A recent sales promotion has helped many new customers obtain a license of SolidWorks Premium, which includes lots of great Add-in functionality beyond SolidWorks Standard and SolidWorks Professional. Perhaps the most popular is SolidWorks Simulation, which provides full finite element analysis (FEA) capabilities for linear static (“stress/strain”) simulation. Also, those of you on a “floating” Network License may have access to a Simulation license. But many of you might not know how or where to get started with Simulation.
Where are the SolidWorks Tutorials? Where is the Help?
Well, Step 0 is you need to make sure SolidWorks Premium is installed! If it is not, then you won’t be able to do Step 1. If you need help installing (or modifying your current installation), then contact your CAD Administrator, or CAPINC customers on subscription can of course contact our Technical Support staff.
Step 1:  Turn on the “SolidWorks Simulation” Add-in. Launch SolidWorks and navigate to the Tools > Add-Ins… menu:


Check the left-hand box to turn on Simulation in this session. Checking the right-hand box will turn it on in every session from now on, which if you’re using a Network License may anger your coworkers who might want access to the license that you’ll keep grabbing!
Step 2: Open a Part or Assembly file. You will not see any Simulation user interface (icons or toolbars) unless a model file is open. It can be a new empty file, as long as you have one open.

Step 3: Browse the pull-down menus (usually hidden beneath the SolidWorks logo) to Simulation > Help > Tutorials. You could also browse instead to Help > SolidWorks Simulation > Tutorials. As long as the Add-In is on, and a model file is open, you will be able to see both of these menu options.

My company does not want to upgrade to EPDM; but they want to create a vaulting system which will index all files. I have been researching programs such as DBWorks, Conisio… I’m looking for comparable programs, or any extra info would be appreciated. Statement below is info from my VAR about SolidWorks Explorer and our 64 bit’s ~As is mentioned in many Microsoft forums, this is a Microsoft Windows limitation. Mapped, network locations cannot be indexed by Windows Search on Windows Vista x64 or Windows 7 x64, therefore they cannot be added to SolidWorks Explorer's search paths list. To workaround this limitation, you can make the files stored in the mapped, network location available offline. Files that are made available offline can be indexed by Windows Search and can therefore be added to the search files list since they will be stored locally. Search the Windows Help for "sync offline files" for more information on how to setup offline files. 476452 - Cannot enable Indexing service search for Workgroup PDM on Windows Server 2008 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 64-bit operating systems – open - Until this is achieved we cannot consider Workgroup as being fully supported on Windows Server 2008. Please see KB S-054407 for manual methods to enable Indexing for the Operating systems in question. For SPR 476452 there will not be a Service Pack or future version delivered solution available for this limitation. However, SolidWorks Development and Technical Support have developed the attached instructions for a workaround which will configure these operating systems to enable the Indexing Service to work in concert with SolidWorks Workgroup PDM Search. These instructions do require changes to be made in the Window registry which should be done with caution and only by individuals comfortable with making registry edits~

Solidworks Flow Simulation can be used to study the fluid flow and heat transfer for a wide variety of engineering equipment. In this example we use Solidworks Flow Simulation to determine the efficiency of a counterflow heat exchanger and to observe the temperature and flow patterns inside of it. With Solidworks Flow Simulation the determination of heat exchanger efficiency is straightforward and by investigating the flow and temperature patterns, the design engineer can gain insight into the physical processes involved thus giving guidance for
improvements to the design.

Boundary Conditions Solidworks Flow Simulation Tutorial help you learn something

A boundary condition is required anywhere fluid enters or exits the system and can be
set as a Pressure, Mass Flow, Volume Flow or Velocity.
1 In the Flow right-click the Boundary Conditions icon

Why can’t we all just get along? Trading files back and forth is an issue that plagues engineers often. However there are some things that can alleviate the problem. Take exchanging Pro/ENGINEER parts and assemblies with SolidWorks. This works relatively well with the robust feature sets that SolidWorks offers for either handling the Pro/ENGINEER features natively as well as handling edits with explicit face manipulation.
First, let’s look at the issue of viewing Pro/ENGINEER files. SolidWorks eDrawings software, a free download, allows users to view native SolidWorks, DWG/DXF and Pro/ENGINEER parts and assemblies. If you have the eDrawings Professional package, you can also measure and markup these files, and send them to your colleagues, customers or vendors to review and markup as well. Finally, you can also download eDrawings Publisher plugins for a variety of other CAD programs, like Pro/ENGINEER so save parts, assemblies and drawings to the eDrawing file format. This publisher also works with PTC’s OneSpace Explicit modeling package (The old ME30) as well as many other CAD programs.

Once we have viewed the file in eDrawings, we can then open the file in SolidWorks for editing. SolidWorks can open the most current versions of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and for the latest specifics, I would encourage you to take a look the online SolidWorks help for Assembly import and Part Import. In the video embedded below, I run through several options of importing and exporting Pro/ENGINEER files with SolidWorks.

In the first part of the video, we open the Pro/E assembly in eDrawings Professional, and mark it up to indicate a design change is needed. In this case we need to change the length of the link on a toggle clamp. Once this is identified, we open the Pro/E assembly in SolidWorks. We are presented with a dialog box asking us how we want to import the assembly.



For an assembly we either have the choice of bringing in the part’s feature history or to use the BREP (boundary representation) of the parts. I choose the BREP as it is the most reliable and will bring in the most accurate representation of the solid model into SolidWorks. Plus, I get the opportunity to import mates (constraints in Pro/E). If you use the feature import, this is not a capability, however, you can import a part later with features and then replace that new part in an assembly that you have already imported.
In the following image, you will notice that the assembly comes in with all mates and material properties. Without even doing anything, it looks great. I am using SolidWorks 2011 and turned on the integrated PhotoView 360 preview and it looks fantastic, see below:


Here you can examine the mates and dynamically move the clamp as you would expect to to move. You can even turn on dynamic collision detection to see what the true range of motion is. Now we need to make the design change lengthen the link. Simply click on one of the links and choose “Edit Part” which allows you to change the part inside of the assembly model. Since I imported the part with no features, I will use the “Direct Editing” tools to lengthen the link. After making the direct edits to the link, and then testing the dynamic motion again I notice my range of motion is now limited and I need to change the clamp-base component, so I employ the direct edition tools again.
I should also note, that you can save out a versioned Pro/E assembly after you make your changes in SolidWorks, to share with other Pro/E users. Check out the video below for a full run-through and please add comments on your experience with this!

By default, SolidWorks Simulation does not open when SolidWorks does. We can change this by going to Tools > Add-Ins, shown in Figure 5.

This Tutorial of Conditions in SolidWorks Simulation

Some common reasons for error include making invalid assumptions, setting incorrect boundary conditions, setting incorrect material properties, and general numerical errors. As an example, let’s consider the stress analysis of a typical model. One can assume a linear stress-strain relationship before the yield strength of the material is reached. The model produces incorrect results as stress or strain increase to the point of nonlinearity on the stress-strain curve.

Objectives Of SolidWorks Simulation

By completing this tutorial, you will learn to conduct finite-element analysis (FEA) tests on SolidWorks models using the Simulation add-on.

1. Static analysis, for Identifying stresses caused by static loading
2. Frequency analysis, for identifying resonant frequencies and associated mode shapes
3. Thermal analysis, for identifying heat flow through a model