIDWORKS model. If I forget to scale or rotate an appearance, I won’t need to use Visualize tools to modify it.

Once I re-mapped the bags board to the correct grain direction, I decided it still wasn’t enough. So, I modelled some bean bags and applied a burlap appearance. Of course, I colored them according to CATI colors. I also added the stone tiles that appear on our Eden Prairie office patio.

Wow, we now have an image that excites by showing the purpose of the board. This is just one of those powerful stories we can tell through Visualize. But, it’s just about to get a little more powerful…

While the board toss image rendering was good, I really had to knock this out of the park. How would my boss be able to tell how much enjoyment and office comradery this would bring? The answer: Import human.

And since I didn’t have a CAD model of myself, I decided this articulated robot from GrabCAD might do.

Oh, would you look at them having the time of their life? This clearly depicts the intended use of the product, which is what model rendering can illustrate. Now that’s a convincing sales pitch. Most of us might know already how to play this particular game, but could the same be said for your product? Does it communicate purpose in a professional manner?

And, is this enough to allow your stakeholders to buy-in? How do they know how much they need to buy-in? That leads us to the second necessity: the budget.

The Budget

All products need to fit within certain budget constraints. One incredibly helpful tool is SOLIDWORKS Costing. I’ve written a few blogs on the tool in the past: Costing template editor, Cost optimizing with Weldments I, Part II. It will help me get a total cost approximation for each board.

SOLIDWORKS Premium Costing allows assemblies to be evaluated. Assemblies include the option to price for purchased components like hardware.

A quick browse through the local lumber website can help get data to optimally build this.

First, I’ll evaluate the cost of the part. This is an example of what SOLIDWORKS Professional can provide.

Now, let’s look at the cost of the overall assembly, which includes a secondary board, and purchased bean bags. This is meant for SOLIDWORKS Premium. I already own some extra hardware, so I’ve added the hardware to “No cost assigned”. Purchased parts can have custom property “price” added in the file properties.

SOLIDWORKS Costing also tells me that it’s best to use 8ft members, instead of 12ft lumber, to be most cost-effective. This is the power of SOLIDWORKS Costing.

Results

Now, I can deliver both necessities for my proposal: the buy-in, and the budget. I’ve created both a visually appealing graphic with aesthetic design intent, and provided the overall cost of the product, within just two hours.

I can now go to my boss, propose the final design, and give him a budgetary estimate of under $100 to complete the project.

And that’s the story of how I convinced my boss to let me build America’s favorite game of — as he calls it– “Cornhole”.

Here’s the finished product! A simple laser diode engraver did most of the heavy lifting. I also got to try out my new Milwaukee jigsaw, which was thoroughly enjoyable.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a highly valued startup that wants to render excitement and intrigue to your stakeholders, or whether you’re just trying to convince your wife to build that backyard hangout you’ve always wanted, Visualize brings to life what standard CAD modelling cannot. It’s included with active subscription for SOLIDWORKS Professional and Premium.

SOLIDWORKS Costing is included with SOLIDWORKS Professional (Premium for assemblies.) This tool will help you calculate in-house manufacturing costs for budget approval. It can also determine the “what if’s” of material procurement and manufacturing processes that optimize your lean product manufacturing. I used it to make sure I was wasting less, with 8ft instead of 12ft boards.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started by taking formal training through CATI, informal training through MySolidWorks, and start getting comfortable with the “yes” you’ll start receiving on your product development.

Best wishes and happy designing!

Jordan Kleinschmidt, CSWE
Application Engineer II
Computer Aided Technology

Hello everyone! I am in the process of trying to organize my basement. One of the biggest issues has been organizing tools.  This is a good opportunity to put my 3D printer to use and help get everything in order. Now, I could design something from scratch but I would guess that I am not the first person to come across this issue. I also know that my time is a valuable limited resource and those summer movies aren’t going to watch themselves.

So, I decided to go on Makerbot‘s Thingiverse and do some searching. I figured that it would be quicker to leverage the brain power of the maker community (this may be the only good part of the internet). Within 10 minutes I found a file that looked pretty good. I downloaded the file and checked the dimensions only to find that it isn’t exactly what I wanted. I want to make a few “tiny” modifications, but I know that I cannot make the changes I want in my slicing software. No worries, because working with mesh files (STL, 3MF, etc) has gotten easier inside SOLIDWORKS, especially in SOLIDWORKS 2022. Our own Jordan Puentes wrote up a great SOLIDWORKS 2022 What’s New article about the improvements to Hybrid modeling (Hybrid modeling is the term used when talking about the mixing of mesh BREP bodies and standard SOLIDWORKS BREP bodies).

Here is the TLDR for you hasty individuals (I can read your minds!): Solid model bodies no longer need to be created, converted to a mesh body followed by a boolean command (Combine command). What I want to discuss is how to properly import those mesh files so that you can take advantage of the new workflow and cover some command limitations that I found in the process.

Mesh Import Options

Let us look at our STL (mesh) import options. In the image below you will notice that the green arrows are pointing to the “Import as” options for Solid Body or Graphics body and there is a red line over the Surface Body option. If I import the STL as a Surface Body I will have to use the old workflow for modifying the mesh. The “Import as” for the Solid Body and Graphics Body each have a couple of things to note for Hybrid modeling.

If I “Import as” a Solid Body you will see that the Mesh Body Options are available. Tip: I generally check both of the boxes because I find it easier to work with the model when the facets have been grouped into faces.

If I “Import as” a Graphics Body you will see that the Mesh Body Options are greyed out.

I will show you the import workflow for both methods.

Mesh Import Option 1 – Solid Body

The first method is “Import as” Solid Body. This is probably the easiest and most straightforward method.

Start by selecting the file that you want to open and then click on the Options button.

Select the Solid Body option under “Import as” and then your Mesh Body options and unit.

You then select the Part template that you want to use.

Now, look at the Icon for the body in the design tree. It shows a body with a small mesh icon in the lower right corner. I am now ready to start creating sketches and features to modify this mesh body.

Mesh Import Option 2 – Graphics Body

Now onto the other Import Option workflow. I start off the same by opening the file and clicking on the Options.

If the Graphics body option under “Import as” is grayed out then you will need to unselect the boxes under the Mesh body options.

Once those have been unselected, you can then select the Graphics Body option. Don’t forget to select your units.

Once again you will select your Part template.

In the FeatureManager Design Tree, you will see an icon that looks like a Circle that is split into triangles with a small eyeball in the lower right corner.  This is the icon for a graphic mesh body.

In order to take advantage of our new Hybrid Modeling workflow, we need to convert the Graphics Body mesh file into a Mesh Body. This can be accomplished by right-clicking on the Graphics Body under the graphics Body folder or by clicking the Graphics Body under the Graphic Body feature.

Next, I choose whether I want to Group the facets into faces or not. I check the box and hit the green check mark.

We now see a new icon the FeatureManager Design Tree. It is the body icon with a small mesh icon in the lower right corner. This means that we have now turned the Graphics Body into a solid mesh body. Now we can use the new Hybrid Modeling workflow. Now you may be asking what exactly is this file that I am looking at in these images. This STL is a bit holder for all of my ¼” hex tool bits for my drill. This particular file takes up a little more real estate on my table than I would like so I am going to make it smaller.

Modifying the mesh file (Remixing)

The next steps show how much easier it is to modify mesh files. I started by drawing a sketch on the Front Plane. It was just a couple of sketch lines and then I used a Cut-Extrude feature.

In the image above I selected the Graphic Body just so you could see all of the material that I removed.

Next, in the image shown below, I wanted the area under the red box to look the same as it does under the area in the green box.

To do this, I start a sketch on the bottom surface of the channel (area in the red box). Then create an Extruded Boss-Base. You can see that I drew in the sketch entities and added relationships to the mesh body.

I then chose the direction and end condition. I chose Up to Vertex for the feature. Here is a little Tip! At this point in time, you cannot use the Up to Surface end condition when Hybrid Modeling. Notice that I have the Merge Result box checked. This is another bonus we get in Hybrid Modeling now, we do not need Booleans to combine bodies.

In the image below, we have a single body in the FeatureManager Design Tree. Notice that the face is smooth and without segmentation.

The last feature added a little material to the center channel.

Now I have my finished model ready for export (Shown below).

Here is the finished product in use.

I love the smell of organized tools in the morning! Now go print your own!

Credit and Attributions to the following individuals for providing these helpful files:

Alaric Snell-Pym – Creator of the file that I used. This was a remix based on another user’s file.
MakerBot Thingiverse name: Customizable Hex Bit Holder with Staggering
https://www.thingiverse.com/alaricsp
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4916577

Misha Lytvynyuk – This is the original content creator whose file was remixed by Alaric Snell-Pym.
MakerBot Thingiverse name: Customizable Hex Bit Holder
https://www.thingiverse.com/xchg_dot_ca
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:726700

James Reeher
Senior Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

What is the PPT BASE?

Let’s start off with a little bit about the PPT BASE. The BASE utilizes pressurized spray nozzles to cover FDM parts with a cleaning solution. This is similar to how an industrial dishwasher would clean plates or cups. PPT’s Volumetric Velocity Dispersion (VVD) technology allows for full coverage of the large cleaning chamber with a special PLM solution. This expedites the support materials dissolution through a constant low pressure flow from above and below the part. This enables fast cleaning of large FDM parts that otherwise would need to be completely submerged in a traditional cleaning bath. In some cases this can leave sparse infill parts waterlogged with solution trapped inside the part. 

Infill Styles

Below you can find the standard infill styles supported in GrabCAD Print, the empty space in each pattern can become filled with cleaning solution and water during the traditional cleaning process. In some cases draining the sparse infill of waterlogged parts can take days to completely dry out. Parts need to be rotated frequently to ensure trapped detergent and water weep out of a part before shipping. The BASE refines the cleaning process by blanketing the outside of parts with cleaning solution. This can minimize or prevent detergent from becoming trapped inside of sparse infill patterns then slowly weeping out over time. Additionally, the BASE eliminates the need for a parts sink into the solution or be weighed down like in a tradition submersion bath. This also accelerates the cleaning process and time between a job being completed by hours to even days in some cases. 

Other Features

The BASE also comes equipped with an auto heat feature that preheats the machine before office hours. This ensures everything is ready when you walk in the door. The auto heat will begin ramping up the temperature about 2 hours before your selected start time and hold temperature before you start the first cycle. Being ready first thing eliminates any bottleneck of waiting for optimal temperature each morning before even starting the part cleaning process. This feature will also auto cool down if the machine is used with within a few hours of finishing its preheat to ensure the machine isn’t sitting hot when its not needed, such as on company holidays or weekends. 

One more feature to note is the auto dosing that enables the BASE to maintain a constantly full reservoir of cleaning solution. Traditional submersion tanks can lack a mechanism which automatically fills a max water level. This can result in the need of an operator’s attention during the filling and dosing process. With the BASE, the operator is freed up to do other tasks while the machine pulls only the required amount of pre-dosed solution to maintain a full reservoir during operation.

The PPT BASE has been in use at CATI’s Pleasant Ridge, Michigan facility for several years now and the team has positively felt the impact on increasing part throughput. From large Stratasys F900 and F770 parts to hundreds of small delicate F123 parts, incredibly fast and consistently cleaning has become the team’s expectation. For more information on the PPT BASE please see the link HERE to read more.

Ryan Henigan
Printed Parts Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology