What I wanted to show today, is another way to use this command even if the part did not actually have a pattern feature. This exception is based on part geometry created with the Hole Wizard command.  It can be an excellent time saver for tasks like putting fasteners in holes.

Let’s look at a SOLIDWORKS assembly where we would like to add several fasteners to hold it together.

Let’s start by creating the screw holes in the outer blue part. For this operation, we will use the SOLIDWORKS Hole Wizard feature. To take full advantage of the Pattern Driven Component Pattern command, we want to create the holes in a single Hole Wizard feature.

After identifying the Socket-Head Cap Screw as the type of hole geometry we need, we switch to the “Positions” tab. To place holes on multiple faces of the part, we use the “3D Sketch” button.

Inside this 3D Sketch, we can place sketch points to locate our holes.

Mirroring these sketch points, inside this 3D sketch, can save us some additional time.

After completing the single Hole Wizard feature, we now have all twelve desired holes in the part model.

Now, let’s jump back to the assembly file. We insert the initial instance of a socket head cap screw, washer, and nut.

Now, we want to add several of these fastener combinations. We need one for each of these twelve bolt holes. The command we will use is Pattern Driven Component Pattern.

For the “Components to Pattern”, we select the nut, bolt, and washer. For the “Driving Feature” we select the Hole Wizard feature from the part file.

Mission accomplished! We have fasteners in all our bolt holes.

As you can see, this is a time saver and captures our design intent of fasteners in every bolt hole in the part file. If we edit the Hole Wizard hole quantity or placement, these assembly fasteners will update to match. Hopefully, this gives you additional appreciation for the very useful Pattern Driven Component Pattern tool in SOLIDWORKS.

Greg Buter
Application Engineer Manager
Computer Aided Technology

Way back in 2011, SOLIDWORKS introduced the ability to use PhotoView 360 rendering together with SOLIDWORKS Motion for the upcoming 2012 release. As part of the 2012 Beta program I developed and rendered the simulation you see below. (If interested, access the 2021 Beta program.) It was a great exercise to refresh my CAD modeling techniques, implement camera views and dig deeper into the rigid-body dynamics functionality of SOLIDWORKS Motion.

Bowling aficionados hailing from the boroughs of NYC will recognize this “Brooklyn Strike”. If this term is unfamiliar, you are, like me, probably from the South! I give credit to a kind commenter on the Beta forum for pointing out the name.

The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) website clarifies that “a ‘Brooklyn’ refers to a ball that crosses over to the other side of the head pin opposite the side it was thrown (i.e., a Brooklyn strike hit the 1-2 pocket for a right-hander).” More wisdom from the web says this “crossing over” originated as a reference to someone going from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Back to the topic at hand… It was very satisfying to open this file for the first time in several years and take a few turns again! A simulation of this type involves defining the gravity direction, creating 3D contact sets between components and setting initial conditions for the bowling ball.

Contact sets are crucial and are determined by the possible component interactions and their materials. The first set is between the ball and lane components (lane surface and ball trap). The materials selected here contain the impact and friction characteristics while mass properties come from the material originally set for the parts. In this case, the relatively hard aluminum material was ultimately used to properly handle the point contact involved and prevent unrealistic penetration of the ball into the lane surface.

The second contact set is between the lane and pins. Aluminum is also used here due to the very small contact area of the pins.

The third contact set is between the pins, gutters, and lane trap using acrylic and aluminum materials. Note that my virtual bowling skills are such that I don’t need a contact set between the ball and gutters because I don’t throw gutter balls – as far as you know!

An acrylic material contact set accounts for the interaction between the pins. The number of contact pairs is 45 for this group to account for all the possible combinations.

Finally, a contact set with acrylic-on-acrylic material is used between the ball and pins.

For the setup of the ball initial conditions, I used a reference sketch on the surface of the lane in the delivery area. Several lines allow me to deliver the ball in different directions and apply spin. Here, I’ve positioned the ball as shown and started it straight down the lane with a velocity of 300 in/sec and a spin of 80 RPM with rotation about a line angled from the centerline – the way someone might add a twisting motion upon release to throw a curve. This is where the frictional characteristics of the 3D Contact sets comes into play, allowing the spin to influence the path of the ball as it rolls down the 60-ft lane before encountering the head pin!

The result, my beautiful Brooklyn Strike! Here are a couple of rendered still shots just before and after impact in the 1-2 pocket.

I did this project back in 2011 and I don’t remember the settings for the rendering, but I do remember leaving the computer with CPU 4 cores overnight to do its job! A computer with more cores accelerates the rendering process because PhotoView 360 will use all available cores.

We now also have access to the Visualize rendering program for even more realism and ease of use. I intend to do a future follow up blog to show the result using Visualize Professional to render this simulation.

A strike is uncommon for me in the real world, so I was ecstatic to hit a strike with SOLIDWORKS Motion. Scoring a Brooklyn strike is probably a very difficult thing to do in real life, so I would consider myself a very good virtual bowler!

I hope you are staying healthy and safe during this uncertain time and that you too can find a way to entertain yourself with SOLIDWORKS Motion and the other great SOLIDWORKS Simulation products at your disposal!

Let’s go bowling!

Kurt Kurtin
Sr. Product Manager, Simulation
Computer Aided Technology, LLC

SOLIDWORKS tutorials list:  https://www.cati.com/solidworks-tutorials/
Technical communication using assembly motion:  https://www.cati.com/blog/2018/04/solidworks-technical-communication-assembly-motion/
PhotoView 360 vs. Visualize:  https://www.cati.com/blog/2016/05/solidworks-visualize-vs-photoview-360-when-do-i-use-what/

What is the Beta Program?

Participating in the in the Beta program is more that just taking the next release of SOLIDWORKS for a test drive. It’s about connecting with the BETA community, interacting with the SOLIDWORKS R & D team to provide your feedback on the new functionality and flexing your SOLIDWORKS skills for a chance to win some great prizes!

Contests and Prizes?

There are several contests to choose and all have some great prizes: the Points Contest, Overall Points contest, Splash Screen Contest, Exterminator Contest, Overall Exterminator Contest and the Forum MVP Contest.

How can you participate?

It all starts here: https://www.solidworks.com/beta/

Local install or Online?

This year we have two ways to test SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta: a traditional installation or try it online. If you choose to download SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta you’ll be taken to the following page to download and install the software. This process is just like any SOLIDWORKS installation you’re familiar with.

Remember that SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta is pre-release software for testing purposes only and NOT FOR PRODUCTION use. When installing, make sure you choose Beta specific file locations for the installation itself and Toolbox Data folder. Any files saved in SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta cannot be opened in older versions of the software.

Testing SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta online is a great way to participate in the Beta program and not have to worry about anything. It’s accessed through https://my.solidworks.com/solidworksbeta and you’ll be using the software in minutes.

Some specific features of SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta online:

• In addition to the availability of all three beta releases online, there will be intermediate bug fix updates midway between the B1 and B2, B2 and B3, and B3 and Pre-Release milestones.
• Access to SOLIDWORKS Premium (excluding SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard), SOLIDWORKS eDrawings Professional, SOLIDWORKS MBD, and SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional.
• Upload and download sample parts and assemblies using Dropbox^TM, Google Drive^TM and other leading cloud storage solutions.
• SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta online is available through the duration of the Beta evaluation period (ending approximately September 9, 2018).
• Specific FAQ for getting started with the online version.

Your Feedback is needed

This is the point of the SOLIDWORKS Beta program, feedback. As you test SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta make sure you submit any issues you come across.

Make sure to check the SOLIDWORKS 2019 Beta forum to join discussions, find known issues, and test the Focus Areas that SOLIDWORKS R & D wants some extra attention applied to.

Good luck and Happy Beta testing!

Kris Dubuque
Field Technical Services Manager
Computer Aided Technology, Inc

If you read my last blog Why SOLIDWORKS Visualize? and are currently skimming through this one, you’ve likely come to the accurate conclusion, that true photo quality renderings are a much-needed part of your business moving forward. Now you’re wondering, can’t I just use SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard?  After-all SOLIDWORKS Visualize Standard is free with a SOLIDWORKS Professional or SOLIDWORKS Premium license.  But before you just jump to any hasty conclusion, let’s walk through what you may want to consider.

QUEUE.  THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE.  IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE READ THIS PARAGRAPH! Do I have your attention now?  The most important tool that is in SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional is the Render Queue.  This allows you to create multiple rendering jobs and run them as a batch.  Still not convinced it’s needed?  Imagine you need to render multiple images for a client or you want to create multiple renderings to test the look of a few different types of appearances.  With SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional, you can set those jobs up, start the Queue and leave.  You don’t have to wait for one job to finish to start the next!

MOVEMENT.  The most obvious need that would require SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional is the need for animation.  With SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional, you can create a video that has your model and/or camera moving from easy to set key-frame data.

PRE-SET ANIMATIONS.  Not only does SOLIDWORKS Visualize give you the ability to set up your own keyframe data for animations, but you can also get quick 1 click animations as well.  Need to show off a full rotation of your product? No problem, just import your model, and select the turntable output.  You can also create interactive panoramic and virtual reality outputs as well.

CONFIGURATIONS.  SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional allows you to quickly show different options and versions of your product, camera, environment, etc. with different configurations.  If you’re trying to show different options for customers, quickly, Configurations is a must.

POST PROCESSING. Nothing quite says “Professional” as much as post processing images.  Whether it’s filtering, motion blurs, or probably the most impactful, Depth of Field, post processing an image (or video) from a rendered environment shows a level of professionalism to clients and stake-holders that cannot be matched.

BOOST. With SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional, you also get a free license of SOLIDWORKS Visualize Boost.  This license allows you to use another machine as a render farm for your work.  So if you have a lot of work to get done and little time to do it, you can use your Boost node to do the rendering, while your local machine is still using all your horsepower on set up for the next job you’re sending to the farm.

Bottom line is if you’re considering taking your product rendering to the next level, SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional is a must!

Brandon Nelms
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc

The blending of the real and digital world has become so seamless, it’s difficult to tell where reality ends and digital representations begin. But as this blended world has become a part of our culture, so too have the expectations of today’s designers and engineers. No longer is it acceptable to provide hand sketches, line drawings, or CAD mockups to prospective customers. Many customers expect to see THEIR products complete well before the final design and production units are available for photographs. And if your customers are of that mindset, you need to consider SOLIDWORKS Visualize for product rendering.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize provides a great deal of benefits to organizations outside simply making pretty pictures to make customers happy. Renderings can provide true design insight helping key stakeholders internally and externally envision the end product well before expensive prototypes have been built. Imagine providing the CEO a concept model that looks like it’s already been built.

When you use SOLIDWORKS Visualize, much like SOLIDWORKS Simulation, you can reduce your number of prototypes. SOLIDWORKS Visualize allows you to reduce the number of physical prototypes necessary to get meaningful insight into the end product design.

And imagine creating sales and marketing content early enough in the design cycle to actually get feedback from your end customers. You would be able to get feedback from your customers to make changes, but also promote the product and start generating interest and even orders before you even started production.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize takes advantage of best in class NVIDIA IRAY GPU rendering technology and brings your SOLIDWORKS models to life in record time. That means less time spent rendering and you can focus more on the design of your product not the rendering settings.

SOLIDWORKS Visualize even gives users the ability to control a full photography studio experience without ever setting up an actual physical studio. With a workflow that follows a traditional photo shoot style, it’s easy for users to leverage their existing photography experience.

Brandon Nelms
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc

Offloaded rendering allows you to send the model to another machine that has the PhotoView 360 Render Client in order to free up your computer from the burden of the calculating time it would take to complete the task.

In order to do this, 2 machines are required. One machine would serve as the Coordinator and the other would serve as the Client. The Coordinator would require the license of at least Solidworks Professional as well as an active subscription. The Client machine would not need the license.

You can perform 2 types of offloaded renderings: Single off-loaded rendering or Scheduled off-loaded rendering. The single offloaded rendering sends just a single static image to the render client. The scheduled offloaded rendering sends the single static image to the SOLIDWORKS Task Scheduler to start at a later time.

These are the options selected to use Single off-loaded rendering (Render Tools > Options)

To start a scheduled offloaded rendering, you would have to click Schedule Render on the Render Tools command manager and the dialog pops up for you to apply your data and info for the render.

We hope this part of this series gives you an understanding of how to use the SOLIDWORKS Offloaded Rendering to help optimize your design. Please check back to the CATI Blog as the Dedicated Support Team will continue to break down each of the new functions in SOLIDWORKS 2018. All of these articles will be stored in the category of “SOLIDWORKS What’s New.”

George Brañes

Technical Support Engineer

www.cati.com

This time around I was doing a Visualize animation rendering of a pendulum designed and animated by Alex Worsfold from our tech team. I hope he will blogging about it when I give him the finished animation. He composed a very nice physical simulation of the toy running through its movements to a tune of 9 minutes and 35 seconds of animation. That comes out to over 17000 frames at a framerate of 30fps. So off the get go we are looking at a roughly a 6 day turnaround for the animation. Yes; that seems like a lot of time but, for animation of this length I would expect that for photorealistic imaging. Everything was going great until I came back three days later.

The background renderer in the taskbar was giving an astronomical number of 23 days left to complete the animation. Oh crud, what happened. Well, let’s look. Looking at the create date of the files in Window Explorer we can see every frame up until 2:15 pm that Friday was rendering every 35 seconds. Then at that time everything went to almost 3 minutes and 30 seconds per frame. Another person had logged onto the system and did some very heavy processing, which ate up resources and never released them. The very same reasons needed to complete the rendering. What now, do I wait or stop the animation. Yes please, stop the presses and reset.

In the animation dialog box of SOLIDWORKS Visualize there is an option of frame range. You just need to know the number of the last image file in your output folder and use that as your starting number and begin again.

Robert McGaughey, CSWE

Emerging Products Manager

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.

bobm@cati.com

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a well-known adage. PhotoView 360 allows SOLIDWORKS users to create photo-realistic renderings of designs before they have even been prototyped. These images can then be used for marketing purposes. There are a lot of variables that can go into creating renderings, that unless you are into photography, you probably don’t understand. I know I didn’t when I first started doing renderings.

First, is the picture size. There are set aspect ratios to choose from, or you can create your own. Next we choose picture format type and render quality. I keep the Preview render quality at “Good”, which is the lowest quality. This allows for faster previews. Next is Gamma, which by default is set to 1.6. This is directly associated with brightness.

Gamma set to 1.6

Gamma set to 0.5

Gamma set to 2.5

Bloom is next, it creates fringes of light extending from bright light sources. Bloom setpoint sets the threshold point, for example a bloom setpoing of 50 applies bloom to anything with a white level above 50%. Bloom extent is the amount of bloom.

Next we can choose to use Contour or Cartoon Rendering. With Contour rendering we have two options, Render Only with Contours and Render Contours and the Solid Model.

With Cartoon rendering, we have three options: Render only with cartoon edges, Render with cartoon shading, and Render with cartoon edges and shading.

Next, we have Direct Caustics. This is useful whenever light is going through a diffuse surface like light patterns underwater and focusing light from a diamond. Caustic amount sets the number of photons used in the scene, you can input 100,000 to 10,000,000. This is proportional; more powerful lights will receive more photons. Caustic quality controls the number of photons sampled at each pixal. Smaller values yield grainier effects while larger values creates a sharper effect. You can input 32 to 256.

The final option is to utilize Network Rendering to create your rendering faster. Renderings can take a lot of time to create and this can speed that process up.

Hopefully this blog will help you to create better and more detailed renderings.

Chad Whitbeck
CATI Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

To test this, I used a 12-sided die and set up gravity, contact, friction, and materials to simulate what would happen if dropped; what number would it land on?  But what fun is it to watch a virtual dice land on a number?!  Let’s make it explode instead!

Once the simulation was setup, it was time to export the results to Visualize Professional.  With the push of a button, the results are calculated, and then exported to Visualize.  This took about 3 minutes to complete for this example; time to get some coffee.

Once imported, it’s time to set up the scene; I adjusted the camera to my liking using focus and post processing effects.  I then applied materials to the parts and an environment to the background from the library.  Using the preview display, you can quickly play back the animation before sending it to the render queue.  As a proof of concept, you can also save the full animation using the preview quality which only takes a few minutes to save.

To make sure that the animation would look correct, I saved 4 still images to get an idea of what the animation would look like when finished.  I then used a free 3^rd part editing tool (Shotcut) to create a short movie.

Once I was happy with the setup, it was time to render the final animation.  I wanted to slow down the final animation with editing so I increased the frame rate to 120FPS.  Since the animation is 1 second long, Visualize will need to render 120 total frames.  This will take a while so, to continue working on my mobile workstation, I used Visualize Boost on my home machine to free up processing power and continue writing this blog.

Visualize Boost is easy to set up (if you use the proper port numbers; Thanks Jordan!) and one license is Included with Visualize Professional!  Read this other SOLIDWORKS Visualize article for instructions on how to set up Visualize Boost and offload your rendering tasks on other unused PCs in your office.

This animation took 13hr 06m 04s to complete. If I had used a more powerful PC, or more PCs in my Boost Cluster, I could shorten this time.  However, given the complexity of the scene, 1200 passes, and number of frames, Boost averaged 6.5 minutes per frame.  The Visualize Boost machined I used has a 3.9 GHz i7-4770k processor with an NVIDIA GeForce 1080 video card; Visualize SP1 now has support for the NVIDIA Pascal architecture, so Boost used both CPU and GPU to finish the task.

Click the image below to view the final Video.

As always, if you have additional questions about Visualize or any other SOLIDWORKS topic, don’t hesitate to contact CATI Technical Support for help.

Happy rendering!

Alex Worsfold
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology

SETUP

First we’ll start with the model in SOLIDWORKS; I will need to set up the assembly structure and basic materials.  This model was created by one of our Application Engineers, Kris Dubuque, from our Beaverton Oregon Office.

Since the goal here is to show the main rotor and tail rotor in motion, I will group the components into two sub-assemblies.  You can control this structure in SOLIDWORKS Visualize, however this will help save us some time since this is easy to do in SOLIDWORKS.

The next step is to assign different appearances to all the parts.  This can be adjusted in SOLIDWORKS Visualize but it is easiest to assign a common appearance to all like material parts in SOLIDWORKS first.  Visualize will recognize appearances applied to faces, bodies, and components.  Notice the Canopy and main rotor blades have multiple appearances applied.  This is done using the ‘Split-line’ command which splits a face (or faces) into multiple faces.  Appearances are then applied to each face.

IMPORT

To import my model, I start by creating a new visualize project then either drag-and-drop the SOLIDWORKS assembly into the window, or press CTRL+I. Once I have selected the model to import into Visualize, I will use the part grouping option ‘Retain Structure’.  This option will honor the sub-assembly structure and appearances I have already applied in SOLIDWORKS.

You can also choose to ‘Monitor File’.  Using this option will allow any assembly or component edits to be updated in visualize.  Keep in mind that some edits may cause unwanted results in visualize due to regrouping of components, or assigning additional appearances to the model.  Major edits to the model will most likely require you to recreate the project in SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

Upon importing the model, we can see that the appearances have all been imported but more importantly, the structure of the original assembly is intact.

TIP: if you cannot see the model tree or other tabs in the interface, press ‘SPACEBAR’ to toggle between Easy and Regular interface modes.

ADDING MOTION

Next I will need to set the blades in motion.  To do this, I right-click on the component I need to rotate and choose ‘Add Rotation Animation’.

You will notice a red dot is now added to the name in the tree.  This indicates the part is in motion.

Now would be a good time to show the timeline by going to ‘View -> Show Timeline’ or by pressing CTRL+L.  The time line has a new line added for the rotation that defaults to 5 seconds in length and 360 deg rotation around the Y axis.  Double-Click the animation duration area to open ‘Animation Properties’ to the right of the timeline.

Animation properties will allow us to make edits to the total number of degrees in the rotation, reverse  the rotation (use negative integers!) and change its pivot axis.  You can also adjust ease in/out if you would like to show the part accelerating/decelerating to/from the total rotation value.  There are also options to adjust the center of rotation.

Instead, I will adjust the ‘pivot’ position.  Since this part is symmetrical around the pivot axis I want to use, I simply pick the group from the model tree, and from within the group properties window press the ‘Group’ button next to ‘Pivot Center…’ This will align the pivot axis to the center (volume center) of the group.

I then repeat this process with the tail rotor, but instead use the X axis and also reset the pivot location to the center of the component group.  Also, this helicopter has a direct drive to the tail rotor with a 4:1 ratio.  I used -1440 deg to accomplish this.

TIP: This method of adding and adjusting rotations can also be done with cameras and lights.  Right-click the camera or light and choose “Add Focus Rotation Animation”. 

MOTION BLUR

Finally, I would like to add some motion blur for still photos.  Go to the ‘Cameras’ tab and select the default camera in the project.  Scroll to the bottom of the properties window and enable motion blur.  You can adjust the shutter speed in milliseconds.

For my final render I compressed the animation time to a fraction of a second for both rotors since the main rotor speed for this helicopter is between 2800 and 3500 RPM.  Once I have the RPM dialed in, I can more accurately play with the Shutter speed until I find a setting to my liking.  Note that in order to see the effect of the motion blur, you will need to use ‘Accurate’ render mode.

Adding motion and blur with SOLIDWORKS Visualize Professional can add that additional “pop” to still images where you want to convey circular motion quickly and easily.

If you or anyone on your team would like to know more about how to use SOLIDWORKS Visualize or would like to suggest a topic for the future, please email us at support@cati.com

Alex Worsfold
Application Engineer
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.