Below is a list of language operators and examples you can find as helpful aids on the platform. As an added benefit, I’ve included more thorough explanations of the situational examples provided. Hopefully, this further emphasizes best use cases so that you can be more efficient in your day-to-day.

Expression Rules Criteria

Feature:
A feature without any option refers to all options associated with this feature.
Example: [Color]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘color’ as a variant for a Model Version. This Variant is the beginning piece of a Rule Expression.

Feature/Option:
A feature with an option is a valid expression.
Example: [Color] [Blue]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘color’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘blue’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘color’ by arranging the expression in this order.

Feature/Several Options:
A feature followed by a list of options is equivalent to an OR in between all listed options.
Example: [Color] [Blue] [Green]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘color’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the features ‘blue’ and ‘green’’s definitions, both Variant Values, as ‘color’s by arranging the expression in this order.

Standard Operators for Expression Rules

NOT: [NOT] expression1
An expression preceded by a NOT is the logical complement of this expression.
Example: [NOT] [Color] [Blue]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘color’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘blue’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘color’ by arranging the expression in this order. Beginning this expression with the ‘NOT’ operator, we define this arrangement to be ‘false/not allowed’, for the associated Model Version.

AND: expression [AND] expression2
AND between two expressions express the logical conjunction of the two expressions.
Example: [Color] [Green] [AND] [City] [Paris]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘color’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘green’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘color’ by arranging the expression in this order. Additionally, we establish the feature ‘City’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘Paris’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘City’ by arranging the expression in this order. Placing the operator ‘AND’ between these two expression segments links them ‘both’ in the same rule expression for the associated Model Version.

OR: expression1 [OR] expression2
OR between two expressions express the logical disjunction of the two expressions.
Example: [City] [London] [OR] [Country] [France]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘city’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘London’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘City’ by arranging the expression in this order. Additionally, we establish the feature ‘Country’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘France’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘Country’ by arranging the expression in this order. Placing the operator ‘OR’ between these two expression segments links them as ‘one or the other’ in the same rule expression for the associated Model Version.

Conditional Requirement

IMPLY: expression1 [IMPLY] expression2
A conditional requirement – if (expression 1), then (expression 2) – uses the IMPLY operator.
Example: [City] [Paris] [IMPLY] [Country] [France]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘city’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘Paris’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘City’ by arranging the expression in this order. Additionally, we establish the feature ‘Country’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘France’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘Country’ by arranging the expression in this order. Placing the operator ‘IMPY’ between these two expression segments links them as ‘one as well as the other/so long as’ in the same rule expression for the associated Model Version.

Co-dependency Statement

EQUIVALENT: expression1 [EQUIVALENT] expression2
Equivalent makes expression 1 and expression 2 have the same logical content.
Example: [Citizen] [French] [EQUIVALENT] [Country] [France]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘citizen’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘French’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘Citizen’ by arranging the expression in this order. Additionally, we establish the feature ‘Country’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘France’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘Country’ by arranging the expression in this order. Placing the operator ‘EQUIVALENT’ between these two expression segments links them as ‘synonymous’ in the same rule expression for the associated Model Version.

Incompatible Statement

You may want to create two incompatible statements. You can do this with existing operators.
Example: [City] [London] [IMPLY] [NOT] [Country] [France]
Explanation: We’ve previously established the feature ‘city’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘London’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘City’ by arranging the expression in this order. Additionally, we establish the feature ‘Country’ as a variant for a Model Version. Here, we assign the feature ‘France’’s definition, a Variant Value, as a ‘Country’ by arranging the expression in this order. Placing the operators ‘IMPLY’ and ‘NOT’ between these two expression segments links them as ‘if so, then not allowed’ in the same rule expression for the associated Model Version.

Additional Examples
Example Scenario: Include a bottle holder whenever we release a bicycle in France.
Example Syntax: [Country] [France] [IMPLY] [Accessories] [Bottle Holder]

               Example Scenario: Exclude a GPS Unit for a bicycle whenever a customer selects 26-inch tires or a basket option.
Example Syntax: [Tire] [Wanda 26] [OR] [Accessories] [Basket] [IMPY] [NOT] [Accessories] [GPS]

Expressions that specify invalid scenarios will automatically prevent certain scenarios from being chosen when creating Configurations.

Wrap Up

By using logical expression rules in your Project Plan Portfolio, you can ensure consistent results across your team. This means everyone always follows the same rules every time. This also makes it easier to manage going forward, as you set these rules up front and become the standards going forward.

Gabriel Rodriguez
Application Engineer II
Computer Aided Technology

Figure 1. Image courtesy of Dassault Systemes.

One of the downsides of hexahedral elements is the meshed geometry must be such that there is a sweepable shape. This means that overhangs, extra extrusions, and holes that don’t follow the sweep direction would all make it impossible to use these advanced elements for analysis. Many simulation programs get around this by splitting or “partitioning” the shape into separate volumes that are sweepable. As usual, 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation does this as well but ups the ante above those other tools. Let’s take a look at partitioning for simulation on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

Partitioning for Better Meshing

We’ll start with the part below. It is a cylinder from an air-cooled motorcycle engine. Notice the removal of small features like fillets on the simplified version in the figure below.

Figure 2

We can take the simplified model into the Structural Model Creation app to get feedback on how to best mesh this shape. Select the compass, click Structural Model Creation, click “Partition Hex Mesh,” and finally select the component itself as a support. 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation will then color the part according to the methods that can be used to mesh it.

Figure 3

The orange color on the part in the figure above indicates a volume that is NOT mesh-able by hexahedral elements. As is, 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation will assign a tetrahedral mesh instead. However, many of the areas on this model could be split from the others into sweepable shapes. This is where partitioning comes in!

Meshing in 3DEXPERIENCE with the Partition Tool

The partitioning tool is most easily accessed via the Simulation Model Preparation app included with your 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation role. Simply click the compass and select the app from the list to launch it. This app contains sets of tools used for simplification of CAD models for use in simulation. We’re looking for “Partition” under the “Idealize” tab. See figure 4 below:

Figure 4

All we must do to partition the component is to select the part as the “Volume to partition” and use cutting elements such as faces, planes, surfaces, etc. to divide the part into sweepable features. For example, if I want to partition one of the assembly tabs, I can select the face that it is extruded from as a cutting element. If we extrapolate that face infinitely, it will cut through the tab, separating it as its own volume. See below:

Figure 5

Now if we check the color coding to view the types of mesh we can use for each volume, we see the small extrude we split off is colored yellow-indicating a hex-meshable volume. See below:

Figure 6

Automatic Partitioning for Automatic Meshing

We can continue splitting features manually to create the fully partitioned model. It’s a simple process that works very well. However, recently one of the updates to the meshing feature in 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation has added an automatic partitioning tool to do all of that work for you! All you must do is select the volume, and click the checkbox for “Automatic Partitioning,” and soon you will have a fully hex-meshable part! You can see my example below:

Figure 7

As with all automated tools this will not work for every geometry, but in my experience, it does a great job splitting prismatic parts like this one. A further benefit of using the “Partition” tool is that the partitioned hex-mesh will be fully conforming. That means that adjacent volumes of hex meshes will share common nodes at the volume’s boundary.

Figure 8

Figure 9. Image courtesy of Dassault Systemes.

Finally, if you are attempting to mesh a part that has non-sweepable volumes, the partition hex-mesh algorithm will assign tetrahedral elements to the non-hex volumes and create a “tie contact” between the volumes automatically! Optionally, you can also specify a layer of pyramid elements to act as a conforming mesh boundary between the hexahedral elements and the tetrahedral elements. You can see a visual representation of how that works below:

Thank you for partitioning some of your time to read my blog today. Simulation model preparation is a vital step in achieving accurate simulations, and again the 3DEXPEREICNE Platform goes above and beyond in enabling engineers to do what they do best.

Matt Sherak
Sr. Simulation Product Specialist
Elite Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

That’s where 3DEXPERIENCE Works comes in. 3DEXPERIENCE Works makes selections from the 3DEXPERIENCE portfolio to provide an easy and productive starting point for SOLIDWORKS businesses that are ready for a digital transformation.

The 3DEXPERIENCE solutions connect people in an interactive environment to securely share, collaborate, and manage data at any time and on any device while accelerating your product development process.

When you think about the future, you can expect the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio to be dynamic. Therefore, you may see products added, removed, or combined as they evolve.

Within the portfolio, categories, or “domains” are the groupings for each product. As of right now, these are the current domains:

• Designer/Engineer
• Governance/Management
• Engineer/Analyst
• Manufacturing/Production

Each of these domains includes the core collaboration and product lifecycle management functionality of the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Do note that you may see this solution presented in a couple of ways. First, you may see it as the Platform Contributor role. Alternatively, you could see it as two roles, Collaborative Business Innovator and Collaborative Industry Innovator.

3DEXPERIENCE Works Domain Breakdown

Designer/Engineer

This domain includes 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE DraftSight. Something to know about these tools is that neither of them runs in the cloud. Instead, you install and run each on a local computer. Other cloud-based design and planning tools included are 3D Creator, 3D Sculptor, and Project Planner. With these roles, designers and engineers have better control over their CAD data and better visibility over the product development process.

Governance/Management

This domain includes Project Planner and Social Business Analyst. Social Business Analyst allows you to aggregate and analyze information from online sources to quickly determine trends in topics related to the user’s business.

Engineer/Analyst

This domain includes 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE STRUCTURAL roles like Structural Mechanics Engineer. Structural Mechanics Engineer provides comprehensive structural analysis to guide engineering decisions and optimize product performance while reducing reliance on expensive prototyping.

Manufacturing/Production

This domain includes 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE NC PROGRAMMING roles like NC Prismatic & Mill Turn Machine Programmer, and Production Engineer. These roles make your manufacturing more efficient, minimizing errors, preventing bottlenecks, and maximizing utilization, with complete visibility and traceability of the entire manufacturing process.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Works cloud portfolio connects your entire organization, providing the tools and platform to design, develop, manage, and manufacture in a collaborative, real-time ecosystem.

Todd Myers
Senior Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

Private 🡪 Protected

Private 🡪 Public

Protected 🡪 Public

With the changes to the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, there’s more flexibility for you to change the visibility of a collaborative space. Think of a scenario where you have a cloud tenant with a Public Collaborative space. This means all users that have access to the tenant can see all the data within that particular tenant. If you’d like to invite a customer into the tenant for them to see their customer-specific data, the previous setup didn’t allow that.

What Recent Changes Mean for Collaborative Space Visibility

With the recent changes to the platform, the customer can be invited to the environment and the existing collaborative space can be changed to a Private collaborative space. By doing that, the customer will not see any of the data in the environment at any point. You can then add all the customer data to a new Private collaborative space and add them to it. Once this is done, they will only be able to see the data in their collaborative space. Once the customer is done in the environment, you can remove their access to your tenant and change it back to Public. This drastically helps with flexibility and does not lock you into a specific visibility as before.

With the new changes, there are also some new messages that come up in the Platform to warn you about the new changes you’re about to make.

When going from a Public to a Protected Collab Space, you will see the following message on the EDIT command. The same thing goes when changing it from a Protected to Private Collaborative Space.

When going the opposite direction and changing from Private to Protected, Private to Public, or Protected to Public, you will now see the below warning message.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you change a space from Public to Protected or Public to Private, you will need to add members to that collaborative space now in order for them to see the data (if they aren’t already a member of the collaborative space).

Ritesh Dalal

PLM Solutions Architect

Computer Aided Technology

There are two roles that everyone needs for both 2D (logical) and 3D (physical) electrical design. These are called the ‘Collaborative Business Innovator’ (IFW) and ‘Collaborative Industry Innovator’ (CSV) roles.

CATIA V6 Electrical Required Foundational Roles

Collaborative Business Innovator brings the connected environment into an entire organization. This role allows people from inside or outside of your company to securely view and share content while in a web browser. It also lets you do all of the work in a single location from design to market. You can add the power of collaboration and data sharing to your 3DEXPERIENCE platform and create a hub for your designs in a convenient place where you can collaborate on the cloud from anywhere.

On the other hand, Collaborative Industry Innovator is best described as a product data management tool. This browser-based role gives PDM additional functionality by letting users compare, markup, and view realistic CAD data. This provides a collaborative way to monitor iterations and changes to your electrical designs.

2D Electrical Schematic Role Breakdown

Collaborative Business Innovator and Collaborative Industry Innovator are the base roles you need for the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Together, these tools integrate seamlessly with the roles that make up CATIA Electrical. For the creation of schematics and 2D logical designs, you’ll need the ‘Systems Schematic Engineer’ (TIC) role. This tool allows designers to create intelligent schematics for wiring, cabling, piping/tubing, and HVAC systems. Let’s look at some of the capabilities

• Fully define 2D electrical component, port, and wire/cable libraries
• Define and connect electrical and fluid system schematics for a complete detailed logical system design
• Build logical architecture of harnesses
• Capture attributes and technology automatically within the schematic.
• Edit the attributes of electrical components within the schematic
• Create links between logical components and realistic 3D representations
• Analyze connectivity and quality of schematic design and ensure synchronization with the 3D design using business intelligence rules.

3D Physical Electrical Design Role Breakdown

For 3D physical design, you’ll use the ‘Electrical 3D System Designer’ (ELG) role. This tool is an integrated 3D electrical development environment, which enables the physical design of wire harnesses and cabling in the conditions of the complete product. Some of the main features to point out include:

• Create electrical geometries, electrical branch geometries, and electrical physical systems
• Synchronize electrical schematics to 3D designs to improve electrical systems quality and consistency
• Create or import conductor specifications
• Design and optimize electrical wire harness bundles and cable ways accurately in the realistic environment of the full system
• Route 3D wires and cables to obtain exact bundle diameters and wire/cable lengths
• Simulate routes between selected network ends and compute route lengths

CATIA V6 Electrical provides a logical to physical electrical system design solution and is fully integrated with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. This means that you can easily incorporate CATIA V6 Electrical into your design lifecycle process. This allows you to efficiently collaborate with the other roles that 3DEXPERIENCE has to offer, giving you a more seamless process.

Jacob Quintana
Application Engineer Specialist, Electrical
Computer Aided Technology

This will allow a user to continue their work in 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS when there is no internet connection available.

The OFFLINE MODE does need to be a “planned event” for a user, not an afterthought, meaning that you need to prepare for it ahead of time. If you suddenly find yourself without internet it is too late to switch to offline mode. This is the same as if you use a SolidNetwork (floating) License of SOLIDWORKS and want to check out a license because you are going to be away from the local license server.

The workflow for “going offline” would be to FIRST open any assemblies/files that you will need access to in SOLIDWORKS.  This will download copies of those files to your local cache directory on your machine so that you have the files when you are no longer connected to the cloud vault.

You would most likely also want to LOCK the files so that no one else can make changes to them while you are “gone”. Otherwise there would be a conflict of which file is the new(er) one when you come back if two different (unconnected) people were allowed to make changes. If you are not planning on physically changing any of the files in SOLIDWORKS while you are offline, then this step could be skipped.

THEN you would activate OFFLINE MODE from the top right of the SOLIDWORKS window by clicking on your log in picture.

There is a dialog box that reminds you about getting any files you may need into your local cache and locking them.

When OFFLINE MODE is active you will be reminded with a message that the maximum time you can go offline is 30 days, and there will be a “working offline” status indicator in the upper right corner.

Another difference in the interface is that instead of having a tab on your taskpane with the 3DEXPERIENCE compass icon you have a tab for “3DX Files On This PC” which is looking into your local cache folder.

You can now be offline for up to 30 days and continue working on and modifying any files that you have locally.  When you eventually reconnect to your cloud vault you will of course have the opportunity to save (or save with options) your changes back up to the cloud and take any necessary steps to overwrite files or make new revisions.

To reconnect to your 3DEXPERIENCE platform, you simply click on the “working offline” status indicator.  Which will give you the following dialog.

The “3DX Files On This PC” tab will change back over to the 3DEXPERIENCE compass icon and you will get access to the MY SESSION area of your cloud vault.

Super easy way to overcome a past obstacle of working with a cloud vault and cloud licensing model when you know you are going to be without an internet connection for a while!

This OFFLINE MODE functionality is also available for 3DEXPERIENCE DRAFTSIGHT.

Randy Simmons
Sr. Application Engineer, Strategic Solutions
Computer Aided Technology

First and foremost, to utilize physical products and representations, you need to check “Enable 3DEXPERIENCE Integration” in your SOLIDWORKS System Options, shown in the image below.

The 3DEXPERIENCE Integration category in System Options only appears when the 3DEXPERIENCE add-in is active. As indicated near the top of the page, you can only toggle this option when there are no files open.

The two radio buttons determine whether the traditional ConfigurationManager remains visible in your models. If “Configurations: CAD Family only” is selected, the ConfigurationManager will be replaced by a similar panel that shows the physical products and representations in the model. If “Configurations: CAD Family and Configurations” is selected, this new panel will be displayed alongside the standard ConfigurationManager. When you create a new physical product or representation in the CAD Family section, it will create a new configuration in the ConfigurationManager, and vice versa.

Although the ConfigurationManager allows you to edit some properties of the configurations that the CAD Family panel currently does not—for instance, the ConfigurationManager lets you decide whether a part configuration should be excluded from BOMs by default—I, personally, find it somewhat confusing to show both, so I’d recommend using the “Configurations: CAD Family only” option.

In the CAD Family tree on the left in the image above, the CATI-0014 and CATI-0015 objects are physical products, while the two “Pre-Machining” versions are representations—notice that each representation is tied to a physical product. The SOLIDWORKS file in which I’ve created everything, Plate.SLDPRT, is referred to as the “CAD family.”

In the ConfigurationManager on the right side, the physical products show up as configurations and the representations are treated as derived configurations. There are, however, some differences between physical products and configurations and between representations and derived configurations, which I will get into a bit later.

• • •

Physical products are meant to represent unique items in your product line. They’re things that would be listed on bills of materials and could be ordered. Every CAD family has to have at least one physical product.

In my example, CATI-0014 has four mounting bosses while CATI-0015 has five. Because these parts are very similar, I decided to make them as separate physical products within a single CAD family. After finishing the CATI-0014 model, instead of starting a brand new SOLIDWORKS part file and recreating all the features for the CATI-0015, generating another physical product allowed me to reuse the existing features and just change a couple dimensions and pattern instance counts to get what I needed.

Representations are meant to illustrate different versions or different states of a single product. For instance, you might want to demonstrate an assembly’s range of motion by having one representation in an extended position and one in a retracted position, or maybe you are looking to run a simulation on your model and want a simplified rendition that removes some of the cosmetic details. While each CAD family has at least one physical product, physical products do not need any representations; representations simply offer the ability to store multiple forms of a physical product if desired.

The “Pre-Machining” representations in my model are supposed to reflect the part before the holes are added. I just needed to suppress a couple features to set them up. Since we would never actually sell a version of this part without the holes, I didn’t want these to be separate physical products; I just have them as a reference.

In general, I tend to think of representations as variations kept for internal company purposes, whereas the physical product is what you want the customer to see.

In 3DEXPERIENCE, physical products are listed as separate objects in the database. This is the main difference between physical products and configurations. Configurations are not standalone files. If you want to open a specific configuration, you need to first find the model to which it belongs and then tell SOLIDWORKS you want that configuration when opening.

When searching with 3DEXPERIENCE, every physical product and CAD family will have its own entry in the results, so you can access the model from several different places. Representations, by contrast, do not have their own objects, so they will not appear in searches and cannot be opened directly from the platform.

• • •

Normally, when you make changes to a configuration, those changes get pushed down to its derived configurations. Whether you’re adding a feature or altering a dimension, the derived configurations will match it (though there are ways to prevent this). This relationship is not entirely upheld for physical products and their representations unless you make a slight settings adjustment.

When defining a new representation, the option to “Suppress new features” is enabled by default. (This option is turned off by default when working with derived configurations.) This way, any features that get added to a different version of the model—including the parent physical product—will be suppressed in that representation. When disabled, adding a feature to the parent physical product will add it to that representation, though adding a feature to any other member of the CAD family will not. So, if you want to keep a physical product and its representations synchronized, make sure to disable this option when setting up each representation.

As for dimensions, updating a value in the parent physical product will propagate to its representations unless you unlink that dimension at the representation level, which is also how derived configurations behave. Additionally, the “All Configurations” option in the Modify Dimension dialog can still be used to apply a dimension change to all of the members of a CAD family.

• • •

Before you commit to using physical products and representations to manage your designs, it’s important to understand their behavior with revisions. When you add a new revision to a model, it affects the entire CAD family, meaning all physical products and representations will be revised at the same time. In other words, the physical products and representations within a CAD family will always be on the same revision.

Now, this makes sense for our definition of representations. You would likely want these to match the revision of the physical product with which they’re associated. This may not be desired for different physical products though. Even if two products are similar, it’s possible that you would want to revise one before the other, and that just isn’t allowed within the CAD family. If you do expect to need independent revision numbers for different versions of your model, you will be better off creating branches or entirely separate CAD files to depict design variations, as these methods will result in individual CAD families. (If you are looking to learn more about branches, this webinar from the Dassault team contains some helpful details.)

• • •

To summarize, the main difference between physical products and representations is that physical products are treated as separate objects in the 3DEXPERIENCE database while representations are not. Each physical product should be a unique part number in your catalog, whereas a representation just reflects an alternate way of showing a particular product. Because all physical products and representations within a file share a CAD family, you can easily push changes from one to another. However, this relationship also means that they will always be on the same revision, as the CAD family is what gets revised, not an individual physical product or representation.

As is often the case with new technologies, 3DEXPERIENCE comes with a new lexicon that may steepen the learning curve. If you have any questions about physical products, representations, or any other aspect of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, feel free to reach out to us.

Anthony Sandri
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

WHAT is Surface Modeling?

Rather, what is a solid? Technically speaking, every edge on a solid body is shared between two faces. Even more specifically, this can be proven by Euler’s Formula and a simple cube. For a solid body to be solid geometry, Euler’s applied formula for a cube must equal a value of 2 where 8 vertices minus 12 edges plus 6 faces equals a value of 2. Success! We have a solid cube.

But what looks like a solid in CAD might not be a solid. Below is an image of two identical models in SOLIDWORKS. The cylinder on the left is a solid body and the similarly-looking cylinder on the right is a surface body.

Generally speaking, if a model can be created in CAD using solid modeling features like a simple boss extrude, then use the solid modeling features to save yourself some time. The part environment on the right displays a feature manager design tree with many more features than its solid body counterpart. This is because the steps in the surface modeling process are individualized. Solid body modeling actually speeds up this process for us.

HOW does Surfacing work?

While most solid body faces in CAD are broken down into a mesh of curves, these curves are typically lines, arcs, and sometimes circles. Model faces are typically trimmed from an originally four-sided surface.

Surfaces, however, are broken down into a mesh of splines (commonly referred to as NURBS or ‘Non-Uniform rational b-spline’ Surfaces) to achieve more complex geometry. Surfaces do not follow the same rules as solids. Some may have less than four sides. In cases where a surface has less than four sides, singularities can occur when curves converge on a vertex, which can cause problems later in the design process with fillets, shells, and offsets.

WHERE to find Surfacing in SOLIDWORKS

Whether you have SOLIDWORKS Premium, Professional, or Standard, you have access to the awesome capabilities of SOLIDWORKS surface features. If you do have a premium license, then you have an additional capability in advanced surface flattening.

Surfacing capabilities also exist on the 3DExperience Platform. The 3D Creator Role includes the xDesign app which has surfacing tools. Additionally, the 3D Sculptor Role contains the xShape app for non-analytical geometry. I mention this because often at times, surfacing techniques are used to achieve non-uniform geometry. The xShape app has push-pull capabilities which generate these shapes by non-traditional modeling methods relative to SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD.

WHO is Surface Modeling for?

Surface modeling can be somewhat of a niche market as surfacing tools certainly aren’t standard or traditional CAD tools. But more industries than you may think are utilizing these advanced capabilities. To name a few, Industrial Design and Consumer Products are areas within the design industry where you might expect to see CAD users accessing these design tools. Inject Molded Components use surfacing as well as CAM users. If an appliance is sitting on your kitchen countertop, it was most likely modeled using surfacing tools. Medical products are another large area of surface tool usage.

WHEN to use Surfacing

Surfacing is often required for non-analytical geometry, i.e. creating anything that would otherwise be a challenge to design with standard solid body modeling tools. Any household or office item that is ergonomic would likely require surfacing tools to achieve the necessary curvature.

Another situation that may call for surfacing tools would certainly be repairing faulty faces from imported geometry.

Reference surfaces can also be used in a more advanced modeling technique for end conditions. If an “up to surface” end condition is used, then the end face of the extrusion will conform to the selected surface rather than maintaining its original two-dimensional profile.

Yet another creative use for surface tools in SOLIDWORKS is with master modeling techniques involving a multibody offset design. Below is an example used in the CATI surface modeling class in the design and control of a speaker and baffle model.

By this method, a series of surface bodies in the parent file drives the child parts which correlate to the resulting assembly file in a trickle-down effect of associativity. Master modeling is a one-way street so changes to child parts cannot affect the original files.

WHY is Surfacing important?

Some product designs require advanced design capabilities. To access those features, you’ll need a SOLIDWORKS Premium license.

You are certainly in good hands in your surface modeling endeavors as many application engineers are certified in surfacing with the CSWPA-SU certification.

SOLIDWORKS surface modeling training is also available virtually as well as in-house.

Lastly, here are a few related blogs that I think you should check:

SOLIDWORKS Premium: Surface Flatten

SOLIDWORKS – Choosing the Right Surface Patching Tool

Gabriel Rodriguez
Application Engineer II
Computer Aided Technology

The first addition is that there is a new flyout on the right side of the Feature Manager Tree that can be enabled to show columns with 3DEXPERIENCE data management information.  This is the same place for a long while that you have been able to see visualization information, but now there is a 2^nd tab named Lifecycle & Collaboration.  The columns included are STATUS (not saved, equal to, newer than, etc), LOCK STATUS, REVISION, and IS LATEST REVISION.

A nice enhancement in the Feature Manager Tree flyout is that you will see a green checkmark if you DO have the latest revision and a red “X” if you do NOT.  This is better than the “blank” or “+” sign used in the task pane interface in my opinion.

There is also new sub menu when you RT+CLK a part from the Feature Tree for “Lifecycle And Collaboration” tools to get access to some common functionality for data management.

A new standalone TOOLBAR titled “Lifecycle And Collaboration” that is available to turn on/off that contains the same tools as the RT+CLK menu.

Even better than that, there is a new TAB that can be enabled on the Command Manager for “Lifecycle And Collaboration” to get to these tools.

This tab has to be “added” to your Command Manager the first time, then can be turned on/off like the other tabs you have.

If you can’t remember how to add a tab to your Command Manager (I never can), here is a quick reminder…

One thing I did notice on the free standing toolbar and on the Command Manager tab was that 2 of the new related commands were not showing on them by default.  I had to customize and manually add the buttons/commands for “Share as Picture” and “Share as 3D” to both of these.  Those commands are listed under a new section called “Lifecycle and Collaboration” of the Customize—Commands window.

These new interface enhancements obviously don’t eliminate the need for all of the 3DEXPERIENCE tools in the Task Pane, but does get some of the most commonly needed information right over in your Feature Manager for easy access, as well as faster ways to get to some of the commands you need. Sometimes your 3DEXPERIENCE Task Pane is filled with other info like search results, or Relations, etc. and it is nice to be able to see all this info at the same time.

This functionality is available to customers using desktop SOLIDWORKS with the Collaborative Designer for SOLIDWORKS add in OR using a seat of 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS.  You just need to update to SOLIDWORKS SP02.

Randy Simmons
Sr. Application Engineer, Strategic Solutions
Computer Aided Technology

Fracture and damage mechanics are nothing new to the experienced ABAQUS user but have been unattainable for CAD-embedded simulation tools like SOLIDWORKS Simulation. 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation does a wonderful job of bringing both worlds together. To demonstrate damage and fracture, we are going to use the classic example of a Charpy test. If you are unfamiliar with the Charpy test, watch this video.

FIgure 1- Charpy Test

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

At a very basic level, the Charpy test is a way to determine the energy absorbed by a material during fracture. Simulating this process would be impossible with software that does not allow for fracture mechanics. So let’s take a look at the setup in 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation!

Figure 2

The setup is simple, hold the test specimen in place with simple supports, keep the impacting component in-plane with fixtures and apply the correct translation to it.

The impacting component will be treated as rigid, and the mesh must be sufficiently fine for the analysis to solve the fracture effectively. See the mesh plot below.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Finally, we can review the secret sauce. The ABAQUS backbone of 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation allows for the combination of multiple failure mechanisms to act simultaneously on the same material. According to the ABAQUS help documentation, the failure calculation mechanism can be broken into 4 parts:

1. The material must have an effective description of the undamaged material response (a-b-c-d’ in figure 4)
2. Must define a damage initiation criterion, i.e. how damage starts (c in figure 4)
3. Must define how damage propagates once started (c-d in figure 4)
4. Deletion of the element once the stiffness of the material is fully degraded. (d in figure 4)

Let’s go through those in order. In 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation, these four parameters are defined via the material’s data card. Because the material in question (aluminum) exhibits ductile behavior, we will use a ductile damage model for the failure analysis.

1. Description of an effective undamaged material response. Our material has elastic and plastic material definitions assigned to the material’s behavior.
   

   Figure 5

    

2. The damage initiation criterion in this case is handled via a table that relates fracture strain, stress triaxiality, and strain rate. This is a complex subject beyond the scope of this blog, but you can see the data for our material below:
   

   Figure 6

    

3. Damage propagation is a numerical tool used by the ABAQUS solver to stabilize the fracturing elements so that the solution is more easily solvable. It can be defined as either a displacement or energy dependent parameter. For this model, we are using a 0.1 mm displacement at failure metric.
   

   Figure 7

    

4. The final piece of the puzzle is telling 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation what to do with the elements that meet the criteria above. In our case, I have turned on the “Remove Failed Elements” option so that the destroyed material is deleted from the FEA mesh.
   

   Figure 8

All that is left to do is run the study. Once it is finished, we can see our “Failure” in all its glory!

As you can see, this is an INCREDBILY slowed down animation. Notice that when elements reach a certain threshold, they are removed from the mesh allowing for the next layer of elements to be removed, and so on.

I hope this blog has helped to broaden your understanding of fracture mechanics using 3DEXPERIENCE Structural simulation. This technology truly is fascinating and making it more accessible to designers and analysts alike is a win-win. The next time your business needs to succeed by failing (materials), don’t hesitate to reach out to CATI!

Matt Sherak
Sr. Simulation Product Specialist Elite AE
Computer Aided Technology